Cornelius Hamelberg and Courage in investigative journalism award
Augustine Togonu-Bickersteth
Thank you Cornelius for raising the issue about courage in journalism.
Curiosity and courage we are told make great journalism but Curiosity also killed the cat..
Below is a post houmous award unfortunately gor investigative journalism!
Legatum Institute founded the Courage in Journalism Award in 2018 following the death of Daphne Caruana Galizia, the widely-respected Maltese journalist who was killed by a car bomb in October 2017. In discussion with the Caruana Galizia family, we decided to create this award to honour her legacy and to shine a light on the very real dangers facing journalists working in many countries around the world.
Across the world today, media freedoms are under threat. This should be a cause for concern for all of us – journalists play a vital role in reporting the news and holding governments to account. In too many parts of the world, this duty comes at a price.
The Legatum Institute decided to make this a posthumous award, to recognise a journalist whose life – and death – had made a significant impact. Sadly, the need for courageous journalism seems greater today than ever before. We owe a huge debt to the men and women who paid the ultimate price to ensure their readers, viewers, and listeners received fair and truthful accounts of the facts.
The Award judges are:
- Con Coughlin, Defence Editor, The Telegraph
- Lord Freud, House of Lords, Formerly Financial Times
- Christina Lamb OBE, Chief Foreign Correspondent, Sunday Times
- Abeer Saady, International Advisor, The Ethical Journalism Network
- Mike Thomson, World Affairs Correspondent, BBC
To read the profiles of the journalists who were killed during 2021 and have been considered for the Award please click here.
Cornelius Hamelberg
Clearly, the world’s investigative journalists could be more united than they are at present because as everybody knows, there’s strength in unity, and divided we all fall. Perhaps, the much-desired unity could be more effective if it adopted something like the NATO policy - an attack on any NATO member is an attack on all NATO Members currently flying the same motto as the three musketeers:” One for all, all for one”.
Such a song of unity would sound like terrifying music/ cacophony/ anathema to the ears of tyrants and other repressive regimes. On the other hand, some of the more repressive regimes will always accuse Uncle Sam of interference, accuse Úncle Sam of poking his Pinocchio nose in the internal affairs of regimes that don’t want to toe the line laid out by Uncle Sam. Right now the Islamic Republic of Iran is accusing the Great Satan, the CIA, and maybe “little satan” too, of stoking the demonstrations about the mandatory wearing of Muslim women’s headgear known as hijab. I wouldn’t be surprised. The Islamic Republic may be right, that Uncle Sam has a finger in what’s going on there too.
BTW, in 1988 I met some geezer in an Islamic bookshop in the Warren Street, Goodge Street, Holborn area, and after a short discussion about Hafiz, and after telling him that I was on my way to Iran, he would not let me go. He wanted me to be sending him periodic reports about what was going on in Iran. Upon hearing the details of his proposal I broke down into a cold sweat. I told him that he was talking to the wrong nigger. This one did not want to be hanged at Evin Prison. I could see the headline “Caught spying for uncle sam!”
I just glanced at the Press Freedom World Ranking of countries for 2022 and then at the Human Development Index for the past couple of years to see whether there’s a correlation / tenuous link between press freedom ( including unfettered investigative journalism) and human development, but apparently, that study has not yet been done in relation to Nigeria, for example.
Over here in Sweden, there have been a few scandals as a result of some wrongdoing unearthed by investigative journalism. In the wake of the spate of ransom kidnapping in Nigeria, I might as well mention The Geijer affair. There was also The IB affair unearthed by Peter Bratt and Jan Guillou. Investigative journalism resulted in a major scandal known as The Bofors Affair, which had far-reaching implications for international affairs.
With regard to courage in journalism, instead of the gossip mongers ( hack writers, so-called journalists / “professors of journalism/” media communication” merely scratching the surface (like some chicken) it should be both interesting, profitable, and worthwhile to dig deeper into the affairs of the lootocracy.
Posthumously too, what about a Courage in Journalism Award to Dele Giwa ?
Which reminds me, yesterday, I read in Nigeria World that Brer Atiku is in the States. What’s he doing there, apart from assuring some big and little US businessmen that they can rely on him to secure their business interests if they help him to be elected next president…
From all that’s popular knowledge so far, it’s clear that “investigative journalism” about the arms trade or military secrets could be risky business…
I don’t know exactly where you’d like to place that scoundrel, Julian Assange...
I suppose that a very fine line has to be drawn between legitimate investigative journalism and what’s defined as espionage of the type documented in Peter Wright’s Spycatcher
Cornelius Hamelberg
There can hardly be any investigative journalism without investigative journalists, can there?
I suppose that the degree-prone Nigerians in particular are aware that there are degree courses in investigative journalism, and that there are degree courses in investigative journalism in Sweden too, that there are degree courses in media and communication everywhere, and since the world is round, that includes in China