Ostensibly, the environment of fear has lifted but we've run into situations where people are still afraid, because it's hard. I have 34 years of possible jail time disappearing with four criminal charges when I was acquitted along with Rappler. I think people looked at the three justices of the Court of Tax Appeals to see if there were any repercussions, there were none. In V-Dem (Varieties of Democracy), one of the things I liked is that when they are saying that if a country is recovering, it is moving back towards democracy. 

For free media, the outlook is uncertain, but slightly better. I’ve had ten arrest warrants beginning in 2019 and seven of them are gone. Therefore, I have three left. That would have been over a hundred years in prison and now we are down to a few decades. We have more faith. The Philippines is not North Korea, we are not Russia, and we are not China. Therefore, I hope that the rule of law becomes stronger.

It’s true in a sense. I have had 10 arrest warrants. I could have been convicted, but I wasn’t. The world finally turned upside down. Duterte was probably the most powerful leader this country has ever had that never had to declare martial law, which the first father, Marcos, had to do. Duterte never had to, because of COVID-19. So, I think it’s correct that we did rise up. I feel it personally. This is a personal experience. But I think where RSF was off is that we are not vibrant. The chilling effect was real and there were stories that weren’t being done. There were costs to do to those stories and we had nothing left to lose, frankly. We kept doing the stories. It would be worse to say I gave up what I was doing, because I was afraid.

There is a case in the SEC, the Securities and Exchange Commission, for a shutdown order on Rappler. The criminal counterpart of that is the violation of the anti-dummy law (Commonwealth Act 108). There is the cyber libel case that is all the way at the Supreme Court. In order to travel, I have to ask for permission from the Supreme Court.

It is impossible to govern when your people, people who are in your country, are insidiously manipulated with fear, anger, and hate. What would you do? Would you use the same tools in order to fight back? How do you fight back? 

How do you deal with this? You look at the law regulatory frameworks; you look at protecting your citizens. A toaster in any of our countries has more safety tests to go through by regulation than what you carry in your pocket. Moreover,this is tremendously far more powerful than anything we've ever touched, right?