In the global anti-free speech movement, Maria Ressa stands apart. The 2021 Nobel Peace Prize winner and Columbia professor has used her celebrated position to call for censorship in the name of tolerance and diversity. She is showered with accolades as she calls for curtailing speech with a highly sophisticated, though at times Orwellian, pitch. In the cause of tolerance, she calls for viewpoint intolerance, particularly in the regulation of speech on the Internet.
That was evident this week as she spoke at Dartmouth’s Division of Institutional Diversity and Equity Social Justice Awards. The most insidious aspect of this campaign is how academic and other groups regularly portray Ressa as a free speech advocate.
A couple of years ago, I spoke at the World Forum in Berlin on free speech. It would be my first in-person exposure to Maria Ressa, the 2021 Nobel Peace Prize laureate, who also spoke about free speech. However, as I wrote at the time, rather than an ally on free speech, I found a diehard advocate for censorship. Ressa has been embraced by Europeans as a champion of speech regulations, using her status to call for limiting speech around the world.
A supporter of Hillary Clinton (who has also called for Europeans to use the infamous Digital Services Act to censor Americans), Ressa has attacked figures like Elon Musk for dismantling censorship systems. For the anti-free speech community, she is the perfect Trojan horse speaker. She is billed as a champion of human rights, yet she spreads the same anti-free-speech narratives.
In her speech at Dartmouth College, Ressa pushed back on attacks on her comparisons of Israel to Nazi Germany. While such criticism is the exercise of free speech, she told the Dartmouth College student paper that the state of free expression in the U.S. is “horrific.”
The statements to The Dartmouth are vintage Ressa. She declared
“I think we are living through the Filipinization of America. America has long been the beacon of freedom and democracy that you aspire to. It’s horrific to see that change and to see the country that anchored the post-World War II world begin to destroy it. I’m shocked to see Americans afraid to speak out.”
The problem is that Ressa is selective about who can speak and about what she declares “false information.” She views conservative governments as virtually synonymous with “authoritarianism” and demands “accountability” for social media companies that do not censor disinformation. That includes cracking down on anyone she considers to be “online trolls” or people who engage in “misogynistic and racist attacks.”
She has continued to espouse the same narrative that Russian disinformation was behind the 2016 win of Donald Trump. In her prior remarks, she declared:
“If the tactic worked on us, then it was deployed for you. That’s what happened in 2016, when 126 million Americans were targeted by Russian disinformation, and on January 6, in the violence on Capitol Hill when Silicon Valley’s sins came home to roost.”
She often demands censorship to combat conservative governments and causes that she opposes because she is right and they are… well… fascists, of course. At Harvard, she proclaimed:
“In Cambridge Commons just on the other side of that gate, there’s a marker to American patriot William Dawes, who, like his more famous friend Paul Revere, rode through here sounding the alarm: ‘The British are coming.’
…I will say it now: ‘The fascists are coming.'”
She wants regulators in control of speech to guarantee that the “truth,” as she defines it, is given greater attention:
“Now, Big Tech is now choking traffic to news sites, which means you will get less news in your feeds. How do you know what’s real, how do you know what’s fact when your emotions are what’s manipulated, when our biology is hacked? Instead of facts, And instead, the “enshittification” of the internet is in full bloom: more trash, more propaganda, more information operations that push our emotional buttons. Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo deleted X last year, calling it a human sewer.”
Dartmouth shows how many in academia will continue to use Ressa to spread this anti-free speech narrative under the guise of a champion for human rights. Some of us believe that free speech is a natural right, a human right. That makes Ressa less than an inspiring figure on the world stage when she campaigns for speech controls and censorship.
Ressa is a reminder that censorship in the United States is more likely to come from the left under the guise of fighting fascism than an actual fascist government. It will be rationalized as an act of tolerance by enforcing viewpoint intolerance.
Jonathan Turley is the Shapiro Professor of Public Interest Law at George Washington University and the author of “The Indispensable Right: Free Speech in an Age of Rage.”
This will never be resolved until there is more truth and BALANCE (*) in mainstream/mass communication entities and sources providing us with national and political news.
There is nationally a fairly even balance between left-wing and right-wing views and support across America. “Today, Americans are about evenly split between the two parties: 46% identify with or lean toward the Republican Party, and 45% identify with or lean toward the Democratic Party.”
https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/fact-sheet/party-affiliation-fact-sheet-npors/
Then, COMPARE and look at which political ideology controls MSM and the main “trusted” sources of information.
(*) At first blush, it appears that some charts reflect a near-‘numerical’ balance in ‘number’ of sources, BUT Notice that the MAIN/highest national audiences sources of national and geopolitical news (MSM “mainstream,” e.g. ABC, NBC, NPR, PBS**)— all fall to the Left of center.
https://www.allsides.com/media-bias/media-bias-chart
** also includes sources where we get most of our national and international news: AP (Associated Press), NYT, WaPo, USA Today, Time, etc., which feed down to our local news coverage network news.
Thank you to Professor Turley for his focus on this pressing issue, and Happy Memorial Day to all! (A full weekend of fun–last night we played laser-gun outdoors in the dark, -with very histrionic, theatrical “dying” scenes from those shot three times in their light-blinking chest vests).
(I also choose to use “memorial day” to “memorialize” and remember a time when my news/journalist sources were more balanced and truthful.) That was America at its best! What happened? How did we get here?
@lin
Great comment, but I disagree views are equally divided: there are a lot of people that vote dem who have no idea what they are actually supporting such has been the level of gaslighting, and it is unlikely they could be convinced.
Nevertheless, in my experience, their personal views stand in contrast to what the modern left actually represents. Based strictly on that and not voting behavior, I’d say actual support for the dems’ *agenda* is probably closer to a third. Just my opinion. But alas, ‘vote blue no matter who’. A lot of people are asleep.
The question remains how bad things would have to get for a shift in the thinking of such individuals to occur, and at this point given all that has transpired just in the past decade I’m convinced it would be a at a level that was much too late to reverse. I hope we never have to find out.
When Ms. Ressa says, “The fascists are coming, “it is she who leads the charge.” Free speech cannot be muzzled by anyone, not by ANYONE.
The way Prof. Turley throws around the vague phrase “free-speech” and its antithesis “anti-free speech” guarantees no resolution (synthesis) of the conflict can occur. His definitions of “free speech” and “censorship” are subjective and case-based, making them unable to be applied universally.
For example, X.com still has a User Agreement and a set of content standards — X.com every day deplatforms accounts that flagrantly attempt to violate those standards. But, you’ll never hear the word “censorship” used to disparage those impositions on freedom. Who know?…maybe Turley considers those limits reasonable?….but without discussing what are reasonable limits (and what are not) in terms of universal principles, we’re left to guess.
There’s a way to crack open the wall of obfuscation. It requires you to think about your worst enemy — someone who hates you and would eagerly do you and your family harm through infowarfare. It could be a foreign terrorist group. It could be the most unhinged, militant zealots of the political opposition. It could be a rival at work who wants the same promotion you think you’ve earned. Or, a neighbor who started a feud and is trying to turn your neighbors against you by spreading ugly falsehoods.
What limitations on your nemesis’ freedom of speech are you willing to impose and also find acceptable imposed on yourself?
That approach to the the problem serves to expose the hard-to-swallow truth that speech-freedom is a balancing act between two unhealthy extremes. At one extreme, you get anarchy, paranoia and dysfunction as the public square is taken over by hyper-emotional negativity, factional hatreds, contrived inauthenticities, outright deceptions and mean-spirited threats — that’s an underregulated system. At the opposite end, you get closed-minded, defensive thinking stifling out-of-the-box ideas expressed with civility, respect and goodwill, leading to conformity, timidity, misreading of intentions, and authoritarianism — that’s an overregulated system.
“I may not agree with what you say, but I’ll defend to the death your right to say it” — that’s laughable naive idealism penned by someone possessed of elite gentlemanly honor in a bygone era. You’re going to defend to the death someone’s right to destroy you and your family via infowarfare? That’s a complete surrender to nihilism.
So. let’s be honest. There are responsibilities that go with the freedom to speak in public. They’re not hard to pin down: authenticity, civility, open-mindedness, non-militancy. These are the restraints I need and want to have placed on those who have in mind to attack me, my wife, my children, my job, my church, my workplace, my profession, my political party, my state and country.
I’m willing to accept those same responsibilities when I speak in public, in exchange for limiting my adversaries to the same extent.
That’s a principled approach in a nutshell.
It’s obvious by his long winded treatise that pbinca thinks that he should one of those who should decide what you can or can’t say. The problem is who gets to be the arbiter. The principle of defending the rights of those with whom you do not agree is still applicable today and not some kind of ancient chivalry. pbinca believes that because his thoughts are of more value than your thoughts that he should be the one who decides. Narcissism could not find a better definition.
No, Pbinca. I strongly disagree. Any standard you set for speech will be hijacked and weaponized, probably by the left.
The only restrictions that should be applied are incitements to violence and copyright infringements, which are legitimate concerns. Individual platforms have other content restrictions, but those are almost always restrictions that the left wants. YouTube routinely has used racism restrictions to silence legitimate criticisms of the black, immigrant, and the so-called science communities.
So no, I reject your call for “authenticity,” etc.
Let me ask you this, when leftists call for violence (they do all they time), do you condemn them? Do you want them censored? Specifically on Charlie Kirk’s assassination? Please, tell that to the trolls who want more censorship–and include your home address–and see what happens.
In the crucible we call life we all have one story and we all have history to view the points of challenge that brought positive change. Sadly what I hear from influential speakers today is a a mind set that returns to where we came from. That of pompous intolerance , better than thou voices…. I reject the harshness of of the content this mindset flourishes! But who am I? A single old voice born in 1941. Educated under the guidance of Dominican Nuns and the Bazilian Priest of St Thomas High School Houston… This Nation is under the influence of dark philosophy that is eating away at the core of our founding Fathers! We best stop reflect and retool! michaleR
I never knew the standards for getting a Nobel Peace Prize were so low.
I gotta get me one of them Nobel Peace Prizes right away!
Of course the Nobel committee standards are low. You must have missed the one they gave to Obama.
And Gore got one for climate cultism. It would be better named the Nobel Political Endorsement Prize.
Nobel Prizes for literature were awarded to Pasternak and Solzhenitsyn. That was a lifetime ago. The Nobel has fallen a long way since then.
The scientific community has always had a streak of red treachery, and they are the filthy pigs who captured the Nobel Committee. The Union of Concerned Scientists spent the Cold War peddling Soviet propaganda. If we had listened to them, we’d still be paying the Soviets not to invade Europe… kind of like Obama paying the mullahs not to spread terrorism and proxy wars… and they did anyway.
Strange that Ms Ressa is condemning the United States for not censoring free speech when she was arrested in the Philippines for demonstrating and speaking for free speech. As such she ran afoul of President Duarte and was arrested and detained then convicted. How can she then turn around and advocate censorship. Her inability to see the contradiction in her stance on free speech and censorship is remarkable.
But we know that this has nothing to do with free speech but more to do with the “right speech” where your opposites in thought and speech are the only ones that should have their rights curtailed or totally revoked.
Granted that free speech can be a sewer but a person capable of thought and judgement is usually capable of getting down in the sewer and pulling out the useful thoughts and points of view and saving them for posterity and humanity.
There is a lot that rolls by each of us every day. Our job is to determine what to snatch from the sewer, pull it ashore, examine it, measure it against what else is found and determine what truth it can show to us. We don’t need a filter upstream guiding our thoughts and denying us the right to make our own decisions. Certainly not Ms Ressa or Hilary Clinton.
Her inability to see the contradiction in her stance on free speech and censorship is remarkable.. Not all all. Read her books. Open you calcified mind to idea and theories.
She sees it, it is calculated. She spews confirmation bias enabling garbage for the morons to grab onto.
She is mouthpiece singing for her supper. In the filipinization of the US, she is projecting ping-pong balls to the blinded
So, what “Now, Big Tech is now choking traffic to news sites, which means you will get less news in your feeds.” news traffic is being chocked off?
Seems to me, do a Google search and the first page will be mostly leftist MSM.
She’s right and you just confirmed it. Google? Only old people use it; too lazy to investigate other possible sources for info. Try AI embedded SE’s.
Curious Why Your Google News Feed Feels So One-Sided? Study Reveals 73% Left Bias
A new study by AllSides has found that major news aggregators, including Google News and Microsoft’s Bing News, continue to feature a disproportionate number of articles from left-leaning outlets in their non-personalized sections.
Why is Google so left leaning, and what are we going to do about it?
https://support.google.com/googlenews/thread/423210827/why-is-google-so-left-leaning-and-what-are-we-going-to-do-about-it?hl=en
https://dallasexpress.com/national/curious-why-your-google-news-feed-feels-so-one-sided-study-reveals-73-left-bias/
AI Content Is Swamping The Internet: How It Impacts Critical Thinking
“What’s more troubling is a Pangram/YouGov study in May that found only 55 percent of participants, all of whom were Gen Zers aged 18 to 28, were able to identify fake or misleading AI-generated material.”
It appears the Gen Zers are not very bright.
https://www.theepochtimes.com/article/ai-content-is-swamping-the-internet-how-it-impacts-critical-thinking-6026954
Ressa is a Fascist. There is no other way to describer her and those of her intolerant ilk.
Fascist? Considering you call everyone and their mother a fascist…
Let the censorship start with her and her ilk. How many battalions does Columbia University have?
Why her?
Maria Ressa expresses a form of self-delusional bias that only others can begin to understand. The same trend she expresses is present in most European nations that have experienced an influx of immigrants with personal belief systems based on Islamic traditions. The first thing they must oppose is free speech, because it allows blasphemy, which transcends all civil laws and notions of freedom. The Philippines, Ressa’s country of origin, has a population in which more than 10 percent of the people are Muslim. Compare that with the U.S., where our Muslim population is about 1.4 percent. In the UK and Germany, the Muslim population is quite large and growing at more than 6 percent of the population. The answer, the only answer, is tolerance, but, alas, this is frowned upon as being blasphemous by some, like Ressa, as being an evil tool of the infidel.
self-delusional bias yo say? Your comment can also be construed as self-delusional bias. You got a Nobel Prize? She does.
From a good annony,
“I never knew the standards for getting a Nobel Peace Prize were so low.
I gotta get me one of them Nobel Peace Prizes right away!”
https://jonathanturley.org/2026/05/24/ressa-at-dartmouth-anti-free-speech-figure-calls-the-state-of-free-speech-in-the-u-s-horrific/#comment-2637051
and so does Yasser Arafat and Barack Obama, the latter just for showing up. Ha!
Disney Asks FCC To Declare ‘The View’ A News Show, Exempt From Equal Time Rule
Disney is asking the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to declare the daytime talk show “The View” a “bona fide news” program to bypass the federal equal opportunities law, FCC Commissioner Brendan Carr announced May 22.
By Jill McLaughlin – The Epoch Times ~ May 23, 2026
https://www.zerohedge.com/political/disney-asks-fcc-declare-view-news-show-exempt-equal-time-rule
She has the right to spew nonsense.
She absolutely does.
She has no right to use force to accomplish her goal of limiting the freedom of others.
Force huh? Whatever you say Say.
Does Reesa have the Rahm Emanuel Honorary Professorship at the Clinton Foundation as well? You know old Rahmy said – never let a good opportunity (aka crisis) go to waste. Looks like Comrade Reesa is turning free speech into a crisis that can only be solve by crushing out unapproved thoughts. Well done Comrade Reesa – train those empty headed DODO BIRD students.
This is a odd way to start a Sunday.
_______________________
Once again, in a retrial against Weinstein, prosecutors were unable to score a win. Yet another charge against the former Hollywood bigwig has ended in a mistrial, this time over Jessica Mann’s rape allegation. And according to one female juror, the split was rather interesting… all the women voted not guilty, and three men voted guilty.
Typical Dustoff, always odd, every day of the week.
From Ressa to Weinstein. You didn’t read Turlery’s piece.
Pay attention fool. Remember that saying (Believe all women) Most of all when it comes to rape.
How things in The Bigger Picture fall into line, like that of Free Speech Censorship.
(Watch the full video to the ending ~ 2hrs.)
Economist Exposes How Banks Manufacture Wars, False Flags & Famines to Usher in the New World Order
Virtually every major war begins under false pretenses. German economist Richard Werner explains what the current global conflict is actually about.
The Tucker Carlson Show • May 22nd 2026 • 126 mins
https://tuckercarlson.com/tucker-show-richard-werner-052226
It’s a small college, but there are of us that used to love it