How to Stand Up to a Dictator

For decades, Maria Ressa challenged corruption and malfeasance in her native country, the Philippines, as a reporter and bureau chief for CNN, and later, through the innovative online news organization, Rappler, which she founded. Within five years, the Philippine government targeted Rappler and Ressa became an enemy of her country’s most powerful man: President Duterte. Hounded by the state and its allies, she was accused of numerous crimes, charged with cyberlibel and found guilty—and may spend the rest of her life in prison.

As Ressa chronicles her experiences she exposes how social media companies have accelerated the rise of authoritarianism around the world. She maps a network of disinformation that has netted the globe: from Duterte’s drug wars to America’s Capitol Hill; Britain’s Brexit to Russian and Chinese cyberwarfare; Silicon Valley to our own clicks and votes.

Democracy is fragile. How to Stand Up to a Dictator is an urgent cry for Western readers to recognize and understand the dangers to our freedoms before it is too late. In telling her story, Ressa forces readers to ask themselves the same question she and her colleagues ask every day: What are you willing to sacrifice for the truth?

**Paperback**

Maria Ressa is the co-recipient of the 2021 Nobel Peace Prize for her work defending freedom of expression and democracy. She is CEO, cofounder, and president of Rappler, the Philippines’ top digital news site, and has been a journalist in Asia for over thirty-six years. She was TIME Magazine’s Person of the Year in 2018 and won the UNESCO World Press Freedom Prize in 2021. Among the many other awards she has received are the prestigious Golden Pen of Freedom Award from the World Association of Newspapers and News Publishers, the Knight International Journalism Award from the International Center for Journalists, the Shorenstein Journalism Award from Stanford University, and the Sergei Magnitsky Award for Investigative Journalism. She grew up in the Philippines and the United States and currently lives in Manila.