Journalists Maria Ressa of Philippines and Dmitry Muratov of Russia awarded Nobel Peace Prize

By: Veronica Leighton

 

The Nobel Peace Prize has been awarded to journalists Maria Ressa and Dmitry Muratov, for their longstanding efforts to safeguard freedom of expression in the Philippines and Russia.

Ressa is the CEO of Rappler, a news outlet critical of Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte’s regime, while Muratov heads the independent Russian newspaper Novaya Gazeta. Both have faced legal and physical threats during their careers, as their respective governments cracked down on the rights of journalists.

“Free, independent and fact-based journalism serves to protect against abuse of power, lies and war propaganda,” Berit Reiss-Andersen, chair of the Norwegian Nobel Committee, said as she announced the prize in Oslo on Friday.

She said the pair are “representatives of all journalists who stand up for this ideal in a world in which democracy and freedom of the press face increasingly adverse conditions.” Reiss-Andersen added that the committee’s choice was intended to “underscore the importance of protecting and defending these fundamental rights.”

Ressa, a former CNN bureau chief and TIME Person of the Year, has been engulfed in legal battles in recent years and says she has been targeted because of her news site’s critical reports on Duterte.

Muratov and Ressa have faced legal and physical threats since they established their news outlets.

“We need to sound the alert to every person in a democracy,” she told CNN in 2019 on her fight for freedom of expression. “These freedoms are being eroded in front of our eyes … If you don’t have facts, you can’t have truth.”

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Ressa becomes the first woman to be awarded a Nobel Prize this year. The awards in medicine, physics, chemistry and literature were given out earlier this week.

Six staff members at the independent newspaper Novaya Gazeta have been killed since Muratov co-founded the outlet in 1993, the committee said. He has served as the paper’s editor-in-chief since 1995.

“The newspaper’s fact-based journalism and professional integrity have made it an important source of information on censurable aspects of Russian society rarely mentioned by other media,” the committee said.

It added that Muratov has “consistently defended the right of journalists to write anything they want about whatever they want, as long as they comply with the professional and ethical standards of journalism.” (CNN)

Maria Ressa & Dmitry Muratov