They called power to account

We focus today on journalists, Maria Ressa and Dmitry Andreyevich Muratov, who were awarded the 2021 Nobel Peace Prize “for their efforts to safeguard freedom of expression, which is a precondition for democracy and lasting peace”. The announcement of the award was made on Friday, October 8 by Norwegian Nobel Committee Chairperson Berit Reiss-Andersen. She said they received the award “for their courageous fight for freedom of expression in the Philippines and Russia. At the same time, they are representatives of all journalists who stand up for this ideal in a world in which democracy and media freedom face increasingly adverse conditions”.

At a time such as this when journalists around the world take great risks to report what is happening behind the screens, we thought it opportune to celebrate the life and work of these two journalists, who have traversed that extra mile to uphold media freedom and the freedom of expression.  

Sharing the prestigious honour, the two journalists – Maria Ressa and Dmitry Andreyevich Muratov -- leading embattled media outfits at great personal sacrifice are witnesses to the heroism of principled media practitioners around the globe who deliver fact-based news from the frontlines of social unrest often provoked by corrupt governments or despotic regimes.  

59-year-old Muratov, who founded Novaya Gazeta, an independent Russian newspaper, having served as its editor-in-chief for 24 years, is the first Russian to win the peace prize since Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev in 1990. Gorbachev himself has long been associated with Muratov’s newspaper, having contributed some of his Nobel Prize money to help set it up in the early post-Soviet days when Russians expected new freedom, while 58-year-old Ressa is the first person from the Philippines to win a Nobel Prize in any field. In 2012 she co-founded Rappler -- a Philippine online news website -- with a group of Filipino journalists. It is based in Pasig and has grown in prominence through investigative reporting, including into large scale killings during a police campaign against drugs.

Despite working under constant duress and harassment -- defending against criminal charges ranging from cyber libel to tax evasion -- had led to Ms. Ressa being arrested in 2019. She has nevertheless demonstrated the capacity to confront the presidential palace by the Pasig River and its army of paid trolls while having impressed and inspired a new generation of young media practitioners.

Muratov dedicated his award to six contributors to his Novaya Gazeta newspaper. They had been murdered for their work of exposing human rights violations and corruption. “Igor Domnikov, Yuri Shchekochikhin, Anna Politkovskaya, Stas Markelov, Anastasia Baburova, Natasha Estemirova -- these are the people who have today won the Nobel Prize,” Muratov said, reciting the names of slain reporters and activists whose portraits hang in the newspaper’s Moscow headquarters.

In an interview with Reuters in Manila, Ms. Ressa called the prize “a global recognition of the journalist’s role in repairing and fixing our broken world”. “It has never been as hard to be a journalist as it is today,” the veteran journalist said. Ms. Ressa said she was tested by years of legal cases in the Philippines brought by the authorities over the work of her Rappler investigative website.

“Journalism like this is so important because without it our sense of injustice would lose its vocabulary and people would not be armed with the information to fight it,” wrote award-winning investigative journalist John Pilger in his introduction to the book titled, ‘Tell me No Lies’. Secretive power loathes journalists, who do their job by pushing back screens, peer behind facades, lift rocks and the opprobrium from on high is their badge of honour, he said.

Consider the hundreds of journalists, who have been persecuted and murdered in Guatemala, Nigeria, the Philippines, Algeria, Russia, China and in many other oppressive States, because their independence and courage were feared.

It is in such a backdrop that we conclude today’s column by memorializing three of Sri Lanka’s frontline journalists -- Sunday Leader Newspaper’s editor-in-chief Lasantha Wickramatunga, who was bludgeoned to death in broad daylight on January 8, 2009 and popular Tamil journalist Dharmaratnam Sivaram, who was abducted from a restaurant at Bambalapitiya on April 28, 2005. His body was found the next day with signs of having been beaten and shot in the head and the third; senior journalist Prageeth Eknaligoda, who has gone missing since January 24, 2010. Their greatest sin was that of calling ‘power to account’, which Pilger says is journalism’s paramount role. Other than some red herrings, no suspects have been arrested so far.

With that said, we use this opportunity to congratulate the two Nobel Laureates in their mission of keeping alive the freedom of expression and the right to dissent.