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.

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

'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.

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

Frontline tells the story of government going after a Chinese American bank

Left to right: Vera Sung, Jill Sung and Thomas Sung,

DO YOU LIKE David and Goliath stories? How about stories about injustice? Scapegoating? Racism? Put them all together and you get a story - the American Dream turned into a nightmare for a Chinese/American family.

Contrary to popular belief, the government did go after one bank in the mortgage loan crisis that brought the U.S. to the Great Recession.

You've heard of the investment bankers, Countrywide, Wells Fargo, Bank of America and the bundlers on Wall Street.

The government chose to make an example of Abacus Federal Savings Bank, a privately owned bank that serves New York's Chinese community. It is the 2,531 largest bank in the country.

Its story, "Abacus: Small Enough Jail" will air tonight in a documentary on Frontline (check your local listings.)

“We are pleased that this story will have a chance to reach an even wider audience,” says Thomas Sung, the founder of Abacus Federal Savings Bank. “For us, this was never just the story of our family bank. It’s a cautionary tale about the larger struggle for justice in our community.”

It’s a little-known chapter from the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression: In 2009, shortly after the housing market crashed and the markets melted down, the owners of a small community bank in New York City’s Chinatown discovered fraud within their loan department.

The bank’s owners, the Chinese/American Sung family, fired a loan officer — and reported the fraud to their regulators at the federal Office of Thrift Supervision.

But two-and-a-half years later, the bank was accused of mortgage fraud by the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office — making Abacus Federal Savings the only U.S. bank to be prosecuted in relation to the financial collapse and the first bank indicted in New York since 1991.

Why did Abacus face charges, while the biggest banks on Wall Street all avoided prosecution for fraud related to the sale of bad mortgages?

That’s the question at the heart of Abacus: Small Enough to Jail, the newest film from acclaimed documentary director Steve James (Hoop Dreams, The Interrupters). Fresh off of a robust international film festival run and national theatrical release, the documentary has its national broadcast premiere tonight on FRONTLINE.

In vivid detail, Abacus chronicles the Sung family’s quest to clear their names, the district attorney’s case against the bank — and how 19 of the bank’s ex-employees, largely immigrants, were treated by the justice system.

In the attached clip, go inside the day of the indictment, when 12 ex-employees of the bank who refused to plead guilty were arraigned, handcuffed to each other, and in the words of one of their attorneys, “herded like cattle” down courthouse hallways.

“Reporters in this town were treated to this extraordinary photo opportunity, this almost Stalinist looking chain gang” of Asian Americans, says journalist Matt Taibbi.

The Manhattan District Attorney, Cyrus Vance, Jr., says there were security issues behind the decision to march the former employees through the court’s hallways in handcuffs. “It was very unfortunate, but it happened,” said Vance.

But others who were there say the move was designed to humiliate.

“They actually staged it so much so that three of the people that were in that chain had already been arraigned, had already posted bond and were out awaiting trial,” investigative journalist David Lindorf says in the above clip from Abacus.

For one observer, the scene was particularly personal.

“I had never seen that in my entire time at the DA’s office,” says Chanterelle Sung, whose father, Thomas, is the bank’s founder. She had worked at the office as a prosecutor for seven years — in the very division that would end up prosecuting her family’s bank.

The story has attracted the attention of Hollywood director Justin Lin who wants turn it into a feature movie. “This is a quintessential American story told from a point of view that is rarely seen on screen. The Sung family’s collective act of courage needs to be told, especially now,” said Lin.

Get the full story on the case against Abacus, how the trial played out, and what it all says about America’s financial and justice systems in "Abacus: Small Enough to Jail," premiering tonight, Tuesday, Sept.12 at 10 p.m. EST/9 p.m. CST on PBS stations (check local listings) and online.

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