How much rope does Ressa still have?

The Philippine Court of Appeals has affirmed a lower court conviction for cyber libel of Rappler's Maria Ressa and one of her former writers and researchers. Not only that but the appellate court also increased by more than eight months her original prison term of six years. Ressa, of course, can still bring her case all the way to the Supreme Court but at this point, her real story should be clearer to everyone.

Since court records are public documents, someone should send a copy of the court decision to former US secretary of state Hillary Clinton, who only very recently Tweeted for all the world to see, quite sadly, her ignorance not only of how vibrant democracy is in the Philippines, how alive and free is its press, and what Filipinos in the Philippines really think of Maria Ressa and Rappler.

To Clinton and much of the Western press, which is the subject of that magnificent piece of satire called "Foreign Press" by Lord Laro, everyone in the Philippines is a liar except Maria Ressa. They believe her crocodile tears about the country's press being either shackled or functioning under great duress, if not at outright gunpoint. To these suckers of two-bit propaganda, the Philippine press is what Maria Ressa says it is.

But Maria Ressa neither has the authority nor the mandate to speak for the Philippines in general, or the Philippine press in particular. Maria Ressa is not and will never be the face of Philippine journalism. God forbid, literally and figuratively. Pushing her luck on self-importance and self-aggrandizement, she once claimed receiving several rape threats a day. I don't know whether to laugh or cry over that claim.

The problem with the Western press, and much of the press in general, is that it thrives on the bad news, the controversial, and if pushed out on a limb, even the half-baked or outright false. I know. I know the ins and outs of media from more than 40 years of journalistic experience, nearly half of that time as correspondent for a foreign news agency.

Between Hillary Clinton and the Western media, though, at least with the latter I can say they are just pursuing the bigger splash to make a bigger sale. Journalism may once have been a genuine noble calling. Not so anymore. These days, journalism is big business, and a means of livelihood. Nobody will buy any ribbons and curls news about Maria Ressa being crowned homecoming princess. Even Rappler will chuck it.

But Hillary Clinton swallowing Maria Ressa hook, line, and sinker? Either she is really the "D" word that former US president Donald Trump used to describe her or she is in on some Western conspiracy to demonize the Philippines on account of its perceived pivot to China under then president Rodrigo Duterte. The only thing that kept the US and the West from ousting Duterte was his huge popularity.

It is this same popularity, expressed in an unprecedented mandate of more than 31 million votes in a clean and honest election that they themselves cannot help but acknowledge, that drove the US and the West to fall head over heels in congratulating new president Ferdinand "Bongbong" Marcos Jr. on his landslide victory. Never mind that up to the eve of the election, they all had continuously vilified him and his family.

But of course we all know that all of this is part of the grand design to bring the Philippines back to the fold of US and Western influence as a secure and unflinching ally against their enemies, particularly China and Russia. Never mind that these two countries are not necessarily enemies of the Philippines. In geopolitics, not even journalism can escape being used as a weapon, and journalists as dogs of war.