This Tuesday, the prestigious Spanish newspaper El País presented the Ortega y Gasset 2022 Journalism Awards, in a special ceremony in which the winners of the 2020 and 2021 editions were also recognized, which could not be held in person, due to the siege of the Covid 19 pandemic.
In the 2022 edition, they were recognized with the award for Best Story or Investigative Journalism the investigation on pederasty within the Spanish Church, published in the newspaper El País. The jury highlighted “the fundamental value of a long-term investigation, on facts hidden and concealed for decades, giving a voice to adults broken by the terrible experiences of childhood.”
The Spanish newspaper also recognized in the category of Better multimedia coverage, the special one The challenge after the massacre: memory, truth, justice and non-repetition, published by the Nicaraguan media divergentand which analyzes the situation of repression in Nicaragua under the regime of Daniel Ortega.
The jury highlighted that it is a work that “brings together everything required of good journalism: information, different points of view, numerous voices and exhaustive analysis. It also presses several keys that would be applicable to other places in the world. It integrates multiple formats, well executed and combined, designed for a plural audience, which allow us to understand the reality that the Central American country is experiencing.”
Photo: Confidential | EFE / Kai Forsterling
Recognition to Carlos Fernando Chamorro
In this ceremony, it was also finally recognized the 2021 Professional Achievement Award to the director of CONFIDENTIALjournalist Carlos Fernando Chamorrowho is in exile due to persecution by the regime of Daniel Ortega and Rosario Murillo.
The prize, awarded unanimouslyhighlighted Chamorro as “an emblem of the defense of freedom of expression,” and added: “His is an exercise in journalism with capital letters, exercised in the face of adversity and violence.”
“I receive it very honored, as the spokesperson for a message of encouragement for independent journalism in Nicaragua, which is defending freedom in these moments of persecution,” Chamorro valued when speaking about the recognition that highlights his “capacity to overcome and confront the repressive regime” of Nicaragua.
In 2021 the recognition for the Best Story or Journalistic Investigation The women who won the desert, by Isabela Ponce, which describes the struggle of four women in a semi-desert area of Ecuador to bring water to their crops.
They will also be recognizing the 2020 winners. That year the Ortega y Gasset was delivered to transnationals of faith is an investigation of evangelical political power and its fundamentalist agenda in Latin America. Journalists from 16 media outlets worked on the project, coordinated by María Teresa Ronderos, from the Latin American Center for Journalistic Investigation, and Giannina Segnini, from Columbia Journalism Investigations.
That year, the Professional Career Recognition went to the renowned Chilean journalist Mónica Gonzáleswho directed from 2007 to 2019 the prestigious Center for Journalistic Research (CIPER).
Nicaragua: Total Persecution of Journalists
The photographer of the EFE Agency in Mexico, Sáshenka Gutiérrez, and two journalists from the Nicaraguan digital portal Divergentes, Wilfredo Miranda and Carlos Herrera, recent Ortega y Gasset Prize winners for Journalism, claimed this profession this Monday, despite the dangers involved in developing it in those countries. .
Wilfredo Miranda and Carlos Herrera are two of the authors of “The challenge behind the massacre: memory, truth, justice and non-repetition”, published on the digital portal Divergentes and awarded Best Multimedia Coverage, who live in exile in Costa Rica because exercising the journalism in Nicaragua is “a high-risk job.”
Miranda points out that in Nicaragua “informing is a crime” since the Government has “criminalized the exercise of freedom of the press” with laws in which it decides what is false news and that can lead to eight years in prison “simply for making reports ”, which means that the editors do not sign their news and that there are no sources, “because they are taken prisoner”.
“Every time the loopholes to do journalism in Nicaragua are smaller,” laments this editor, who specifies that more than 120 colleagues have had to go into exile and there are currently three journalists and a director of a newspaper in prison, three newsrooms “confiscated ” and a “total persecution” of journalism.
For this reason, he highlights that this award represents a “breath of oxygen in the midst of the repression” that the government of Daniel Ortega maintains against journalists in Nicaragua and a “back” to continue moving forward in a context in which they are “simply persecuted for exercising the constitutional right to inform”.
His colleague Carlos Herrera agrees that it is “very complicated” to practice in Nicaragua, so this award is a “great encouragement” for a young newsroom -the portal celebrates two years of existence in June- and for the journalists who remain in the country and who work daily “in very difficult circumstances”.
The award-winning work is a multimedia special in which they document the repression that began with the protests in 2018 and demand justice for the victims.
Sáshenka Gutiérrez, with 15 years practicing photojournalism, explains to EFE that Mexico is considered “as one of the most dangerous countries to practice journalism, and it is not Ukraine or another country that is in conflict,” but so far this year eleven Mexican journalists were murdered.
He indicates that in Mexico City they live safer because they do not suffer the “persecution” of colleagues from other states, who “are being assassinated, are kidnapped or many have to live in exile,”
The photographer affirms that she really likes her work despite “so many things that can happen” and that in Mexico there are still “few female photographers and the few that exist are discriminated against in many media”, and assures: “There are many beautiful things that They make me still love this profession.”
Gutiérrez was awarded the prize for Best Photography for an image showing Sandra, a woman who underwent a double mastectomy and with which she wanted to give visibility to women who have gone through that experience and want their story to be known. .
*With information from EFE
