In Conversation: Maria Ressa and Karen Davila on journalism in the age of AI and the cost of silence

KD:  One of the things that suffered for many of us is our intellectual integrity. What arose was the need to think like everybody else. There was a time when it was scary to be different and to stand up for what you believed in. Say, you’re against the death penalty but you open Facebook and everyone is pro. You start to question your own beliefs. But more than this, what worries me in terms of tech is that the younger Filipinos are so far behind when it comes to reading, math comprehension and science.  We’re building a next generation of Filipinos who cannot think because AI is doing the thinking for them.

MR: Cognitive surrender.

KD: Cognitive surrender, yes.   I also worry that it’s already 2026 and the dream of the Filipino is still to leave the country.  I hope to see change. I hope that a certain generation would care enough to correct what older generations have forgotten and allowed.

MR: Well Karen, your son Lucas is doing something. He gets all his friends together and acts.  What about us? What is our civic circle? 

KD: It’s why I’ve always believed in the value of volunteerism and teaching it at such a young age, to involved them in community work.

MR: And yet, it’s not that prevalent, right?  Because of cynicism, which kills hope. 

KD: No, what kills hope is indifference. When you no longer care.  We need to make people care. It’s better to be angry than indifferent, better to be afraid than indifferent, better to be doubtful than indifferent. 

MR: Indifference is aligned with silence. For me, hope comes from action. Duterte crushed our institutions within six months, from politics to business to media. I noticed people were silent but I couldn’t get mad because I understood that they had to protect their families, their businesses. But that quiet is where the quote, “ silence is complicity”, comes from because we enabled it.

KD: Maria, if I were to ask you, what would we do today? Now that tech is here to stay and behaviours have changed already. What should we do?

MR: One country alone can’t do this. I’ve pushed a lot at the UN level which people say is extremely weak; but it is the only multilateral solution we have. What can be done is to strengthen Asean because America, that created the post-Second World War multilateral system, is literally working to almost destroy it with its policies. Asean, Democracia Siempre, all the different groupings around the world must coalesce. No one country alone can regulate technology because it’s global in scope. 

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KD: I  feel that tech has democratised information.

MR: Don’t say that! That’s positive! What tech did was change the incentive structure of the public information ecosystem for money, profit, power; and it did it with impunity, encouraging the worst of us. Lies spread at least six times faster in 2018. 

KD: But also, with news. Today it’s worse by a hundred times; yet, we also said, that bad news sells.

MR: Yes. So, we were still legally liable for these things. But tech companies which took over as gatekeepers rewarded lies, fear, anger and hate because they made more money from it.

KD: How should we fight it, Maria?

MR: The first is regulation. Well, before that, to first write stories that tell people how they’re being manipulated by technology. Hold the tech accountable the way you hold news organisations accountable. The second is, don’t take journalism for granted. We’re counting months before the possible end of journalism. If the world does not do anything significantly different, journalism will die.

KD: I think journalism will not completely die… but will it still be as relevant and important to those who actually consume it? 

MR: That’s called accountability. Look, if journalism does not exist in a society, there’s no way that society will be a democracy. That comes from the Nobel Committee, right? This is incredibly important as a check and balance. 

KD: How do we make sure that journalism survives and thrives?

MR: You just have to understand right now that the business model of journalism is dead! 

KD: No, it’s completely changed.

MR:  I would say changed for the worst. It has abandoned the ethics of what journalism is.

KD: But, Maria, the truth is, it starts with the fear to stand up for what’s right because of a leader who seems to be untouchable. We blame tech—and I agree they have to answer, to be regulated—but what about our accountability? When we see wrongdoing or corruption, we blame tech; but the survival of a democracy starts with the people. And I think we don’t use that power enough. But you, Maria, you held the line.

MR:  People will make the choice, and this aligns with values. Good journalists hold the line. But the incentive around society is not to. If you don’t hold the line, then you’re not a journalist. If you do, you get a Nobel Peace Prize! (Laughter) 

KD: I’ve actually experienced having to self-censor because of what ABS-CBN went through. Going  through a period wherein what you want to say would affect the lives of other people you work with, that was such an eye-opener fbecause I’ve always taken journalism as an idealistic profession. That we have allowed ABS-CBN to shut down, that has changed me in the sense that I take responsibility for myself more. Now, Headstart is online. And I think that today, I can really stand by every word I say, every question I ask. But how about you, Maria? 

MR: I haven’t really changed. Strange. I see it in the way I wrote all my four books. But perhaps, in a way, the Nobel opened this entire other world for me and showed me to fight globally. It showed me that if I only fought in the Philippines, Rappler would have shut down. Our global advocates helped fight our battle here on the world’s arena.

KD: Maria, you’ve always been single-minded and focused all these nearly 30 years. that we’ve known each other. 

MR: Okay, but for the record, Headstart was my idea!

KD: Yes! You told me to do Headstart. Long-running like Tatler, who’s been here for 25 years. With Tatler, the DNA remains the same but through the years, it’s evolved in terms of what it’s writing about, on what it deems as important. Tatler’s actually expanded its coverage and what they want readers to see.

MR: And that’s exactly it. If you are reading Tatler, that means you are relatively well-off, privileged in some way, that you actually understand and travel the world, that you have power. What are you going to do with it?

KD: Maria’s favourite quote when she was my boss was, “With power comes great responsibility.” And my retort? “Dear, that’s Spiderman!” But today I’d say, “Tell that to the Tatler readers!”

MR: On Tatler’s 25th anniversary, if you’re reading this, do one powerful act, which you can tell your grandchildren you did to help not just your family, your country, but the world. That’s the power you have today.

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