Emmy awarded to "A Thousand Cuts' documentng Maria Ressa's fight for press freedom

MARIA RESSA

A Thousand Cuts, the documentary following Filipino American journalist Maria Ressa, won the award for Outstanding Social Issue Documentary at the 43rd News and Documentary Emmys held in New York City last Sept. 28.

“Thank you, Academy. And (Frontline PBS). and of course (Maria Ressa) and (Rappler) and everyone of our Philippine team!” tweeted Diaz, a resident of New Jersey.

The feature had its US broadcast premiere on Frontline in January 2022. Directed by Filipino American Ramona Diaz, the documentary follows Nobel Peace Prize winner Ressa as she fights for press freedom during the administration of former Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte. It is a powerful examination o the threat of disinformation spread by social media.

Ressa, who co-founded the online news network Rappler, has had a ongoing battle with the Duterte administration, especially over its war on drugs, where thousands of alleged drug dealers and users were executed by overzealous law enforcement, military and vigilantes.

Philippines court found the New Jersey-raised Ressa guilty for libel, which she is appealing.

Ressa was awarded the 2021 Nobel Peace Prize earlier this year for her defense of press freedom in the Philippines.

A Thousand Cuts is a Concordia Studio, Motto Pictures, and CineDiaz production developed in association with Topic for Frontline.

The full documentary can be viewed online for free on the YouTube channel and website of PBS Frontline, which acquired the rights to the documentary in June 2020.

For a complete list of Emmy winners, click here.

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'A Thousand Cuts' documentary earns two Emmy nominations

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The documentary "A Thousand Cuts" centers on Filipino American journalist and her fight for press freedom.

The documentary "A Thousand Cuts," about Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte's efforts to muzzle journalist Maria Ressa, was nominated for two Emmy's.

In “A Thousand Cuts,” Filipino American filmmaker Ramona S. Diaz follows the crusade of Maria Ressa and Nobel Peace Prize laureate, as she exposes Duterte’s war on drugs, the extrajudicial killings and the corruption surrounding him.

RELATED: 'Squid Games' lead other Asian and Asian American nominees

The “thousand cuts” refers to chipping away at democracy through lies, misinformation and death threats until nothing is left.

Ressa, who grew up in New Jersey, is free on bail after being convicted of cyber libel by the Philippine courts.

The documentary, fresh after winning the Peabody Award, was nominated in Outstandin Documentary and Outstanding Social Issue categories as announced by the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences on Thursday, July 28. It was among the 13 News and Documentary Emmy Award nominations received by Frontline one of the top investigative news programs in the US..

The 43rd News & Documentary Emmy® Awards will be presented in two individual ceremonies September 28 and 29, both live at the Palladium Times Square and live streamed on Watch.TheEmmys.TV and The Emmys ® app. 

To see the full list of nominees click here.

EDITOR'S NOTE: For additional commentary, news and views from an AANHPI perspective, follow @DioknoEd on Twitter.

'A Thousand Cuts," documentary on Maria Ressa, wins Peabody Award

Two Jersey girls making waves: journalist Maria Ressa, left, and filmmaker Ramona Diaz.

As journalist Maria Ressa fights off attempts of the Philippine government to muzzle her online news site Rappler and to jail the Nobel Peace Prize winner, a documentary of her fight for freedom of the press won the prestigious Peabody award.

A Thousand Cuts — Frontline’s 2021 documentary on the escalating war between the government and the press in the Philippines — was honored with a George Foster Peabody Award in the documentary category.

Directed by Filipino American filmmaker Ramona S. Diaz, the award-winning feature-length documentary follows renowned journalist Maria Ressa, CEO of the independent news site Rappler and a top target of Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte’s war on press freedom. In December 2021, Ressa went on to be named a winner of the Nobel Peace Prize.

Like Ressa, Diaz immigrated with her family as a young girl and grew up in New Jersey.

As one of the most prominent Filipino American filmmakers in the US, Diaz is the director of numerous feature documentaries including: 

• Spirits Rising (1996), about Corazon Aquino and the People Power Revolution, which won a Student Academy Award and the Ida Lupino DGA Award; 
• Imelda (2004), the definitive portrait of the infamous former First Lady of the Philippines, which won the Sundance Cinematography Prize for director of photography; 
• Ferne Pearlstein (full disclosure: my wife); and 
• Motherland (2017), a cinéma vérité portrait of a hospital in one of the poorest parts of Manila, home to the busiest maternity ward on earth, which won a Special Jury Award at Sundance.

In the Peabody Award jurors’ citation, A Thousand Cuts was recognized for its “astonishing access and chilling precision” and was honored as “a journalistic profile in courage for our time and a cautionary tale for global press freedom straining against the rise of populist autocracies around the world.”

A Thousand Cuts premiered on PBS in January 2021 following a decorated theatrical release in the summer of 2020 by PBS Distribution. Most recently, the film was awarded a 2022 Robert F. Kennedy Journalism Award in the International TV category.

“We are thrilled to see Ramona Diaz’s A Thousand Cuts be recognized by the George Foster Peabody Awards,” said Frontline Executive Producer Raney Aronson-Rath. 

“At a time when the critical practice and public service of journalism is increasingly under attack in countries across the globe, we are proud to share Maria’s courageous story with our PBS audiences. We share this honor with our production partners at CineDiaz, Motto Pictures and Concordia Studios, and we will continue to champion Maria and other journalists in pursuit of the truth.”

In the last days of the Presidency of President Rodrigo Duterte before he handed over the  government to incoming , the Philippine government ordered Rappler to stop its online operation. Two weeks later, the Court of Appeals upheld libel charges against Ressa which carries with it a six-year prison. sentence.

Meanwhile, Ressa remains free on bail and Rappler is continuing to operate as appeals are being made to the newly installed government of President Bongbong Marcos to drop the charges against the news site and the journalist.

“I’m very honored to receive a Peabody Award for A Thousand Cuts,” said Diaz. “It’s been a privilege to be able to tell Maria Ressa’s story. She has been sounding the clarion call for social media disinformation and its effects on democracy since 2016. This important recognition from Peabody goes a long way in helping us amplify this universally resonant story.”

Since 1940, the prestigious George Foster Peabody Awards have honored excellence in broadcasting. The awards now recognize excellence in digital storytelling as well.

Including the award for A Thousand Cuts, Frontline — which is produced at GBH in Boston and airs nationwide on PBS — has garnered 27 Peabody Awards to date. 

Stream A Thousand Cuts below.

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'A Thousand Cuts', the anti-Duterte documentary, will be shown in the Philippines

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Journalist Maria Ressa faces a host of charges in the Philippines.

No television station in the Philippines was daring enough to air A Thousand Cuts, an award-winning documentary critical of President Rodrigo Duterte's attempts to suppress press freedom. The people of the Philippines will, at last, have the opportunity to view the film about their own country.

“After a year of screening for audiences around the world — from New Zealand to North America, from Israel to the Netherlands, A Thousand Cuts is finally coming home. I’m so grateful that Frontline (PBS) stepped up to the plate to make the film available to audiences in the Philippines where it matters most,” says filmmaker Ramona Diaz.

PBS' Frontline, the longest-running investigative documentary series, announced Tuesday, March 2, that it has acquired full-streaming rights for the award-winning film A Thousand Cuts in the Philippines, a country experiencing an escalating war between the government and the press.

The important acquisition will make the film accessible March 13 on PBS.org/frontline and YouTube to the people in the Philippines who are most impacted by the issues in this story. The news comes after Philippine distributors and TV did not license the film.

A Thousand Cuts chronicles the story of Filipino American journalist Maria Ressa, a top target of  Duterte’s crackdown on the news media. Ressa and her colleagues have been at the forefront of reporting on Duterte’s brutal war on drugs and she has endured harassment, arrests, and a cyber libel conviction that could send her to prison. In January, she posted bail for her tenth arrest warrant.

The film will begin streaming in the Philippines on Saturday, March 13. At 9 pm PHT/8am EST on March 13, Frontline will host a live YouTube roundtable discussion with Ressa, Diaz and Frontline’s Executive Producer, Raney Aronson-Rath. The roundtable will explore the importance of sharing A Thousand Cuts with Filipino audiences as Ressa’s legal situation continues to unfold.

The 2020 Sundance Film Festival documentary made its U.S. broadcast debut on Frontline (PBS) in January this year, and is currently available to stream in North America. By securing full streaming rights on both PBS.org/frontline and YouTube, the Philippine people can stream A Thousand Cuts in its entirety and learn about the implications for democracy when press freedom is threatened — a story that is increasingly vital, as Duterte has taken severe measures to thwart journalists.

“At Frontline, we felt we needed to do whatever we could to make this story available to the Filipino people,” says Frontline Executive Producer Raney Aronson-Rath. “We’ve seen a growing desire to have A Thousand Cuts be more permanently accessible in the Philippines, especially as Maria’s legal situation continues to worsen. We’re proud we can make Ramona’s documentary available to the community it impacts the most.”

Prior to its PBS broadcast, A Thousand Cuts completed a robust festival run — including Sundance Film Festival, SXSW Film Festival and AFI DOCS — and a nation-wide virtual theatrical release last summer. The New York Times calls A Thousand Cuts “absorbing” (Critic’s Pick), The Washington Post says the documentary is “utterly urgent” and The Hollywood Reporter describes the film as  “essential.”

A Thousand Cuts is now streaming online in North America on pbs.org/frontline and YouTube. The film is also available to stream in the PBS Video App and on PBS Documentaries Prime Video Channel.

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.