In his acceptance speech for the Nobel Peace Prize, Dmitry Muratov, editor-in-chief of Russia’s leading independent media outlet, Novaya Gazeta, said: “The award today goes to the entire community of investigative journalists.” Four days later — in a webinar interview with GIJN — Muratov set out the true stakes for investigative journalists who now share that high honor.
In their acceptance speeches in Oslo, Norway, 2021 Nobel Peace Prize winners Maria Ressa and Dmitry Muratov issued a clarion call to the world to support and defend independent journalism in an era awash in misinformation, propaganda, and rising authoritarianism.
Fact-based journalism has been under siege as newsrooms worldwide struggle against the onslaught of misinformation, disinformation, and falling revenues. But the awarding of the 2021 Nobel Peace Prize to Maria Ressa and Dmitry Muratov, two renowned investigative journalists, is a boost to reporters and highlights the importance of quality journalism for democracy.
Monday, May 3, is World Press Freedom Day, a global day of recognition for journalists around the world, particularly those who are standing up for truth and revealing information in the public interest despite political intimidation, government oppression, and threats of violence.
This week’s Friday 5, where we round up our favorite reads from around the world in English, we found a helpful database that’s tracking government responses to COVID-19 with the help of 400 researchers, a multimedia project on how eight journalists from around the world are coping with reporting during the pandemic, and a piece on how autocrats are cracking down on independent news sites.
The Global Investigative Journalism Network is outraged and alarmed by the conviction of our colleagues Maria Ressa and Reynaldo Santos for cyberlibel in a Philippines regional court. Maria Ressa, the founder and executive editor of Rappler, was the keynote speaker at the 2019 conference of GIJN, which represents 184 nonprofit investigative journalism organizations in 77 countries. She is a journalist of unquestioned integrity, representing the best of her nation’s long tradition of investigative reporting.
This year’s Sundance Film Festival, which runs from January 23 to February 2 in Utah, includes four films which put journalism front and center. The films take viewers to Kenya, the US, Saudi Arabia, and the Philippines, tackling the perils reporters around the world face.
By popular demand, we are publishing the prepared remarks that Rappler’s CEO and executive editor Maria Ressa delivered during a rousing keynote speech at the 11th Global Investigative Journalism Conference in Hamburg.
Before she could even start to speak, Maria Ressa received a standing ovation, which brought tears to her eyes. She was out on bail, and was forced to pay a travel bond in order to leave the Philippines and come to Hamburg, where she gave a keynote address to an auditorium full of fellow investigative journalists from around the world.
Maria Ressa is a former CNN war correspondent, but none of her experiences in the field prepared her for the destructive campaign of gendered online harassment that’s been directed at her since the election of President Rodrigo Duterte in 2016.
