鈥淲HAT ARE YOU WILLING TO sacrifice for the truth?鈥 That was the blunt question posed by Maria Ressa, the 2021 Nobel Peace Prize winner, as she delivered the Salant Lecture on Freedom of the Press in November. Ressa, the founder of Rappler, a digital Filipino news organization, has gained international recognition for her tireless work holding the powerful accountable and for her technological innovations in journalism. She has also paid a heavy price, in the form of near-constant online attacks aimed at her and her staff, along with a barrage of civil and criminal cases, which hold the potential for serious prison time and have required her to seek court permission to travel, including to Harvard and to Norway in December for the Nobel awards ceremony. Ressa, who was at the Kennedy School as Hauser Leader at the Center for Public Leadership and a Joan Shorenstein Fellow at the Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy, spent her time at the University in the fall meeting with students and experts and delving further into her research. Her lecture focused on the use of social networks as vehicles for huge misinformation campaigns aimed at division and distraction, and she criticized them heavily for contributing to the erosion of democracy. 鈥淚f you have lies, you don鈥檛 have facts. If you don鈥檛 have facts, how can you have truth? How can you have trust? If you don鈥檛 have these three, you don鈥檛 have democracy. You don鈥檛 have a shared reality.鈥
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鈥淲e have a democracy in the United States, but the only way that democracy can work is if everybody participates.鈥
鈥淚f we are truthful about the extent of racism in our politics and our policymaking, then we have to be honest about the fact that it has a cost for virtually everyone.鈥
鈥淲e remain resolute that failure is not an option as it relates to our democracy.鈥
鈥淚nflation is a tax. It鈥檚 a very regressive tax ... because it is in the lower income strata where the largest share of the budget goes to food, energy, and basic necessities.鈥
鈥淭he ability to have an education鈥攖hat is a health issue. Housing is a health issue. The environment is a health issue. Transportation 鈥 that鈥檚 a health issue.鈥
鈥淭his quest to a clean energy future is actually totally in line with where the world needs to head. It鈥檚 not a sacrifice. It is an opportunity.鈥
Banner image by REUTERS/Eloisa Lopez; Jeffries and Reinhart portraits by Martha Stewart