We refuse to be silenced.
That was the common message when six media outlets, journalists, and editors from Georgia, Azerbaijan, Ukraine, Russia, and Belarus received the Free Media Awards 2024 on September 17 at the Nobel Institute in Oslo.
– Threatening, attacking, kidnapping, and murdering journalists has become a war tactic, said documentary filmmaker Tonje Hessen Schei in her speech to the prize winners.
Graphic novels that address historical topics was this year’s focus among the 144 public libraries that responded to the Fritt Ord Foundation’s call for applications from libraries for 2024, "The History of History».
According to graphic art creators as well as librarians, graphic novels can recount history in new ways to new groups of readers. Forty-four libraries have been granted MNOK 2.6 to organise meetings on nonfictional prose, fiction and graphic novels. This is the largest amount since the calls for applications from libraries began in 2008.
Debate seminar at the Fritt Ord Foundation premises, Uranienborgveien 2, from 6-7.30 p.m. on Monday, 9 September
The Fritt Ord Foundation and the Zeit Stiftung Bucerius hereby announce that the Free Media Awards for 2024 will be presented to journalists and media from Georgia, Ukraine, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Russia and, for the first time, Hungary.
Gerard Ryle, an Irish-Australian investigative journalist and director of the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, has led projects that resulted in the resignation of four prime ministers. He led the world’s largest journalistic collaborations: Offshore Leaks, Panama Papers, Paradise Papers, Implant Files, FinCEN Files, and Pandora Papers. “They are all based on the principles of freedom of expression,” he says.
Tuva Rognås Strømmen from Valdres Upper Secondary School won the history competition ‘My family in History’ with the story entitled “An ordinary life, out of the ordinary” about the life choices that her Great Aunt Ragnhild made in the late 1800s. Liv Conradi Andersen from Kråkerøy Lower Secondary School won an award for “First she lost her home, then they wanted to take away her language” about how her Sámi grandmother Marit Elvira experienced the Norwegianisation policy prevalent in Finnmark County in the 1950s.
Pastor Kjersti Gautestad Norheim has been appointed to the Fritt Ord Foundation Board.
The Fritt Ord Foundation awards annual grants to critics for 2024-2025. At NOK 250 000 each, the grants should result in a steady stream of reviews during the period from August 2024 to August 2025.
A new report gives some answers and, for the first time, the use of artificial intelligence in the media has been surveyed all over the world.
The Fritt Ord Foundation, the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism at Oxford and the University of Bergen invite the public to the world-wide launch of the Reuters Digital News Report 2024 and the Norwegian report:
Monday, 17 June 2024, 08.30-10.00 a.m.
Uranienborgveien 2, Oslo
“Each day, more than 3 billion images are uploaded to social media, including photos from conflicts and disasters. However, in an age of fake news, propaganda, manipulation and artificial intelligence, the question is often ‘what can we trust?’" observed Harald Henden upon being awarded the Fritt Ord Prize.
His response is that we must trust the individual photographer. Grete Brochmann, chair of the Fritt Ord Foundation Board, drove home the same point, calling war and documentary photography an integral part of the infrastructure of freedom of expression.
“Credibility is the media’s most important capital asset. That is precisely why the importance of having the media’s own photographers on site has not diminished. In point of fact, it is more important than ever before.
“This is because credibility is also an individual photographer’s most important asset. “When I put my name under a photo, readers should be able to trust that the content is correct, so that no further verification is needed. This brand of credibility takes many years to build up, and it can be descimated by a single mistake,” commented Harald Henden (63) upon being awarded the Fritt Ord Prize on Tuesday evening.
This story is only published in Norwegian.
Writer and historian Hilde Gunn Slottemo presents “Freedom of expression. Foundation and Society 1974-2024”
The Fritt Ord Foundation’s Prize for 2024 is awarded to war and press photographer Harald Henden for his courageous and uncompromising documentation of wars, conflicts and natural disasters for more than three decades.
In collaboration with the ZEIT STIFTUNG BUCERIUS of Hamburg, the Fritt Ord Foundation has allocated the Free Media Awards annually since 2004 to Eastern European journalists and media that defy every obstacle to tirelessly ensure independent press coverage. Russia’s war against Ukraine and the subsequent wave of disinformation clearly demonstrates the need for independent reporting in the region. Journalists and media in Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Georgia, Russia, Ukraine Ukraine and Hungary that promote freedom of the press through their investigative and independent reporting are eligible to be nominated for the Free Media Awards.