Maria Ressa, one of the Nobel Peace Prize winners, gave an interview to The Guardian where he launched criticisms of Facebook, considering that the social network is “biased against facts"and "biased against journalism".
"If you don't have facts, you can't have truths and you can't have confidence. If you don't have any of this, you don't have a democracy”, said Ressa, declaring that Facebook is a threat to democracy.
Ressa, journalist and activist, won the 2021 Nobel Peace Prize together with journalist Dmitry Muratov. The prize was awarded based on the “effort to safeguard freedom of expression, which is a precondition for democracy and lasting peace.".
BREAKING NEWS:
The Norwegian Nobel Committee has decided to award the 2021 Nobel Peace Prize to Maria Ressa and Dmitry Muratov for their efforts to safeguard freedom of expression, which is a precondition for democracy and lasting peace.#NobelPrize #NobelPeacePrize pic.twitter.com/KHeGG9YOTT- The Nobel Prize (@NobelPrize) October 8, 2021
Maria Ressa uses freedom of expression to expose the abuse of power, the use of violence and the growing authoritarianism in her home country, the Philippines, where she directs the Rappler, a digital media body dedicated to investigative journalism and co-founded in 2012.
The Nobel Committee highlighted, in particular, the role of Ressa and the Rappler in denouncing the “the regime's controversial and murderous anti-drug campaign” by the President of the Philippines, Rodrigo Duterte”.
For the Committee, the death toll in this campaign is so high that "it resembles a war waged against the country's own population."
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Ressa and Rappel too "documented how social media is being used to spread false news, harass opponents and manipulate public discourse".
In 2020, the Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to the World Food Program (WFP) for the role of this United Nations agency in ending hunger as “a weapon of war and conflict”.
The Nobel Peace Prize is the only one of the six prizes to be awarded and presented outside Sweden, in Oslo, at the express request of Alfred Nobel (1833-1896), since Norway was part of the Swedish kingdom in its time.
Since 1901, the Nobel Peace Prize has been awarded 101 times, to 132 laureates: 90 men, 17 women and 25 organizations, according to the organization.
The laureates will receive a prize of eight million Swedish kronor, in addition to a diploma and a medal.
