Connecticut Foundation for Open Government will present Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Maria Ressa with the Walter Cronkite Award on April 14.

Submitted

Maria Ressa, a crusading journalist awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for her courageous reporting, will be honored with the Walter Cronkite Freedom of Information Award at an April 14 event at the Mark Twain House and Museum.

The award, bestowed by the Connecticut Foundation for Open Government (CFOG), recognizes internationally renowned champions of free speech, beginning with its first recipient in 1995, Walter Cronkite, for whom the award is named.

Ressa was chosen as the 2025 Cronkite Award winner based on her fearless reporting from the Philippines, where she faced harassment and arrests for exposing corruption in government. The frightening campaign of intimidation and censorship, orchestrated by the regime of former President Rodrigo Duterte, is chronicled in Ressa’s 2022 book, “How to Stand Up to a Dictator: The Fight for Our Future.” She is recognized as one of the world’s most powerful voices for democracy, free expression and media rights.

“We are thrilled to be adding Nobel Peace Prize laureate Maria Ressa to our list of distinguished honorees,” CFOG President Kate Farrish said. “For her courageous reporting, her steadfast defense of a free press and her brilliant insights into social media’s effects on society, she should be an inspiration to all of us. We can’t imagine a more worthy recipient of the Cronkite Award.”

The April 14 event is open to the public, with tickets available at https://ctfog.org/cronkite-awards/. A limited number of institutional sponsorships are also available. For information, contact the award committee at  [email protected].

The ceremony, including a sit-down dinner and remarks by Ressa, begins at 6:30 p.m. at the Twain House and Museum, 351 Farmington Avenue in Hartford. The event will also recognize the 50th anniversary of the Connecticut Freedom of Information Act.

Ressa will be the eighth person to receive the Cronkite Award, joining a list of free-speech greats including Bob Woodward, Attorney Floyd Abrams, Seymour Hersh and, most recently, Judy Woodruff, who was honored in 2022.

Ressa was born in Manila and at a young age moved with her family to the United States, where she later studied at Princeton University. After graduating, she returned to the Philippines and became a local correspondent for CNN, where she covered the growth of terrorism in Southeast Asia.

In 2012, she co-founded Rappler, an online news site, where she built on her reputation for daring investigative reporting and an unyielding defense of free expression. Despite relentless efforts to silence her, Ressa boldly reported on Duterte’s deadly extra-judicial anti-drug sweeps and his growing authoritarianism. She was also among the earliest journalists to focus on the ways social media was used as a political tool to spread fake news and harass political opponents.

In 2021, Ressa and Russian journalist Dmitry Muratov shared the Nobel Peace Prize “for their efforts to safeguard freedom of expression, which is a precondition for democracy and lasting peace.”

She is currently a professor at Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs and co-leads the school’s Technology Initiative, which focuses on the harm to democracy posed by the misuse of artificial intelligence and the Internet.

In speeches around the world, Ressa has warned of the destabilizing dangers of online disinformation. “Studies have shown that lies laced with anger and hate spread faster and further than facts,” she said in a 2022 speech at Princeton. “Without facts, you can’t have truth. Without truth, you can’t have trust. Without these, we have no shared reality, no rule of law, no democracy.”

A recent interview with Ressa on PBS Newshour can be found here.

The Connecticut Foundation for Open Government is a nonprofit organization founded by Connecticut citizens interested in promoting open government and the public’s right-to-know. Its programs are carried out by a volunteer board of directors drawn from the news media, academia, the law, business and government.

Like what you see here? Click here to subscribe to We-Ha’s newsletter so you’ll always be in the know about what’s happening in West Hartford! Click the blue button below to become a supporter of We-Ha.com and our efforts to continue producing quality journalism.