| Screenshot from YouTube
NEW YORK – Nobel Peace Prize laureate and Rappler co-founder Maria Ressa delivered a powerful speech, calling information integrity “the mother of all battles,” at the 80th anniversary of the United Nations General Assembly on September 23, 2025.
Ressa was one of just five featured speakers, alongside UN Secretary-General António Guterres and former Liberian President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf.
Her message, rooted in the urgency of defending truth and human dignity, served as a rallying cry for global action on information integrity.
Ressa’s speech was packed with powerful lines that stood out as the emotional and strategic core.
“Information integrity is the mother of all battles. Win this, and we can win the rest. Lose this, and we lose everything,” she said.
She followed it with a stirring plea to world leaders, saying, “Please choose courage over comfort, facts over fiction, hope over fear.”
And she didn’t shy away from the stakes:
“This is the deadliest period for journalism in recorded history…Journalists are being targeted and killed. There must be accountability.”
Guterres called for renewed multilateralism and global cooperation amid rising authoritarianism and misinformation; Annalena Baerbock, president of the General Assembly, highlighted the UN’s legacy and the need for democratic resilience, Ellen Johnson Sirlead, former president of Liberia, spoke about post-conflict rebuilding and the role of civic trust; Gro Harlem Brudtland, former WHO Director-General, focused on global health equity and climate action.
Not all of them focused directly on information integrity, like Ressa did, but her message clearly echoed through the room.
Ressa was the final speaker at the 80th anniversary commemoration of the UNGA. Her speech closed the high-level plenary with a resounding call to action, defending truth, restoring dignity, and rebuilding trust in democratic institutions.
Ending with her voice wasn’t just symbolic — it was strategic. Ressa’s message on information integrity tied together the themes raised by other speakers, from global health to democratic resilience. It left the audience with urgency and clarity: “Win this, and we can win the rest. Lose this, and we lose everything.”
Ambassador Antonio M. Lagdameo Sr. — the Philippines’ Permanent Representative to the United Nations — was present, but no official public statement or reaction from him specifically addressing Ressa’s speech has been released as of this writing. The Philippines’ top diplomat, Foreign Secretary Ma. Theresa P. Lazaro, along with several staff from the Philippine Mission to the UN, was part of the audience that listened to her speak.
That said, Lagdameo’s presence alongside Ressa at such a high-profile event is symbolically significant. It marked a moment when a leading Filipino diplomat and a globally recognized Filipino journalist, who had been at odds with the past administration, shared the same international stage. It’s a quiet image of pluralism and evolving narrative with Philippine representation.
