Migration needs better reporting: New media competition awards 35 journalists
The first edition of the Migration Media Award awarded 35 journalists from 16 countries for their journalistic excellence on migration in the Euro-Mediterranean region. The award ceremony was held on 14th June evening in Valletta, Malta, under the auspices of Malta’s EU presidency.The winning entries feature fact-based and impartial reporting on the complexity of migration, its many challenges and opportunities. High quality reporting as rewarded by the new journalistic competition is urgently needed to improve people’s understanding of migration.
The twelve first-prize winners for the four categories of video, print, online or radio in the English, French or Arabic languages come from eight different countries: Sameh Ellaboody, Ahmed Shalaby and Abdelrahman Ayyash from Egypt; Marco Panzetti, the team Marco Stefanelli, Nerina Schiavo and Nadia Lucisano from Italy; Fouzi Bendjama from Algeria; Catarina Santos from Portugal; Daniel Trilling from the UK; Elisa Perrigueur, the Egypt-based team François Hume-Ferkatadji and Jenna Le Bras from France, and Salaheddine Lemaizi from Morocco. A multimedia prize was presented to Migration Matters from Germany as an additional first prize.
An international jury, composed of reputable senior journalists, evaluated over 120 applications. Impressed with the quality of the previously published pieces and the proposals for future productions which this award scheme will fund, jury member Aidan White from the Ethical Journalism Network said: “This kind of reporting does great credit to the cause of public-interest journalism. It shines a powerful light on the humanitarian and policy challenges of the recent ‘migration crisis’. The authors raise questions that cannot be ignored and challenge those who come up with easy answers.”
The Migration Media Award is a new EU-funded journalism competition bringing together four partners based on the initiative of the International Centre for Migration Policy Development (ICMPD). The EUROMED Migration IV and OPEN Media Hub projects, funded by the EU, developed the scheme in partnership with the European Asylum Support Office (EASO) and Malta’s Ministry for Foreign Affairs and Trade Promotion
The award scheme is the first EU-funded activity that addresses the various challenges that journalists face when it comes to conducting balanced and fact-based reporting on migration. These challenges and barriers were identified in the recently launched study entitled “How does the media on both sides of the Mediterranean report on migration?” in which journalists from 17 countries examined the quality of migration media coverage in 2015/16.
The full study on “How does the media on both sides of the Mediterranean report on migration?” is available here in English.
