The Year's Most Beautiful Book 2020: Terje Abusdal and Gösta Flemming

November 4 2020

The Fritt Ord Foundation congratulates Terje Abusdal and Gösta Flemming on winning Grafill’s distinction ‘The Year’s Most Beautiful Book’.

Grafill has awarded photographer Terje Abusdal and Gösta Flemming/Journal the distinction ‘The Year’s Most Beautiful Book 2020’ for his photo book entitled Hope Blinds Reason. Fritt Ord provided NOK 20 000 in support for production of the book in 2017. The book has been published by Journal publishing house, with Gösta Flemming as editor. Abusdal has previously participated in the Fritt Ord project The Norwegian Journal of Photography.

The jury’s justification for awarding the prize begins as follows: “A project that really stands out from the crowd owing to its uncompromising quest for expressive power. Exquisitely effected as a flawless distillate of an obviously massive corpus of material. Insanely precise in every minute detail. Every theme hits you like a gut punch, striking a precise balance to avoid clichés.”

Grafill is an interest organisation for those studying or working within the field of visual communication in Norway.

News

Call for nominations: Free Media Awards 2025

March 14 2025

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. Journalist, editorial teams and media companies in and from Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Georgia, Russia, Ukraine and Hungary who make a contribution to press freedom through their investigative, independent reporting can be nominated for the Free Media Awards.

Civitates' Tech & Democracy open call

March 6 2025

Civitates – The European Democracy Fund is a pooled philanthropic fund that was set up in 2018 for the sole purpose of addressing democratic decline and closing civic space in Europe. The case for confronting these threats is growing increasingly urgent. Fritt Ord Foundation is one of the initiators and partners of Civitates.

Civitates has launched its Tech and Democracy open call to support organisations working to ensure safer, more inclusive online spaces (social media platforms, search engines etc.) by improving the enforcement of EU tech regulations at the national level.

This open call offers a unique opportunity to strengthen civil society’s role in holding the tech sector accountable, with a focus on key EU regulations such as the Digital Services Act, GDPR, AI Act or the European Media Freedom Act to name a few.

Norwegians increasingly more positive to computer games

March 5 2025

Norwegians are increasingly more positive to accepting computer games as culture

About 17 per cent have developed a more favourable view of computer games over the past year. Six of ten play computer games, and one of three plays computer games weekly. At the same time, computer games are ranked as having lower status than books and music, for example.
“Computer games deserve more attention and discussion”, contends Joakim Lie of Fritt Ord.

– Computer games are also art

March 4 2025

“The problem with far too many media reports about computer games is that they start begin with sentences like: ‘computer games have come a long way since Pac-Man’,” sighs American computer game critic Jacob Geller.

“Let us first simply agree that computer games are indeed an art form and an expression of culture, and then let us examine the works as part of the history of art and culture.