Philippine news site Rappler allowed to operate after court overturns 2022 shutdown order

A Philippine news site co-founded by Nobel laureate Maria Ressa can continue operating after a court overturned a shutdown order, according to the ruling released Friday, the latest legal victory for the media outfit.

Ressa and Rappler have been fighting multiple court cases filed during former president Rodrigo Duterte’s administration.

Ressa, who was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2021, was a vocal critic of Duterte and the deadly drug war he launched in 2016.

That triggered what media advocates say was a grinding series of criminal charges, probes and online attacks against her and Rappler.

“It’s a day of celebration, it’s a day of hope,” a smiling Ressa told a press conference in the Rappler newsroom in Manila.

The Court of Appeals decision, issued on July 23 but only released to the media on Friday, reversed a previous ruling by the Philippine Securities and Exchange Commission that ordered the shutdown of Rappler.

The order had been a “grave abuse of discretion” and contravened “established procedures, jurisprudential and legal instructions, and clear intent of the Constitution”, the court said.

The shutdown order was affirmed on June 28, 2022, days before Duterte left office. It was first issued in 2018.

It revoked Rappler’s “certificate of incorporation” for violating constitutional and statutory restrictions on foreign ownership in mass media.

Rappler continued operating as it appealed the order.

“It’s a vindication after a tortuous eight years of harassment,” Rappler said in a statement.

“We are a Filipino company. We are independent.”

Under the constitution, investment in media is reserved for Filipinos or Filipino-controlled entities.

The case sprang from the 2015 investment from the US-based Omidyar Network,