Do you want to win the Grand Prix worth 10,000 zlotys (2,400 euros) or either of €1,200-euro prizes, along with a trip to Poland? If you do, take part in a contest for the best report from Eastern Partnership countries (e.g., Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Georgia, Moldova, Ukraine), launched by the Reporters Foundation in Poland, meant to support and upgrade journalism in Eastern Europe.
Such reports can be submitted to [email protected] in a video/audio format before October 31 this year. In early November the jury will select 10 finalists who will be invited to attend the award ceremony scheduled for November 24-25 in Poland. The emphasis will be on investigative reports concerning human rights, discrimination, democracy, civil society, cooperation between the Eastern Partnership and the European Union. All such materials must meet the television, radio, printed media, and Internet criteria, with appropriate references after January 1, 2010.
Poland’s Reporters Foundation was established in the spring of 2010, by a group of noted Polish journalists who wanted to share their professional experience with the younger generation in Poland and elsewhere in Eastern Europe.
The organizers say these journalism prizes will be granted to journalists who can best demonstrate that true democracy depends on information exchange. Being professional reporters, they feel sure they can secure this exchange.
Marcin Wojciechowski, one of the organizers of this project, met with Eastern Partnership journalists at the editorial office of Gazeta Wyborcza [Poland’s major periodical] and told his guests: “We know only too well that doing our job in the post- Soviet countries is very difficult. Therefore, we are making every effort to secure professional journalism, so we can pick bona fide reports from this information chaos. After all, the newspapers must broach publicly important issues and keep monitoring the performance of all those ‘upstairs’ — government officials, clerks, businesspeople.”
Wojciechowski went on to say that, back in the 1990s, the printed media were making re-venues, but after the crisis their revenues have been on a downward curve, with the newspaper owners reducing the print run, ordering to publish tabloid-like features. They are unwilling to pay for journalists’ investigative trips and order their staff to write their stories there and then. Wojciechowski said some periodicals are no longer interested in investigative journalism; all their owners want is “revenues, not quality stories, but we know that the press must broach acute public issues; we have to keep our professional standard. We hope that this contest and its purse will help upgrade journalism in the Eastern Partnership countries.”
Rzeczpospolita reporter Paul Reszka explains that the prize money is provided by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Poland, which, in turn, is funded by the European Union to secure Eastern Partnership. The agreement made by the Reporters Foundation and the Ministry, reads that the Ministry will not do anything to influence the jury. Reszka said the Reporters Foundation had held a two-day session to discuss ways of protecting information sources, and that a noted journalist, Carl Bernstein, would be invited as a guest of honor.
