Defending press freedom: Rappler’s Glenda Gloria says courage always the first step needed

Rappler executive editor Glenda Gloria, in receiving the 2023 Laureate for Southeast Asia in the WAN-IFRA Women in News Editorial Leadership Award, said that while it takes more than courage to run a newsroom, “in the toughest of times, courage is often all you need as a first step.”

Gloria, alongside co-laureates Emang Mutapati, editor-in-chief of The Voice in Botswana, and Lina Ejeilat, co-founder and editor-in-chief of 7iber in Jordan, received the awards for their respective regions from WAN-IFRA at the 2023 World News Media Congress held in Taiwan. The World News Media Congress began on June 28 and will be held until June 30.

Gloria thanked the body for the award, and said the award was not just a “recognition of what we in the Philippines have overcome but of what newsroom leaders in Southeast Asia have managed to achieve in an environment that is constantly under the gun – whether from unenlightened business owners, corrupt regimes, or profiteering tech platforms.”

While Gloria maintained courage as an important first step, she also said courage needed “support from outside journalism, from those who value the role of independent media in tempering power and greed.”

“Courage also needs competence that can show the world that good journalism is still good business,” she added.

Gloria was thankful for the good fortune of Rappler and noted how not all media outlets were as lucky. One of the reasons Rappler survived the twin onslaughts of Duterte and Facebook, she remarked, was because, “when the situation called for life-and-death decisions, those decisions were made by journalists.”

She noted, however, that such isn’t the case in most newsrooms, especially in the global south where journalists and their managers are fighting for survival.

Said Gloria, “They navigate minefields every day; they are constantly harassed into making a choice between the commitment to journalism and the responsibility to keep the business alive, between the need to tell stories that speak truth to power and the incentive to feed the social media beast with song and dance.”

“Democracy’s gatekeepers, emasculated by tech, are battling it out there,” she said, adding there was hope, as organizations find ways “to keep the fire of journalism burning and craft a sustainable, viable path – with the help of communities that take action and technology that enables good citizenship.”

To that end, Gloria also made sure to thank all those who held the line alongside journalists. – Rappler.com