World News for Students of English

22-06-2020 07:00

Maria Ressa is a Filipino American journalist, who grew up and studied in the US. In 2018, the Times named her Person of the Year for her work in journalism.

Ressa founded a news site, where she openly criticized the Philippine’s president, Rodrigo Duterte. In 2012, Ressa and her colleague wrote an article about a rich businessman, and they linked him to murder and drug dealing. This week, a court in Manila, the capital city of the Philippines, found Ressa guilty of libel, and it sent her to prison for 6 years. However, the court used a law that did not exist in 2012.

Human rights organizations do not agree with the verdict, and they say that the verdict attacks the free press.

Difficult words: drug dealing (when people do business to sell or buy drugs), libel (when someone writes or says something about somebody else that is not true, and it can change what people think about this person), verdict (what a court decides), free press (when journalists and reporters can freely write or say what they think, and they can criticize the government).

You can watch the original video in the Level 3 section.