It has been 75 years since a journalist last won the Nobel Peace Prize. Back in 1936, Carl von Ossietzky couldn’t accept the honour in person because he was imprisoned in a Nazi concentration camp. The fact that today’s winners, Maria Ressa and Dmitry Muratov, both made it to the Oslo award ceremony might be a sign of progress. But in a year when a record number of journalists have been jailed, dozens killed, and countless more threatened, intimidated or forced to flee their homes, the spotlight their prize shines on the world is grim. It shames so-called liberal democracies, too, including Britain, that claim to stand for press freedom.
“Dmitry and I are lucky because we can speak to you now, but there are so many more journalists persecuted in the shadows,” Ressa said in her Oslo speech today. ‘Lucky’ might be pushing it – next week, she returns home to the Philippines to face a litany of trumped-up charges that could see her jailed for the rest of her life. But she is perhaps fortunate to be alive. Twenty-two journalists have been killed since President Rodrigo Duterte took power in 2016: the latest, Ressa’s former colleague Jesus ‘Jess’ Malabanan, was shot dead just 36 hours before her Oslo speech.
In Russia, Dmitry Muratov is the editor of Novaya Gazeta, one of the last independent outlets operating inside the country. Six of his colleagues, including the celebrated Anna Politkovskaya, have been killed. Shortly after the Nobel Prize was announced, President Putin warned the award would not be a “shield” for Muratov or his colleagues. (And he meant it: weeks later Novaya Gazeta and Muratov, personally, were hit with fines for their reporting on Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny.)
