Flash Back: iMEdD, in collaboration with the European Press Prize, organised a series of inspiring discussions with the laureates around the story or the work for which they were honoured.
Following iMEdD’s recent membership of the European Press Prize, this project marks the launch of joint initiatives between the organisations, designed around our common goal and values.
Through the Ideas Zone Talks series, the audience was able to learn “the story behind the story” of the award-winning journalists, how they conceived the idea, the methods, the challenges and risks they faced, the impact on the public, up to the moment of the award. Each session also included members of the jury or the award’s preparatory committee, who talked about the judging process and the elements in a story or project that make it stand out. At the same time, the discussions presented best practices and information on submitting journalistic works for the European Press Prize.
The discussions started with the Distinguished Reporting Award category, with Isobel Cockerell, winner in 2020, speaking on her project “The Uyghur women fighting against China’s surveillance state“. She said that “indeed a young woman taking on such an important project in these areas can be quite dangerous, but at the same time it can also work in a positive way, as it is easier to discreetly enter the local community and get to know the people.” Furthermore, she said that “innovation in journalism is very important and I feel it is my duty to convey the stories accurately, but at the same time in an interesting way to the public.”
On the European Press Prize, she said that she “deeply appreciates the way the organisation honours young journalists and celebrates the influence journalism has on everything that happens in the world”, but stressed that when she received the prize she wondered “why I am receiving this award when nothing has changed in the region where the reporting was done”, adding however that “no one can really measure the influence journalism has on everything that happens”.
Furthermore, Wafaa Albadry, who is a member of the Preparatory Committee of the European Press Prize, also participated.
The next session, dedicated to the Innovation Award category, was about challenging the current limits of journalism by finding new ways of communicating with the public. The discussion featured the 2021 award-winning project of Maldita.es, represented in the discussion by Clara Jiménez Cruz and David Fernández Sancho. Maldita.es’s WhatsApp Chatbot has managed to become a successful fact-checking tool against misinformation. Juan Luis Sánchez, a member of the Jury of the Awards, participated in the discussion.
During the discussion, Clara Jiménez Cruz noted that “the COVID-19 crisis has given us a lot of insight into how people manage information. When the effects of the pandemic started to be evident and things started to get dangerous, we didn’t have the corresponding information about what was happening. So people started looking for answers.” Furthermore, she added that through Maldita.es they tried “to give people all the information they needed to create their own view of what was happening”. David Fernández Sancho said that “in the last year and a half we have learned that people see information as something that directly affects their lives. We have fully realized that information on scientific issues can catalytically change people’s lives.” Juan Luis Sánchez noted that “the pandemic years have helped society evolve towards technology. Societies became much more digitalised and people became very much aware of the need for journalism. Similarly, the media realized the need for innovation and we see many new and smaller media outlets using ‘naturally’ what innovation and technology has to offer, as Maldita.es has successfully done.”
Also, on the changes that the pandemic has brought and the integration of technology even more in our lives, Sancho said that “until now we have seen technology as something complementary to journalism. Now we understand that through technology you can create channels to channel information to the public. We need to be where the audience is to facilitate the consumption of content as much as possible.”
On trust in the media, Cruz stressed that “in journalism we have to be honest. Even if we make mistakes, we have to remain honest to the world. We are journalists, not robots, and we have to be fully honest so that people can trust us.” In addition, Sánchez noted that “the focus of the media should not be on the number of unique visitors to the sites, but rather on looking for ways to disconnect journalism from the need to be only attractive to the public, but also be useful.”
As part of the Investigative Reporting Award, the third session was held with award-winning journalist Roman Anin of iStories as a speaker, covering the axes around investigative journalism, the control of power, the disclosure of secret news to the public and the efforts of silencing against it. The reportage with which Anin was awarded the 2021 European Press Prize was “Kirill and Katya: love, offshore and administrative resources. How marrying Putin’s daughter opened up a world of opportunities for Kirill Shamalov”. In the conversation, Anin noted “I realized that if you want to work in an ideal media, you have to create it”, and added that for him “in journalism, fear should not limit us from doing what is important to us or what we think is right. As journalists, we are obliged to publish the stories we discover and we don’t respect our work if we don’t share them with the world.”
The session was also attended by Denis Džidić, who is a member of the preparatory committee of the European Press Prize. During the discussion, Džidić noted that “there are not many media outlets that can do in-depth journalistic investigations, as often the conditions required in terms of human resources are not available.” Furthermore, he said that “The European Press Prize shares messages of unity between journalists from different countries, ’embracing’ all European journalism values”. Finally, he underlined that “what makes a story really good is the human factor in it. Journalists need to find what is of value to the audience, what they can identify with and understand what the real human cost is in every story.”
The Ideas Zone Talks session series was followed by a discussion on the Special Award, which the judges present for outstanding journalism to an impressive entry that defies categories and disciplines. The keynote speaker was photojournalist David Frenkel, a member of the team that won the award in 2021 after an -in-depth and produced based on data journalism techniques- investigation, on police violence in Belarus during the 2020 presidential election.
As he said, “we wanted to write an article to help the public understand the extent of the injuries caused by police violence. One does not need to read the whole report to realize it. This story has attracted a lot of attention, not only from journalists in Russia and Belarus, but also from colleagues from abroad who asked us for the article translated.” Regarding the award for the team of Mediazona reporters in which he participated, he noted that “Our goal as journalists is to share information about what happened. We do this work because we believe that the attention that the issue attracts can help the people who are being harmed. We are honored to receive this award as we feel that we represent all Russian journalists who are fighting for journalism and freedom of speech in Russia and Belarus. This award motivates us to continue working even harder.”
Marie Nemcova , member of the Board of Directors of the European Press Prize, also participated in the discussion, and noted that “the key elements for winning the Special Award are the quality of the journalistic work and the topic covered”. She stressed that “this prize highlights the works that should be widely known to the public, while creating a community of people from all over the world working for quality journalism”.
The series of inspiring discussions concluded with a special event dedicated to the Greek laureates of the European Press Prize. The discussion was attended by journalists Elina Makri, Iliana Papaggeli, Stavros Malichoudis, Kostas Koukoumakas, Thanasis Trombukis, Ioannis Papadopoulos and Maria Louka. Lucila Rodríguez-Alarcón, member of the Preparatory Committee of the European Press Prize, also participated.
Commenting on the importance of awarding journalistic works, Elina Makri noted that “The prize is very important. In Greece it is very difficult to get a reward from a story you have been working on for many months.” Similarly, Maria Louka stressed that “Greece is not a rosy place to do journalism, both in terms of the labor and financial part where there is deregulation, but also in terms of the control part where, as we know, there is a quite narrow framework. So we often forget that there are excellent and outstanding journalists who despite that framework can produce very high-quality content. Such an award can encourage, endorse and help high-quality journalism, which we understand flourishes with a difficulty but if you give them incentives and the ground can indeed flourish.”
Similarly, Iliana Papaggeli, noted that “Survival in journalism is difficult. It’s like you are constantly in a race and you are chasing something. There are the ideas and the meeting point of competent people, so there is the will, but it is often difficult to find the resources to implement your work. Journalism itself needs a prize, such as the European Press Prize, to encourage good journalism and set a good example. Such institutions empower and open up new horizons for journalism“. Furthermore, Ioannis Papadopoulos underlined that “The prize is not an end in itself. It is a reward, a moral reward, but we must not forget that our work is done for the readers, it is to them that we address ourselves and it is by them that we will be judged in the end. However, it is very important to have this recognition, we all crave it. In Greece there is no system or central planning that somehow guides the reward in journalistic work or encourages you to go the extra mile.” Lucila Rodríguez-Alarcón also said that journalists “don’t produce information to win an award, but international awards are important because they form a community that gives so many people the opportunity to read the work of each nominee.”
Discussing the Greek journalistic landscape, Stavros Malichoudis commented “In Greece we have very good journalists, even though we “play” on much worse terms than journalists in other European countries, who may have the time and resources to do the work they want to do”, while Kostas Koukoumakas stressed that “There is no culture in the Greek media in terms of investigation. There is no media that has a special investigations department in Greece. Those of us who do something extra do it in our free time or at the end of our work. At the same time, many media call for investigative journalism, but they don’t have the most basic of all: an organized legal department. I even notice that as journalists we produce more ‘investigative journalism’ than we can consume.” Thanasis Tromboukis added in the conversation “If you think about what resources we have in Greece to produce a journalistic work, what we do is unimaginable and heroic. I personally believe that in Greece we have more than ever the need for journalism awards. Somehow, in this information explosion, these awards should help both readers and the public to understand what good journalism is”.
The sessions were conducted online in November 2021, moderated by Dimitris Bounias, project manager iMEdD ideas zone & incubator and journalist.