Nobel Peace Prize winner Maria Ressa visits her New Jersey high school alma mater

Please, let's give a nice welcome to Maria Reza. Ask permission if I could take my mask off. So, I want to take your questions. First of all, this wasn't here when I was here. I graduated class of 1982. So, I'm really old. I'm 58 this year, right? I'm almost going to retire, but I don't think I can. Anyway, I look back at the times here, and my classmate, she used to be Shelly Finkelstein, and I just saw her here. So, we were walking through these schools, and you get what you give. I think in everything in life, you get what you give. So, I threw a lot of time in Tom's River North. Tom's River North threw a lot into each of you here, into me. So, I'm going to give the mic to you. Tell me what you're interested in, right? How can I help? Yeah. Tell me your name. Hello, I'm Jackie Anderson. Jackie. I just wanted to ask, really, what inspired you to make the impact that you have? Because I also greatly admire you, and I do want to make an impact somewhere, too. Jackie, thank you. So, here's the hard part, right? Someone asked me, how do you win a Nobel Prize? You don't. You can't make it the goal. I think what you do is you find the strand and begin to pull something that you're good at or that you love. One of the other two things. And then you keep pulling, and you get better and better and better, and because you get better and better and better, you have impact. So, it always starts with one, then you bring your group in, and your group grows. Shelly went to high school with me. One of the things she reminded me of is that at a time when we weren't very close friends, I was a nerd, but I would play basketball, and I did theater, and I did orchestra, so it was really hard, the stereotypes you try to break, right? Shelly remembered this time when, in our class fundraising, I asked her to join us to pick up garbage at Great Adventure, and it was really fun, and we raised money for the class. It was just a different way of doing it. Did it create impact for our prom? Yeah, you know? So, sometimes, I guess what I've tried to do is whatever you do in the moment, whatever you like doing tomorrow and the next day, you pull out just a little bit to try to see, okay, so as I learn, how big does it get? You want to walk the same path, and this is something I tell folks and rappers. You know, if I'm recruiting you for rapper, I want to find out what you want to do, and we walk the path together. I would say, whatever you really love right now, see where you would go three years, five years. And it's hard to think about that in high school, but it's like if you love it, you will get better and better, and how does it fit in? The big stuff like student council, student government, I don't know if you have all-state or girl-state. Is that still there? All-state orchestra? There was boy-state and girl-state. No more? You see me, right? All of those things that you do, like my orchestra teacher was Mr. Spalding, and he pushed me to do Garden State Philharmonic, to do all-state, those auditions. You meet people all the time, and those people come back in your life. So I guess that's always push to learn. Be aware in the moment, the friends that you have as you get older, they get older with you and you become more influential together. That's kind of how you create impact, right? I mean, if you look at just social network theory, it's your group that rises together. Thank you. Yeah, tell me your name. Hello, my name is Kyle Reinheimer. Kyle? I wanted to ask you if, can you remember any defining moment in your life where you looked at it and said, okay, this is going to lead me down the path to what the rest of my life is going to be? Where you choose to go to college. I'm not going to say it just because Ben is here. So I applied to 13 colleges. Nerd, right? I'm Asian American, so my parents wanted me to be a doctor, but I didn't really want to be a doctor. So I applied to six-year med programs. You know that saying, if you aim here and you're down there, then you'll get maybe halfway. Aim as high as you can, and you may not reach it, but you will reach higher than if your goal is easier to reach. If that makes sense. Going to Princeton was huge because I was a public school kid. I walked into a place where people were highly competitive and came from all over the country. I think that's the other part. It's so cool to be back here and to see you because Tom's River is, you know, also cherish the time in Tom's River because when you leave, if you leave, I've had friends who stayed here and built their lives here. So choosing a school was a big one. I almost went to West Point because I thought I needed discipline. Now you know how old I am. I wanted to stay physically fit. So college, choosing your college. The other part is boyfriend, girlfriend. Choosing your partner will be critical because those also align with your values. Not that you can choose who you fall in love with, but the partner you spend your life with, that's also important. My book that's coming out this year, the title is How to Stand Up to a Dictator. But it could also be How to Stand Up to a Bully. Because in the end, that's where it was. I wrote about Tom's River North in the second chapter, I think. I wrote about the orchestra room, which we just passed, and how there was this girl, I didn't say her real name, let's call her Lisa, who was being bullied. And so choosing, do you sit on the sidelines and watch people bully someone, which it's kind of frightening if you step in in front of a bully, right? Or do you help? At one point, I just saw her crying on the side in the orchestra room, and I got a tissue paper and gave it to her. And we became friends. I was afraid that if she gets bullied, I'll get bullied. And it almost happened. But then my friends, the nerds, also came in and helped. It's these little moments that define your values, that define who you are. And so even something simple like standing up against a bully, the stereotypes of people are the same, whether you're in high school, in college, in government, in journalism. They're good and bad. And what I think makes it good is when you are with people who have the same values, who stand up for the same ideals. That's the other part. Hang on to your ideals because you can make the world the way you want it to be. Yeah, don't be mean. Hi, I'm Rebecca Ramallara. How did you manage to keep up with all the activities you did in school? Did you ever overstress well? How did you manage to do all that? When I first moved to Tom's River, I could barely speak English. My third grade teacher, she told me that I was so quiet that almost for a year I didn't talk. And it was the school system, Silver Bay, that actually gave me piano lessons. I think more than anything, I wanted to learn. So whether that is playing an instrument like Mr. Spalding. I took the violin, but then I played almost all the string instruments because he would teach and I would take the time. Did I get stressed out? Senior year. That's when I didn't have straight A's. Senior year. But I aimed for it, you know. That's why it wasn't valedictory. Senior year, right? So you choose at a certain point. Now I have to choose a lot more, but I like being a jack-of-all-trades. Especially now, in your world, with technology, with social media, the people who will crack this. So first of all, the world, the way us oldies knew it, know it is dead. You will create the new world because technology now, there's going to have to be legislation to control this, but it's quite insidiously manipulating you on social media. The Facebook whistleblower, Frances Haugen. If you guys are on Instagram, you know that if you're a teenage girl, that it's manipulative of you, right? Even if you're a teenage boy. It can be really tough, so don't always follow the crowd. That's going to change because legislation is going to be put in place to protect us. It's become a behavior modification system. This phone that you have, depending on how many apps you have on it, each of those apps is gathering data of everything you do, and that data then is owned by these large corporations. That can be used in different ways. Anyway, to go back to what you asked, you will create this new world. You're a product of this kind of twisted information ecosystem. I love how much more diverse this high school is than when I was here. The fracture lines of society are being pounded open on social media, and the worst of human nature is what is being encouraged. How do you be the best you can be when what's being rewarded is the bully? You will create the world. That's what you have in front of you. Does that sound daunting? Don't be daunted. The person who will win, who will find the solution, is a person who cuts across. I know science, math, very, very important, but humanities. Humanities reminds us of being human. English major, sorry. Let me take other questions. I'm Gabrielle Consova, and my question to you was, when you first immigrated to America, did you feel any pressure to succeed in your classes or in anything, just like in regular life? You've been true to everyone around you that you were just as you've always been, and what was the hardest thing for you? Was it learning the language or something like fitting in? Wow, that's a fantastic question. Up until high school, maybe through college, I felt like there was a devil on my shoulder kind of pounding me to do well. I felt like I needed to prove that I belonged. It's like Pascal's Wager. Are you guys familiar with Pascal's Wager? The question is, you know, should I believe in God? Do you believe in God? And Pascal said, well, if you don't believe in God and there is a God, if you choose not to believe in God and there is a God, then you're kind of screwed. Sorry. But then if you choose to believe in God and there is no God, you lose nothing. I paraphrased him in a bad way. So it's like Pascal's Wager, right? If I was learning and growing and building my resume, I have a really good resume, then I'm doing the right thing. Because don't put so much pressure on yourself to know because you don't know. And sometimes you don't know until you do know in terms of what you want to be. That's okay, right? You walk your way into the answer. Which is harder, fitting in or proving that you belong? They're kind of two sides of the same coin. So it was important that I aim to be the best at what I did. It drives you to be your best, right? And then the other part is, I'm just so thrilled. You will find your friends. And I learned, it was high school, where I learned that I shouldn't care about everyone's opinion. Some people will really not like you. That's okay. If they bully you, then that's something different. But, sorry, it's because of how to stand up to a dictator, trying to make dictator. So fitting in is part of whatever you do for the rest of your life. After you graduate high school, you'll go to college, if you decide to go to college. Or your job, you want to fit in. It's important to find the right balance. But for me, the line always is, what things are non-negotiable for me? I want to be a good person. Here's a really simple rule that I figured this out in Tom's River. How do I live my life? If I have to make a quick decision about something, the golden rule, do unto others as you would have them do unto you. It's really simple. And it works all the way until now. If I'm in a tough situation and I don't know what to do, I will act in a way that I would have someone do unto me, do unto others as you would, sorry, Christian or Catholic. Philippines is Asia's largest Roman Catholic nation. So it's a little bit of both, I think. I think connected to that is something I say all the time now because people always ask me, how do you find courage? You've got to have courage, right? And I did it and I learned this in Tom's River. Embrace your fear. Whatever you're most afraid of, whether it's like in basketball, my coach, so I'm still in touch with my basketball coach and my student advisor. In basketball, you know, if you're going to push yourself, whatever that is you're most afraid of, whether it's in sports or whether it's in classes or whether it's you like this guy, right, whatever it is you're most afraid of, you touch it, you hold it, and embrace it. Because if you take the sting out of your fear, you are unstoppable. So if you're afraid that someone will think you're a teacher's pet, who cares? Embrace it. I'm Steven. I was just wondering, when you hit your lowest point, how did you respond? How did you come back to that? How did you get yourself out that door when you just felt really down low? Lowest point would be like in high school, probably not getting straight A's. No. I'll tell you one that I remember that I really can't forget. It's a decision from being in war zone coverage. I ran the CNN team in East Timor, Timor-Leste. It became the world's newest nation in 1999, 2000. Leading up to that, there was violence, and I was leading coverage, right? So my team was driving out from the capital, Dili, and it's like a four-hour drive to a city called Suwai, because we heard that there were these people in a church who were afraid, and that the military was coming after them. East Timor was fighting for its independence from Indonesia, which is the world's largest Muslim population. We were driving through and stopped in a town called Likursia. I was a reporter, and at that point, there's a vote for independence. Pro-independence, or if you're anti-independence, they were kind of these goons who were working with the Indonesian military. One of my sources who's pro-independent, he asked me if he could ride with us because he felt that his life was being threatened. I have my team, right? We were going still, like three hours further away. So I told him, no, no, no, we can't take you with us because if we took him with us, we'd become a target as well, and we needed to go report. So you have to make these decisions. And I told him, we'll come back and pick you up on the way back. We'll meet you here at 7 o'clock in this area. So we go. There was a massacre in Suwai. It was a church massacre. We're driving back. We're an hour late that night. We get to where we're supposed to meet him, and we waited 45 minutes. And it had to be 45 minutes because I couldn't wait any longer because I needed the file. He never showed up, and only later did I hear that he was killed. He was killed. He was right. He was afraid for his life. So that has haunted me. That was a long time ago. And it's haunted me because it was a decision that, should we have taken him with us? So you make these split-second decisions, and it ripples through your world. So how do I cope? I go over and over and over in my head, whatever that failure point is. I don't know. I go over and over and over, and I try very hard to see, could I have done better? In that situation, I couldn't. And I still think about it. I know his family, and I'm still in touch with them. But it was the right decision at that point in time. The other things, as you get older, as you get married, as you have kids, does that seem far away? It might seem far away. Not that far away. It goes like this. Now I feel old. But as you do that, you build yourself. You create who you are. You find meaning in your life in these small decisions that in the moment you may not realize will mean anything. How do you get ready for those small decisions? You know your values. You know who you are. And you do unto others as you would have them do unto you. Never let something that you fail at stop you. In fact, if you don't fail at anything, it means you haven't risked enough. It means you've kind of stayed at a medium point because you can't succeed at everything. And failure teaches you also. I was more careful in the succeeding years. That was 1999. That was how long ago that was. So failure and success, don't look at them as, you know, it's not a zero-sum game. Sometimes startup. I started a startup. Rappler is a startup in the Philippines. And 90% of startups fail. Very few startups actually succeed. We're 10 years old now. But when we started, we didn't know whether we were going to succeed or fail. And that is part of the fun. Make sense? You have to risk so that it makes the winning that much better. Gender. I like you. What inspired me to start exposing corrupt government and corrupt government officials. We know what's right and we know what's wrong. We all do. I think even in school you knew this. People will say, don't be a tattletale when it's personal. The honor code at Princeton is the best. I still use it as an example of the kind of world I want to live in. The honor code is that every exam or every paper you do, you pledge on your honor that you didn't cheat. And then here's the part that's more important than you not cheating. You would report everyone else around you. You see cheating. It was how I began to be a journalist. And then when I took over, I took over the largest news organization in the Philippines in 2005. And I took a zero tolerance approach to corruption and fired some of our best people when we had evidence that they accepted a bribe. So it isn't just public officials. So as a journalist, part of our job, the mission is to hold power to account. And how do you hold power to account? The two things are always intertwined, power and money. So you follow the money. So corruption is connected to that. But the other side is it's easy to expose. That just requires a little courage. And when you're part of a news organization, what's much harder is to actually build. And that to me began in 2005 when I was heading up. The largest news group in the Philippines had about 1,000 journalists. We had six international bureaus. I used the honor code. Where's Ben? I used the honor code to kind of reform this zero tolerance approach to corruption of ADS-CBN is the name of the network. I love that idea. Think about it. Whether it's corruption or whether it's, you know, whatever it is, you pledge on your honor to make your world what you're doing. You do that. You pledge to do it. And then you hold accountable everyone else around you. I'll take that one step further. Today, we're actually like we have elections in exactly 80 days in the Philippines. And I always say that the Philippines is going to be the domino. If our election, so we have 36 years after people power ousted a dictator, Ferdinand Marcos, his son is now poised to become president, the front runner. And the way he has become that way, the front runner, is because of social media. We've watched history eroded in front of our eyes. Today, what we're trying to do is to create a mesh. And I literally use that because we're trying to find a way to get around social media. Because social media, you know, when you're on Facebook or Twitter, YouTube, what spreads fastest and further are lies that are laced with anger and hate, right? Content that makes you angry. So you'll see that that gets the widest distribution. It screws with the political system of every country. And so what we're trying to do is to connect. So I'm taking that same idea of like you pledge on your honor, this is your world, to connect all the different meshes. In social network theory, it would be like you would have a boundary spanner. Let me not get geeky. But it's that. It's like you pledge on your honor to do the best that you can. You're not going to do the bad things. And then you pledge to hold everyone else around you accountable. If you can hold yourself accountable, if you can be honest to yourself, and then hold your closest friends accountable, you've just started a little piece of paradise. And I always used to say, if I had all my friends together in a deserted island, we would have a fantastic world. But of course that never happened. But does that make sense? I was wondering if there was anyone, a specific person or a support system that you had that inspired you? Yeah, sure. Maybe not. I was class president for three years from freshman, sophomore, junior year. Our senior year, I wasn't elected class president. That's a moment of failure, maybe, right? Everyone assumed I'd get elected class president. But then what happened was a small group of football players decided that they were going to campaign to not make me president. We became friends later on. They succeeded, and it taught me a lot. So here's the lesson that I learned there, I think. You have to have your confidence. In teachers, at that point, they were fantastic. But it's your friends also, right? Because you'll have moments of disappointment and failure. And sometimes, if you succeed, then you also... I think I was just targeted. But is there still pain? Let me just say. No, but it comes back. At that moment, what did we do? My friends took me to the Rocky Horror Picture Show. Is that still a thing? It is! Yeah. And then the other part is, I have two groups of friends, and the other one took me to Star Wars like 40 times or something. We watched Star Wars a lot. So, yeah. She had, and then I'll come back. Oh, so cute. I was just wondering if your life has been affected at all since receiving the award. I still am doing, you know, that Edward Munch, the screen, the painting. I still feel like that. But my life has been affected in, I think, two ways. More is expected. What's that? Spider-Man said it. Much is given, much is... You know, you have to do more, right? So, a lot more people are coming for help. Things that I don't normally do. Like in the Philippines, people who really need help. So, I wind up connecting them to people who can help them. But also, if before... So, I was already running a company. We're building our own tech, right? So, then I was trying to write a book. I always said I was under two oceans of water. That's normal. You're trying to swim your way up two oceans of water because you overcommit, okay? To overcommit. After the Nobel, it became four oceans of water. And then you realize that, oh my gosh, it can get busier. And I guess the other part. Journalists all around the world are under attack. And that's something that hadn't really been recognized. The Time magazine, the person of the year in 2018, they called us the gatekeepers. The guardians. That's what they called us. The guardians. Anyone here wanting to be a journalist? Yes, of course, you. It's a tough time. But I think you can actually reshape and remold it. I could go to jail for the rest of my life. That's still there. After I get out on Monday, on Tuesday, I will fly back to Manila. And I will submit myself to the courts. I had ten arrest warrants in less than two years. Because I'm a journalist. Even getting here, they harassed me to the point. Imagine if you don't have the right to travel. I have to get court approvals. So three have already been dismissed. But there are still seven cases that are criminal. So I have to ask courts for approval to leave. And I was supposed to have left on Wednesday. One court. So I got six of seven approvals. One court didn't. It gave a non-denial denial. And so I pushed harder. If I didn't push harder, I could have just said, I guess that means I can't make it. They just made a moot argument. But they gave it. So getting here was a victory. And part of what really pushed me. It's not just that Princeton is giving me an award tomorrow. But yeah, coming back. Ben was so nice. He just said, got Tom's number. Would you like that? I was like, yes. And I was so thrilled to come back. So yeah. Anyway. Long answer to your question, isn't it? If you can give yourself, well, your younger self. I'm not saying you're old, but I'm just saying. I'm old. It's OK. You can say it. I won't take offense. If you could give your younger self one piece of advice, what would it be? Oh, my gosh. Don't be afraid. We're all afraid. Things scare us. Don't worry so much about not knowing where you're going. That used to keep me up. Why don't I know? I should already know. Everybody wants you to choose if you're a senior. Who are the seniors? What are you going to do next year? And there's pressure senior year. Don't let it get to you, because it's only the first step. And every choice you make is OK. What's worse is if you don't choose at all. If you like the path that you're on, you keep going. If you don't, you turn. You make another choice.