The Free Media Awards 2018 are awarded to Chai Khana, Fontanka and Belarus Partisan

The Fritt Ord Foun­da­tion and ZEIT-Stiftung hon­our inde­pen­dent media in Geor­gia, Rus­sia and Belarus.

The prizes con­sist of EUR 15 000 for each of the prize lau­re­ates. The awards will be bestowed at the Free Media Awards con­fer­ence in Yere­van, Arme­nia under the aus­pices of Fritt Ord and ZEIT-Stiftung from 1 to 3 Octo­ber 2018.

“The annu­al sur­veys from Reporters With­out Bor­ders and Free­dom House show that press free­dom inter­na­tion­al­ly is being reduced, and the sit­u­a­tion is crit­i­cal in sev­er­al coun­tries in Cen­tral and East­ern Europe. The Free Media Awards are meant to pro­vide sup­port for jour­nal­ists and media that report inde­pen­dent­ly and refuse to give up their work con­front­ed with threats, oppres­sion and pres­sure of all kinds”, says Knut Olav Åmås, exec­u­tive direc­tor of the Fritt Ord Foun­da­tion.

Chai Khana, head­quar­tered in Tbil­isi, Geor­gia, is a val­ue-dri­ven, inter­na­tion­al­ly ori­ent­ed and polit­i­cal­ly inde­pen­dent media plat­form. The staff con­sists exclu­sive­ly of women. The web­site cov­ers news and oper­ates across the nation­al bound­aries between Geor­gia, Arme­nia and Azer­bai­jan. Chai Khana’s cov­er­age of sto­ries, includ­ing text, pho­tos and mul­ti­me­dia, as well as doc­u­men­tary films, is orig­i­nal and inno­v­a­tive. They chal­lenge stereo­types and pro­mote social engage­ment among their read­ers, aim­ing at minori­ties and women, as well as peo­ple in rur­al dis­tricts and areas of con­flict. The focus is often on prob­lems involv­ing eth­nic minori­ties, gen­der and sus­tain­able devel­op­ment. Chai Khana gives a voice to mar­gin­alised groups in soci­ety, broach­ing top­ics that have rarely, if ever, been addressed pre­vi­ous­ly. Exam­ples of such sto­ries include a series of arti­cles on the griev­ing par­ents of fall­en sol­diers on both sides of the bor­der with Nagorno Karabakh, reports on Arme­ni­a’s fail­ure to inte­grate Armen­ian refugees return­ing from Azer­bai­jan, and the dif­fi­cul­ties that state­less peo­ple face in Geor­gia. The issues are fol­lowed up over time, so that top­ics do not sim­ply slip into obliv­ion.

Chai Khana was found­ed in 2014 and came online in 2015. The news items are pub­lished in Eng­lish and Russ­ian, and many of the arti­cles are also trans­lat­ed to Geor­gian, Armen­ian and Azeri. The media plat­form gives peo­ple in the region an oppor­tu­ni­ty to notice the sim­i­lar­i­ties and dif­fer­ences between the three coun­tries. Chai Khana was nom­i­nat­ed by the Fed­er­al Repub­lic of Ger­many’s embassy in Geor­gia.

Web­site: chai-khana.org/en

Fontan­ka is an online region­al news­pa­per oper­at­ing out of St. Peters­burg, Rus­sia. Over time, the news­pa­per has pri­mar­i­ly focused on fol­low­ing up, report­ing on and doc­u­ment­ing the fact that pri­vate Russ­ian mili­tia have been involved in a vari­ety of mil­i­tary oper­a­tions in East­ern Ukraine and Syr­ia. The Russ­ian author­i­ties have gen­er­al­ly been very cau­tious about report­ing on mil­i­tary oper­a­tions and the loss of Russ­ian lives in areas of con­flict. Fontan­ka has also run sev­er­al sto­ries that have exposed Russ­ian col­lab­o­ra­tion with pri­vate mil­i­tary groups that are engaged in war­fare, even though par­tic­i­pa­tion in pri­vate mil­i­tary forces is ille­gal in Rus­sia.

As ear­ly as in Octo­ber 2013, the news­pa­per wrote about Russ­ian mil­i­tary groups’ inter­ven­tion in the con­flict in Syr­ia. The top­ic has been metic­u­lous­ly fol­lowed up ever since, result­ing in sev­er­al sub­se­quent inves­tiga­tive reports. Fontan­ka has received threats against online news­pa­pers in gen­er­al and against indi­vid­ual jour­nal­ists in par­tic­u­lar. The news­pa­per staff strives to bring greater trans­paren­cy to Russ­ian mil­i­tary oper­a­tions in inter­na­tion­al con­flicts. Fontan­ka focus­es on the val­ue of human life and the desire for legal recog­ni­tion of that val­ue. In this way, the online news­pa­per helps to shape Russ­ian soci­ety by pro­vid­ing reli­able infor­ma­tion. Fontan­ka was nom­i­nat­ed by the Nor­we­gian Helsin­ki Com­mit­tee.

Web­site: www.fontanka.ru

The web­site Belarus Par­ti­san was found­ed in 2006 by a group of Beloruss­ian jour­nal­ists. It is an infor­ma­tive, ana­lyt­i­cal media plat­form that address­es the most exi­gent and rel­e­vant mat­ters in Belarus. Belarus Par­ti­san is often one of the first to report on news items and is among the few news media to focus on issues of pub­lic inter­est, as well as on polit­i­cal­ly sen­si­tive issues. Their inves­tiga­tive jour­nal­ism cov­ers a wide vari­ety of top­ics. Cor­rup­tion and the fate of ‘dis­ap­peared’ Beloruss­ian politi­cians are among the top­ics the web­site reverts to repeat­ed­ly. Belarus Par­ti­san also plays an impor­tant part as a debate plat­form for White Russ­ian oppo­si­tion­ists, in a coun­try in which there is a pre­car­i­ous lack of pub­lic debate. It is one of the 10 most pop­u­lar news web­sites in Belarus, address­ing region­al and inter­na­tion­al issues alike.

In 2016, Pavel Sheremet, for­mer edi­tor-in-chief and one of the web­site’s founders, was killed by a car bomb in Kiev. Both before and after that event, Belarus Par­ti­san has repeat­ed­ly been blocked and attempts have been made to hack into its sys­tems. In 2017, the web­site was com­plete­ly blocked through­out Beloruss­ian ter­ri­to­ry — by the author­i­ties. The web­site was forced to move to a new domain to be able to reach its Beloruss­ian read­ers. Even though they had to rebuild, they have devel­oped even fur­ther, giv­ing them a broad­er reach than ever before. Belarus Par­ti­san pub­lish­es in Russ­ian and Beloruss­ian, and it has been nom­i­nat­ed by the Board of the Belaruss­ian Asso­ci­a­tion of Jour­nal­ists.

Web­site: https://belaruspartisan.by

The Free Media Awards jury con­sists of five indi­vid­u­als: Alice Bota, Moscow cor­re­spon­dent for the week­ly news­pa­per DIE ZEIT, Ane Tusvik Bonde, senior advi­sor at the Human Rights Foun­da­tion, Oslo, Guri Norstrøm, Berlin cor­re­spon­dent for the Nor­we­gian Nation­al Broad­cast­ing Cor­po­ra­tion (NRK), Oslo, Mar­tin Paulsen, East­ern Europe expert with a PhD in Russ­ian from the Uni­ver­si­ty of Bergen, and Stephan Wack­witz, exec­u­tive direc­tor of the Goethe Insti­tute, Min­sk.