As if TIME Magazine had not learned any lessons over the course of its slide to irrelevance over the last decade or so, it goes on and reportedly names Rappler CEO Maria Ressa among its “100 Women of the Year”.
Time‘s “100 Women of the Year,” a list of the most influential women of the past century, puts the spotlight on “influential women who were often overshadowed.”
“This includes women who occupied positions from which the men were often chosen, like world leaders Golda Meir and Corazon Aquino, but far more who found their influence through activism or culture,” the magazine said.
Time recognized Ressa as its Woman of the Year for 2018, noting her already impressive career in news before starting Rappler in 2012.
But who or what exactly has Ressa “influenced”? As far as can be observed she has not influenced those who matter the most in her chosen “advocacy” — not Filipinos nor the Philippine courts upon which the outcome of her legal troubles are hinged.
All Maria Ressa has influenced are chi chi cliques of Western mainstream media organisations that include, of course, TIME Magazine. Most Filipinos have never read TIME Magazine nor find any relevance in the people they choose as the world’s “influential”. The magazine has in recent times proven to be ineffective at influencing even Americans’ political preferences!
Ressa is pinning her hopes on the continued influence she imagines Western powers and Western brands continue to exert on Philippine society. By unabashedly basking under whatever is left of the brand power of TIME Magazine, Ressa demonstrates her treachery against her people in the way she weaponises an old psychological legacy of Western imperialism — Filipinos’ renowned colonial mentality.
Webmaster of Get Real Philippines