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Media awards are historically potent for reinforcing best practice. They are rewards, to be sure, but the headlines only last a day or two, like TV ratings or baseball scores. Editors need to move on to the news of the moment.
The Pulitzer Prizes were bestowed this week (May 8) for achievements in arts, letters and journalism. Fourteen of the 22 categories related specifically to news and journalism. Laureates are generally from the US or US media outlets.
The Russian Federation’s war on Ukraine, continuing now for more than 400 days, figured significantly among the 2023 Pulitzer awards. While some observers believe public interest in the brutality and destruction is waning, it is certainly not the case with the Pulitzer Prize Committee at the Columbia University School of Journalism, which determines the annual awards.
Always the most-watched Pulitzer is the Prize for public service. This year it was bestowed on the Associated Press (AP) for “courageous” reporting of the Russian siege of the Ukrainian port city Mariupol. The AP journalists reporting that story were Mstyslav Chernov, Evgeniy Maloletka, Vasilisa Stepanenko and Lori Hinnant. AP photojournalists won the Pulitzer Prize for breaking news photography for the Mariupol story “after other news organizations left.” That team consisted of Romanian photographer Vadim Ghirda, along with colleagues Bernat Armangue, Emilio Morenatti, Felipe Dana, Nariman El-Mofty, and Rodrigo Abd. (See more about conflict zones here)
The New York Times was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for international reporting for its eight-month investigation of the Russian massacre in the Ukrainian village of Bucha. The NYT mounted a multinational and multiple speciality team of dozens of reporters, photo and video journalists and editors with data and security teams, some of whom remain in Ukraine today.
A day after the 2023 Pulitzer Prizes were awarded, news agency AFP video reporter Armin Soldin was killed in Ukraine, reported Russian exile news portal Meduza (May 9). He was a victim of Russian rocket fire close to Bakhmut in eastern Ukraine. He had been in Ukraine since this phase of the Russian invasion began in February last year. He was 32 years old. His death is “a terrible reminder of the risks and dangers faced by journalists every day covering the conflict in Ukraine,” said AFP chairman Fabrice Fries. CPJ and RSF have counted a dozen media workers killed in Ukraine.
Directors general and chief executives of major public broadcasters generally serve their appointed terms. Then they escape to whatever available safety. These are - or are designed to be - public service jobs. In the post-modern populist age, they are fraught with political infighting, generally unpleasant.
Italian public broadcaster RAI lost its chief executive Carlo Fuortes this week, reported La Repubblica (May 8). “No pressure was applied by the government,” said prime minister Giorgia Meloni to a press gaggle. That may be true, literally, but only part of the story. Last week (May 4), the Council of Ministers created rules governing tenures of public executives. It was seen as a further move by right-wing politicians to pack RAI with favorable executives. Sr Fuortes, it appears, took the jump to return to his previous job, running either the Rome Opera Theater or San Carlo Opera Theater. This is Italy: opera is a very big deal. (See more about media in Italy here)
“I have been working in the public administration for decades and I have always acted in the interests of the institutions I have led, favoring the general benefit of the community over partisan conveniences,” he said in a statement (May 8). “I therefore acknowledge that there are no longer the conditions to continue my job.” He had been appointed RAI chief executive in 2021 by then Prime Minister Mario Draghi. (See more about public broadcasting here)
Earlier this year he complained of a “less than constructive attitude” within the RAI Board of Directors. This, he said, “threatens in fact to paralyze (RAI), not making it able to respond to the obligations and deadlines of corporate programming with the risk of making it impossible to face the great challenges of Rai's future. In the coming weeks, the Board of Directors must decide on the programs for the new schedules and it is a fact that there are no longer the conditions to continue the editorial renewal project that we undertook in 2021.” The next RAI chief executive is widely expected to be Roberto Sergio, current director of RAI Radio, a noted conspiracy theorist who has praised Russian Federation president Vladimir V. Putin. Naturally, dozens if not hundreds of positions within RAI will change quickly.
Critical information flow is easily disrupted and blocked from those who need it most. Government censors are very adept at keeping critical news and information away. Helsingin Sanomat, Finland’s leading daily, has taken a special approach.
Finland has a very long border with the Russian Federation, which has kept nearly all news about its war in Ukraine from its citizens. Outside newspapers are no longer distributed. Broadcast channels are blocked, with the exception of a few shortwave stations. Online news services from the outside simply unavailable. Helsingin Sanomat (HS) looked to the realm of the possible. Where there’s the will, there’s a way. (See more about media in Finland here)
Online game sites remain freely available in Russia, war games being popular among young men. HS commissioned designers who work with game portal Counter Strike to “build” a special room, down a figurative flight of stairs, in which gamers find rather blunt and stark details of the horrors, much of it from HS war correspondents. Information about Russian atrocities and losses are displayed with Russian and English titles. There is a Russian language audio track. (See more about censorship here)
The special map within Counter Strike: Global Offensive - de_voyna, meaning war, a term forbidden in Russia - was introduced to coincide with World Press Freedom Day (May 3). The special room looks just like a newsroom. “The secret room built into the game is meant to force Russian gamers to face what’s really going on in the war in Ukraine,” said HS chief editor Antero Mukka in a statement from publisher Sanoma (May 3). "It shows that any attempt to prevent the flow of information and to mislead the public is doomed to failure in our modern world,” he added. Game analytics provider SteamDB reported 1.8 million concurrent users over this past weekend, noted Eurogamer (May 7), a record for Counter Strike.
Leaders of national media regulators are rarely quoted and more rarely remembered. More often than not political appointees, they go to the office, hold meetings and speak to lobbyists. Any policy making decisions are left to specialists and civil servants. In this post-modern populist era, political operatives and dictators make all the decisions.
Newton N. Minow was chairperson of the US regulator Federal Communications Commission (FCC) between 1961 and 1963, appointed by US President John F. Kennedy. During his term two major regulatory measures were adopted. The All-Channel Receiver Act (1961) mandated UHF television reception with all TV receivers sold in the US. The increase in the number of TV channels available led to development of educational TV broadcasting, the nascence of public TV. He was also instrumental in enabling the launch of communications satellites, at the time called IntelSat. Mr. Minow passed away this past week (May 6) at age 97.
His legacy within broadcasting was fixed by his oft-quoted speech to the US National Broadcasters Association (NAB) convention in Chicago, Illinois delivered May 9, 1961. It was his first major speech. In part, he said: “When television is good, nothing—not the theater, not the magazines or newspapers—nothing is better. But when television is bad, nothing is worse. I invite each of you to sit down in front of your television set when your station goes on the air and stay there for a day without a book, without a magazine, without a newspaper, without a profit and loss sheet or a rating book to distract you. Keep your eyes glued to that set until the station signs off. I can assure you that what you will observe is a vast wasteland.” (See more about television here)
After his FCC tenure, Mr. Minow joined international law firm Sidley Austin LLP and became a managing partner. During that time he became a board of governors member and later chairperson of the Public Broadcasting Service. He was also president of Carnegie Corporation, original financial supporter of public TV children’s program Sesame Street.
“My daughters threaten to engrave on my tombstone: ON TO A VASTER WASTELAND,” he wrote in The Atlantic (April 2011). “But those were not the two words I intended to be remembered. The two words I wanted to endure were public interest.”
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