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CHAMPIONS OF PRESS FREEDOM TO ACCEPT NOBEL PEACE PRIZE

CHAMPIONS OF PRESS FREEDOM TO ACCEPT NOBEL PEACE PRIZE

She risks prison, he has buried several colleagues: Maria Ressa of the Philippines and Dmitry Muratov of Russia, two champions of the free press, will on Friday receive this year’s Nobel Peace Prize honouring a profession under attack.

Ressa, co-founder of the news website Rappler, and Muratov, chief editor of the independent newspaper Novaya Gazeta, won the Prize in October for “their efforts to safeguard freedom of expression.”

“You have to take care of journalists,” Muratov told a crowd of children shortly before Friday’s prize ceremony got underway at Oslo’s City Hall, scaled back due to the pandemic. “No article is worth their life,” he said.

The award consists of a diploma, a gold medal and a cheque for 10 million Swedish kronor (975,000 euros, $1.10 million) to be shared by the two laureates.

“A healthy society and democracy is dependent on trustworthy information,” the head of the Norwegian Nobel Committee Berit Reiss-Andersen said on Thursday, taking a swipe at propaganda, disinformation and fake news.

Free and independent journalism is under threat around the world.

Ressa said the prestigious award had not improved the situation in the Philippines, which is currently ranked 138th in freedom of the press by Reporters Without Borders.

“This Nobel light is blinding,” the 58-year-old journalist told AFP, saying she was still stunned to have won the prize, mimicking Edvard Munch’s famed painting “The Scream”.

“It’s for all journalists around the world. We’ve seen the decline in terms of the quality of journalism, the safety of journalists and then the quality of democracies over the last decade,” she told AFP.

Ressa, a vocal critic of Duterte and his deadly drug war, is herself facing seven criminal lawsuits in her country.

Currently on bail pending an appeal against a conviction last year in a cyber libel case, she had to apply to four courts for permission to travel to Norway for Friday’s ceremony.

Muratov, 60, heads one of the rare independent newspapers in a Russian media landscape largely under state control.

Source: National News Agency