Baku / 20.11.19 / Turan: The Free Media Prize awarding ceremony for 2019 was held in Vilnius the day before. The prize was awarded by the Fritt Ord Foundation and the ZEIT Foundation. Among the laureates of the prize is the Azerbaijani investigative journalist Hafiz Babaly.
Besides him, the prize was awarded to the Russian online newspaper 7x7, the independent Moscow Insider media platform, the Civil Net media platform from Armenia and the New Weekly Independent weekly magazine.
“All five laureates of the Free Media Prize for 2019 are journalists who actively disclose corruption, organized crime, human rights violations and abuse of power,” said Olav Amos, Executive Director of the Knut Foundation.
The ceremony was preceded by a conference on media issues. Hafiz Babaly, who spoke at it, spoke about the state of investigative journalism in Azerbaijan and problems in this area. According to him, investigative journalists are faced with difficulties regarding security and access to information.
The law restricts access to information, in particular information about owners of commercial legal entities. In addition, in practice there is a difficulty in obtaining information, access to which is not limited by law.
In addition, the criminalization of defamation can also be used to put pressure on investigative journalists.
Since 2016, Free Media Awards have been awarded annually to independent journalists or to bold media organizations from Russia, Ukraine, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Georgia or Armenia. The 2019 awards will be presented at the Free Media Awards Conference under the auspices of the Fritt Ord Foundation and ZEIT-Stiftung on November 18-19, 2019 in Vilnius, Lithuania. The size of the prizes for the press is € 15,000, for each of the prize winners. -06D-
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