OSF journalism award goes to documentarist Tereza Reková and web server iRozhlas
For the twelfth time, the Open Society Fund has honoured Czech journalists and journalistic teams with the Journalism Awards. Tereza Reková received an award for her documentary series To je pravda, napsala, (It’s True, She Wrote), which she prepared for Czech Radio’s station Dvojka, while the iRozhlas.cz team at Czech Radio won the award for innovative online journalism.
Tereza Reková's docuseries about manipulations, disinformation, hoaxes and conspiracy theories won the best reportage in the audiovisual journalism category. The expert jury appreciated the originality of how the author presented dangerous contemporary phenomena that threaten and divide our society to a specific part of the radio audience.
You can listen to the whole documentary series on the Dvojka website, or on the audio portal mujRozhlas.cz
The award for innovative online journalism goes to iRozhlas
Czech Radio’s news server iRozhlas.cz also won a prize. The award for innovative online journalism went to the data team of Jan Boček, Kristína Zákopčanová, Jan Vlček, Petr Kočí and Veronyka Jelinek for the article “From plague to covid: unique data on how the causes of death of the Czech people have changed from the times of the Austrian-Hungarian Empire to today.”
“The jury particularly appreciates the fact that the Czech Radio team presented the data in a visually engaging and interactive form, thus making it accessible to a wider audience – inviting them to discover for themselves the stories behind the data. The jury also recognized the added value of this project in the extremely high quality of data processing and contextualizing,” reads the jury's justification.
"A year and a half ago, there was quite an intense debate about what death with and by covid means. It is not easy to clearly separate the two categories, which was convenient for those who questioned the impact of the disease. Therefore, we used extensive data on causes of death in the Czech territory between 1919 and 2018 to show how cause of death is actually determined. At the same time, we illustrated the stories of the 20th century: what plagued the Czechs during the First Republic, during the war, under communism, and today. Among other things, this work can be useful for teachers in primary or secondary schools," explains Jan Boček.
The journalism prize is awarded by the Open Society Fund. Its mission is to nurture democracy in the Czech Republic, to support a vibrant civil society, and to develop a state where everyone has equal opportunities and participates in their environment. For thirty years, the Fund has been opening up sensitive and neglected topics and, together with donors, looking for pioneers who will develop such topics further.