On PBS: Documentary ''A Thousand Cuts' shows how social media can be misused for nefarious purposes

A THOUSAND CUTS

Journalist Maria Ressa and press freedom is under attack in the Philippines.

The documentary A Thousand Cuts traces Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte’s war on the press, the spread of disinformation on social media — and one journalist’s vow to “hold the line,” for press freedom.

This film from award-winning filmmaker Ramona Diaz examines President Rodrigo Duterte’s escalating attacks on the media through the story of his prime target: Journalist Maria Ressa, a Time Magazine Person of the Year and CEO and co-founder of the independent news site, Rappler. 

The 98-minute feature film film is now available for streaming on PBS' Frontline.

“What we’re seeing is a death by a thousand cuts of our democracy…little cuts to the body of Philippines democracy,” Ressa says in the documentary of Duterte’s efforts to quash independent reporting. “When you have enough of these cuts, you are so weakened, that you will die.” But she vows to press on: “We will not duck, we will not hide. We will hold the line.”

Ressa and her colleagues have been at the forefront of chronicling Duterte’s brutal war on drugs and she has endured harassment, arrests, and a cyber libel conviction that could send her to prison.

PBS's presentation comes on the heels of the documentary’s robust festival run — including Sundance Film Festival, SXSW Film Festival and AFI DOCS — and a nation-wide virtual theatrical release last summer.

“At its core, A Thousand Cuts is about the epic battle for facts. ‘What do you do when the president lies,’ Maria poses in the film," says director Diaz. It is a question Americans had to confront with Donald Trump.

With the very real threat of turning social media as into a weapon to divide and manipulate Americans is still with us. It is the disinformation presented in lies and half-truths that manifest into groups like Q'non and white supremacists and Trump cultists trying to disrupt government and organize extremists.

It was not until right-wing extremists tried to occupy the Capitol by overwhelming guards and forcing lawmakers into hiding that Facebook and Twitter  took away Trump's accounts.

“Authoritarian governments are consolidating power by weaponizing social media and the law against journalists”, Ressa, who has been advocating for Facebook to be more accountable, said, adding: “These tactics on Facebook are part of dictator’s playbooks around the world. But it’s not right that female journalists have to go through this just to do our jobs.”

In A Thousand Cuts, Ressa demonstrates how a single social media post could be amplified to reach millions of viewers.

The backlash against Ressa and Rappler’s reporting didn’t stop with a tide of tweets and Facebook posts that included threats of sexual and other forms of violence. Since Duterte became president, more than 10 court actions have been filed against Ressa, Rappler or its staffers — actions meant “to cow, to intimidate,” Ressa previously told Frontline.

She has been arrested multiple times and was convicted in a cyber libel case in June 2020, which she has appealed; an additional cyber libel charge that Ressa called “ludicrous” was issued in December 2020. Duterte’s office has said that it is not behind court actions involving Rappler and that it’s “unreasonable” to accuse Duterte’s government of harassing the news site.