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Brain Lehrer: Brain Lehrer on WNYC. The Nobel Peace Prize was awarded today to two journalists, Maria Ressa, the first Filipino to win a Nobel Prize, by the way, and Dmitry Muratov of Russia. Here is Berit Reiss-Andersen, the chair of the Nobel Committee making the announcement.

Berit Reiss-Andersen: The Norwegian Nobel Committee has decided to award the Nobel Peace Prize for 2021 to Maria Ressa, and Dmitry Muratov for their efforts to safeguard freedom of expression, which is a precondition for democracy and lasting peace.

Brain Lehrer: To talk now about today's prize, I'm joined by Robert Mahoney, Deputy Executive Director of a nonprofit group, The Committee to Protect Journalists, which has the mission of doing exactly that to help protect journalists in places around the world where they face danger. Robert, thanks for joining us. Welcome to WNYC.

Robert Mahoney: Thank you, a pleasure to be here.

Brain Lehrer: These are brand new names to most people in our audience so what can you tell us about these two winners and the publications that each co-founded, the publication Rappler in the Philippines, and Novaya Gazeta in Russia?

Robert Mahoney: Well, first of all, let me tell you that I like many journalists are thrilled at this award this morning because it comes at a time when journalists and journalism are under threat around the world. Maria Ressa is a former CNN correspondent in the Philippines and in Jakarta, who was educated in the US, in New Jersey, actually and then went back to the Philippines, where she founded an online news site called Rappler to counter some of the lies that were coming out through government-owned media and because of that, she is being targeted and is facing jail.

Dmitry Muratov is a longtime journalist who founded a newspaper back in 1993, called Novaya Gazeta, which has been a thorn in the side of the Kremlin for many, many years and that's a paper, which has done really great investigative journalism, and has paid a terrible price. Six of its staff have been murdered over the last 20 odd years. Yesterday, in fact, we mark the 15th anniversary of the killing, still unsolved killing, of Anna Politkovskaya, one of the most famous Russian investigative journalists. These two journalists live in a very repressive environment for the press, and this is a great recognition of their courage and their work over the last three decades.

Brain Lehrer: Listeners, we invite your calls, if you want to comment on ask a question about this year's Nobel Peace Prize winners. I'm curious if anybody is listening right now with ties to the Philippines or ties to Russia who is previously familiar with either these two individual winners or those news organizations? Is there a reader of Rappler listening right now? Rappler, the news organization in the Philippines, where Maria Ressa worked and that she found it or Novaya Gazeta in Russia.

Anybody listening right now, who is familiar with either of these publications or the journalists who won the prize, and the risks that they have taken to their freedom, and even their safety and their lives in order to cover government and society, and a free and fair way, 646-435-7280, 646-435-7280. Let's talk more about the individual winners. They both work in the face of personal and official threats against them. As you started to describe Maria Ressa, I see, is appealing a conviction and has something like seven legal cases against her. She's unable to travel. Six journalists at Novaya Gazeta have been killed since its founding. How do they keep doing their jobs?

Robert Mahoney: Well, they're just relentless. They have a mission, to tell the truth, and to hold the power in their country to account and that's what really motivates them. The organization that I work for The Committee to Protect Journalists has given both of these journalists awards, and the International journalism community has rallied around them to help them with legal support, moral support, whatever, we can do to sustain them because the work that they're doing is invaluable in a very, very small minority of journalists who are able to do this.

We know that they're effective because of the way that the government cracks down on them because they are regarded as shining a light in those dark corners where the Kremlin or Duterte don't want the public to know what's going on. Maria is sustained-- I know her well, She's sustained by this drive, to tell the truth, and to fight for Philippine democracy. She regards the role of the press in the Philippines at the moment as one of guarding what democracy is last in the Philippines under Duterte, who has been ruthless in silencing his critics.

Brain Lehrer: Maria Ressa has reported for CNN in the Philippines before founding Rappler. Here she is talking about her work last summer on the show GZERO with host Ian Bremmer. He points out that in some ways her job as a journalist has become a form of political protest.

Maria Ressa: I would like to just do the stories, even the way other journalists introduced me now the critic of President Duterte those things made me uncomfortable because I didn't set out to be a critic, I set out to be exactly what I am, which is a journalist. As time went on the impunity in the drug war, the impunity that we looked at in the propaganda war, and then obviously, the government not wanting us to do these stories, the weaponization of social media, followed by the weaponization of the law against us.

Then when I was arrested, all of a sudden, I was unshackled. We were seeing things firsthand. I don't have to ask the person being arrested, whether you're innocent or guilty, or look for documents. I was being arrested, and I knew I wasn't guilty, so that was really a transformation for me when I realized that I will speak and I will speak because it's my rights that are getting violated and I see the blatant abuse of power and its impact on press freedom.

Brain Lehrer: The brand new Nobel Peace Prize winner, journalist Maria Ressa from the Philippines and she goes on to say, "In the battle for facts, all journalists are activists. All journalists are activists" Robert, is that how you define the journalist role in general or under certain circumstances?

Robert Mahoney: As an activist, it's not the definition that I would put on the career that I've had, for example, in journalism, or in a lot of the people that I know, but when you are in a really, really repressive country, and the act of reporting is cast by the government as subversion or criminal, then yes, you are necessarily in that situation an activist. Let's remember that the context for this globally is growing authoritarianism amongst many governments around the world, and the criminalization of journalism, that's to say, just asking questions, seeking documents, trying to discover the truth has been criminalized in both the Philippines and in Russia and it fits into a picture where more and more governments want to keep the truth from their citizens and this has been evident throughout the COVID epidemic, for example, where Duterte took extra powers, extra emergency powers, to cover up their failure to deal with the pandemic.

Brain Lehrer: Turning to Russia and the publication there and that part of the Nobel Peace Prize today. As you pointed out, it was 15 years ago that Novaya Gazeta reporter Anna Politkovskaya was murdered in Moscow after being poisoned and attacked all over her reporting on Russian abuses in the Chechen conflict. Has any of that been officially tied to the Russian government?

Robert Mahoney: We strongly suspect that Russia was behind it, of course, it's been denied and the people that ordered that shooting, she was shot in the stairwell of her apartment building, deliberately targeted like a number of other Russian journalists over the last few years including an American. There has been no prosecution. Some big players in the plot, if I can put it that way have been prosecuted but impunity.

The failure to prosecute the killers of journalists is a cancer on the whole of journalism and Russia and the Philippines are amongst the worst offenders in failing to prosecute killers of journalists. I can tell you in the time that The Committee to Protect Journalists has been keeping figures on the numbers of journalists killed, which is since 1992, we've had 87 journalists killed in the Philippines and 58 killed in Russia. If you put that in a Western context, could you imagine if 87 journalists had been killed in the US over the last 20 years?

Brain Lehrer: What's the situation like for Novaya Gazeta that publication in Russia right now?

Robert Mahoney: Well, it's tolerated I could say at the moment. It's under protection of the state, in fact, but it's reporters when they are out in the broader Russian Federation, particularly in Chechnya do run risks. They have, as I said earlier, lost six journalists murdered over the course of their short life, but they are tolerated and they still do great work but the vast majority of Russians do not get their news from newspapers, they get it from broadcast media, which is totally controlled by the Kremlin.

Brain Lehrer: Listeners. We'll broaden the invitation for you now to any questions for our guest, Robert Mahoney, deputy executive director of The Committee to Protect Journalists who is here to comment on the awarding of a Nobel peace prize this morning to two journalists, Maria Ressa, the first Filipino to win a Nobel prize and Dmitry Muratov of Russia. They are both journalists who are taking their lives and their freedoms into their hands. As we've been hearing any questions, comments, reactions, talk about the prize itself, the big context of journalism in the world today, whatever you'd like to bring up or ask Robert Mahoney, 646-435-7280, 646-435-7280. Did the Nobel committee make any larger statement about increasing threats to journalists either their own personal lives or freedoms or to the ability to get information to publics out around the world today in general, or did they just narrowly focus on here's a person in the Philippines and here's a person in Russia?

Robert Mahoney: No, they've spoken about the importance of free media and the free flow of information. The most eloquent thing they can do though, they've done, which is to award this prize, which will shine a very strong light I believe on both countries at the moment. As I said, at the opening remarks, Brian, I am thrilled that this has happened because this is long overdue. Journalists are on the front lines of the battles to save democracy and keep the free flow of information, not just from repression by governments but also the poisoning of the entire information ecosystem that we have with social media. This is I believe a way of highlighting their work and hopefully making it more difficult for those governments to crack down on them.

Brain Lehrer: Last year we had a critic of the prize, the Nobel peace prize itself, the institution of the Nobel peace prize as a guest on the day of the prize was awarded Anne Applebaum who thought the awards have become too, to have any real effect but do you think this award could have an effect for these two journalists in particular or for freedom of the press in Russia and the Philippines?

Robert Mahoney: Yes. I don't think this is an eccentric choice at all. There have been some should I say surprising choices in the past and some of the prizes, but this is, to me, not a centric. This is the long-overdue recognition of the work of frontline journalists, journalists who are at the vanguard of reporting and have so much skin in the game. Many Western journalists take risks but most of us don't risk imprisonment or assassination. These journalists risk that all the time. I think this far from being an eccentric award is a long-overdue recognition of the great work that they're doing.

Brain Lehrer: Jim in Spring Lake, you're on WNYC with Robert Mahoney, from The Committee to Protect Journalists. Hi, Jim.

Speaker 3: Hi, Brian, thanks for having me on. Mr. Mahoney. The question I have is I'm a humanitarian aid worker and I was very involved in trying to help get Afghans out of Afghanistan or US troops who were leaving. We had some minor success with that, but I have lists upon lists of journalists who did not get out of the country. Just this morning as I was listening to the show, I was messaging back and forth with three journalists that contacted me. They feel they're under threat, that the pressures are building on them. Their families' lives are threatened.

They want to get out and they're telling me they keep trying to contact their Western journalist's colleagues that they worked with in Afghanistan over the years, and nobody is getting back to them. I'd like to know what is the commitment on the part of the journalist community in the west who reported from Afghanistan for years and has left these journalists behind to fend for themselves? We have to have some organized commitment. It can't just be a guy like me working out of his apartment on the beach in New Jersey, trying to help get Afghan journalists. I need to know how you will use your platform to help these.

Brain Lehrer: Jim, thank you very much. Are you using your platform at The Committee to Protect Journalists and whatever leverage you have? It is a global organization.

Robert Mahoney: This is the subject, which is dear to my heart and we're not just using our platform. We're actually providing physical assistance. We have been able to take a number of Afghan journalists out of Afghanistan and continuing to do so. We have one of the go-to organizations in terms of making lists of those journalists that are left behind. We have been working with other organizations with news companies in the field to try to get journalists out. We were successful in getting a number out before the airport finally closed down when the last us troops left, but we haven't forgotten those journalists and we are continuing to work to get them out.

The problem is there is a huge number of journalists still inside, and it's not just the journalist, it's also their families, which means that for every journalist, there may be another three or four people. Then there are the people who are associated with a news bureau. A news bureau is like a little village, you've got interpreters, you've got local journalists, you've got translators, cooks, security, guards, drivers, all those people could be threatened. It's an enormous problem but at The Committee to Protect Journalists, we have not forgotten them. We're actually doing something about it.

Brain Lehrer: All right. Let's hope. Well, then how can the committee and not the committee, the Nobel peace prize for these two journalists, in particular, the one from the Philippines and the one from Russia, help journalists in other countries where press freedoms are not defended? If you think the awarding of the price can do that at all.

Robert Mahoney: I think, first of all, it brings publicity. It brings attention to the work that they're doing. It helps them, I think as individual journalists, but I'm not going to speak for them. They can speak for themselves about what they think the prize will do for them but it's been my experience over the years that I'd been working in this field of trying to help journalists is that most publicity, most exposure about what journalists are doing is good in the end, because it does this by, and it creates a political price for those governments that then want to go after journalists.

Brain Lehrer: Sure.

Robert Mahoney: There are some governments, some dictators who don't care and they will do it but most governments care about their international reputation. They have diplomatic relations with other countries. They have commercial and other ties with other countries, and it at least makes them think twice before going after a journalist. I'm not saying this because I think it, this is what journalists, tell me about how the US as a group issuing a statement, condemning the arrest of a journalist, or shining a light on the plight of a journalist has helped them. There are some cases where it may not be helpful and we're very careful not to do that but in the end, publicity, exposure is the best way to try to protect journalists particularly against governments like those in the Philippines.

Brain Lehrer: Kim in Richmond Hill, you're on WNYC.

Kim: Hi, I usually tell my friends, there's a bit of truth in every joke, and I want to know what you think of this. I tell them because I'm Canadian that Canada exports three things the United States, they can make on their own beer hockey and democracy. Democracy says a lot, especially with regards to journalism. There's a newfound hatred of journalism and that there's an undercurrent in the United States. I want to know what you thought of that.

Brain Lehrer: Thank you very much. Yes. It can always be unpopular to tell unpopular truths, which is part of the job of journalists to be sure. I wonder how you react to that caller, Robert.

Robert Mahoney: Look, journalists are often unwelcome. Whenever you do, you see surveys of people that are disliked the most by the public, I'm afraid journalists and lawyers are usually at the top of that list but that's not the purpose of being a reporter, to be liked. The purpose is to bring forth information to tell truth and to bear witness. What I do see, which is troubling, is the deliberate targeting of journalists particularly online by trolls and people who would engage in terrible online harassment. Particularly against female journalists and that is a growing trend. Even in some of the protests recently in Europe and in the United States by groups opposed to vaccination, we've seen journalists assaulted and accosted just for being there. Some of the protesters identify the journalist mistakenly with a particular political view or with the government. There is I'm afraid a growing hostility in many countries towards journalists and it's something that we have to battle.

Brian Lehrer: Do you think, as the caller suggests that Canada has a more robust democracy when it comes to journalism than the United States?

Robert Mahoney: [chuckles] I know both countries really well. It's different in Canada, the temperature's a little lower and it's probably easier for journalists to operate in certain spheres but there are guarantees for journalists baked into the US Constitution which Canada does not have.

Brian Lehrer: Well, last thing, I saw at least one commentator connecting this win of the Nobel Peace Prize to the Facebook Controversy, the high stakes of stopping the flow of misinformation. The Nobel Committee says, "Freedom of expression is a precondition for democracy," that's a quote from this morning's presentation. To what extent does freedom of expression being subverted by the free flow of misinformation?

Robert Mahoney: It's a huge problem and we've seen it during the pandemic, with the torrent of misinformation about the disease and vaccines that has come forward. Long before even COVID, Maria Ressa was battling Facebook because we think of social media as we see it here in the US, but in the Philippines for example, for many Filipinos, the internet is Facebook. That's their platform. Maria Ressa has been fighting against the misinformation on Facebook because she said when we at The Committee to Protect Journalists gave her our award in 2018, in her speech she says, "We are battling two enemies, the government and Facebook."

The government weaponized Facebook against her. She calls it, patriotic trolling, where the false accounts and paid Facebookers were set after her. Every time she did anything, there will be this torrent of abuse and false information about her and her organization. The weaponization of social media and the pollution of what I will call the information ecosphere is an incredible problem because you cannot fact-check lies fast enough, the next one keeps coming. It's no point as a journalist, in telling the truth because nobody believes you.

Brian Lehrer: There, we leave it with today's news. That two journalists, Maria Ressa from the Philippines and Dmitry Muratov from Russia have won the Nobel Peace Prize. We thank Robert Mahoney, Deputy Executive Director of The Committee to Protect Journalists, thank you very much.

Robert Mahoney: It's great being on your show, Brian, thank you.

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