MANILA – Rappler’s controversial chief executive officer Maria Ressa named as among the 100 most influential people of 2019 by Time Magazine, making her the only Filipino to be part of the list.
In a tribute written by US secretary of State Madeleine Albright, she lauded Ressa’s commitment for “exposing corruption, documenting abuse and combating misinformation.”
“Maria’s Manila-based news site, Rappler, has already been indicted by President Duterte’s government on questionable tax-evasion charges and [she] was arrested and briefly imprisoned earlier this year for allegedly violating a dubious ‘cyberlibel’ law. But Maria remains undaunted,” Albright wrote.
The inclusion of Ressa to the magazine’s influential list came a year after she was chosen as one of Time Magazine’s 2018 Person of the Year, along with slain Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi.
Ressa and online news website Rappler have been slapped with several tax evasion cases by the Department of Justice and were also facing alleged violations of foreign ownership rules.
Ressa was first arrested in February over a cyberlibel case due to an article published on Rappler years ago. She was re-arrested a month later over a charge of violating the anti-dummy law.
Aside from Ressa, Time Magazine’s most influential list includes Los Angeles Lakers’ Lebron James, US President Donald Trump, Lady Gaga, Mark Zuckerberg, Michelle Obama, Pope Francis, Taylor Swift and Chinese President Xi Jinping. /PN
