Over a career spanning more than thirty years, Ressa has worked as CNN’s lead investigative reporter for
Asia and the head of ABS-CBN News and Current Affairs. She has also been involved in many
international initiatives to promote press freedom. In recent years, she has been the target of
online attacks and judicial processes relating to her investigative reporting and status as
manager of online outlet Rappler. She has been arrested for alleged crimes related to the
exercise of her profession, and has been subject to a sustained campaign of gendered online
abuse, threats, and harassment, which at one point, resulted in her receiving an average of
over 90 hateful messages
The $25,000 Prize recognizes outstanding contributions to the defence or promotion of
press freedom especially in the face of danger. It is named after Guillermo Cano Isaza, the
Colombian journalist who was assassinated in front of the offices of his newspaper
El Espectador in Bogotá, Colombia, on 17 December 1986.
It is funded by the Guillermo Cano Isaza Foundation (Colombia),
the Helsingin Sanomat Foundation (Finland) and the Namibia Media Trust.
About the 2021 World Press Freedom Day Global Conference in Windhoek
The 2021 World Press Freedom Day Global Conference will take place from
29 April to 3 May and focus on the theme of Information as a Public Good.
More than 40 online and in situ sessions are planned, looking at topics such
as the transparency of online platforms and the importance of media and information literacy.
The conference will also tackle ways to promote and support independent media struggling
to survive a crisis worsened by the COVID-19 pandemic, at a time when national and local
media everywhere face financial instability and other pressures threatening their survival and
their journalists’ jobs.
- Register to the World Press Freedom Day Global Conference
- More on World Press Freedom Day
- More about the Guillermo Cano Prize
- Media contact: Clare O’Hagan, +33(0)145681729
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