Editor Maria Ressa and Rappler, an online news site in the Philippines, were acquitted of tax evasion by the country’s Court of Tax Appeals on Wednesday. This lifts from her shoulders one of several politically motivated charges aimed at suffocating her organization. The court’s dismissal of the charge is a welcome first step, a win for “facts, truth and justice,” as she put it, in a country that has seen assaults on all three in recent years.
The challenges to press freedom have never been more acute. Despots such as former Philippine president Rodrigo Duterte have shown that instead of locking the doors and using physical force against a newsroom, it is just as harmful to swamp the owners with phony court cases or, as evident in Russia and Turkey, change the ownership altogether, installing friendly cronies to subvert independent journalism. This is the method of leaders who do not want to face probing questions and accountability.
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End of carouselAlso on the Editorial Board’s agenda
- The world’s ice is melting quickly.
- The Taliban rolls back women’s rights.
- Turkey’s autocratic president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, is at it again.
- Hong Kong’s crackdown on free speech continues.
A new study finds that half the world’s mountain glaciers and ice caps will melt even if global warming is restrained to 1.5 degrees Celsius — which it won’t be. This would feed sea-level rise and imperil water sources for hundreds of millions. Read a recent editorial on how to cope with rising seas, and another on the policies needed to fight climate change.
The Taliban came back to power in Afghanistan last year promising to be different from when they ruled the country before 2001. This pledge has gone up in smoke. The Taliban banned women from attending universities, effective immediately. Earlier the Taliban banned girls from middle and high school, restricted them from jobs, and ordered them to wear head-to-toe clothing in public. Read recent editorials on women’s rights in Afghanistan.
A court in mid-December sentenced Istanbul’s popular mayor, Ekrem Imamoglu, a political rival of the president, to more than two years in prison on the charge of “insulting public figures.” If confirmed on appeal, his conviction would bar Mr. Imamoglu from seeking public office. Mr. Erdogan has a long history of suppressing critics and competition. Read our recent editorial.
A Hong Kong judge sentenced Jimmy Lai, a media magnate known for publishing a defiantly independent newspaper, to almost six years in prison. His trial for violating Hong Kong’s repressive national security law, charges for which he could face life in prison, has been postponed until next year. Read our most recent editorial on the case.
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Ms. Ressa faced such pressure from Mr. Duterte, who was president from 2016 to 2022 and launched an extrajudicial war on drugs in which thousands of people were killed arbitrarily and with impunity. Rappler journalists fearlessly documented the death toll. The president then came after the news organization with the tax case, claiming that Rappler had avoided taxes in the course of raising capital with foreign investors. “The acquittal of the accused is based on the findings of the court … that respondents did not commit the crime charge,” the court said in its decision. Rappler welcomed the decision, calling the charges “fraudulent, false, and flimsy.”
Next, Ms. Ressa, who shared the Nobel Peace Prize in 2021 with Russian journalist Dmitry Muratov, faces three more harassment cases: a separate tax charge; her Supreme Court appeal of an online libel conviction; and Rappler’s appeal of a closure order issued by the Philippines’ Securities and Exchange Commission. Hopefully, Ms. Ressa will also prevail in these cases, and she will remain, with Rappler, a fiercely independent example of the free press in action.