The two journalists Maria Ressa from the Philippines and Dmitrij Muratow from Russia will receive the Nobel Peace Prize this year. The Norwegian Nobel Committee announced on Friday. The chairman of the committee, Berit Reiss-Andersen, said at the announcement in Oslo that they received the award for their efforts to uphold freedom of expression, which is a prerequisite for democracy and lasting peace. Her award is intended to underline the importance of protecting freedom of expression and freedom of the press for democracy and peace.
"It is ironic that we have more press and more information in today's world than the world has ever seen," said Reiss-Andersen. "At the same time, we see the abuse and manipulation of the free press and public discourse, for example in the case of fake news." The Nobel Prize will not solve the problems journalists and freedom of expression are confronted with. "But we hope that it sheds light on the importance of journalists' work and how dangerous it is to exercise freedom of expression - not just in places currently experiencing war and conflict, but really everywhere in the world."
The multiple award-winning 58-year-old Filipino Ressa is editor-in-chief of the online news portal Rappler.
She is known as a sharp critic of the Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte.
Last year she was sentenced to imprisonment in a libel trial.
The journalist appealed and is on bail.
Ressa, who had been arrested repeatedly over the past few years, dismissed the allegations as politically motivated.
The US news magazine “Time” honored her in 2018 together with other journalists as “Person of the Year”.
Kremlin critic excellent
The Russian Dmitry Muratov is editor-in-chief of the Kremlin-critical newspaper "Novaya Gazeta". Muratov, who had already participated in elections as a member of the opposition to the liberal Yabloko party, had recently shown solidarity with the democracy movement in Belarus. In the past, he also publicly criticized the Kremlin's policy on the Black Sea peninsula of Crimea, which was annexed by Russia in 2014. He wants to use the cash bonus for the development of suppressed journalism in his country. "We will try to help people who are now classified as agents who are now being harassed and driven out of the country," said the fifty-nine year old on Friday the independent portal Meduza, which is also classified as a "foreign agent". The designation is internationally criticized as a stigma,because it also undermines freedom of the press and freedom of expression in Russia.
Last year, the Nobel Peace Prize went to the United Nations World Food Program, which was honored, among other things, for its fight against hunger in the world.
As in the previous year, the Nobel Prizes are endowed with ten million Swedish kronor (around 980,000 euros) per category.
The winners in the categories medicine, physics, chemistry and literature had already been announced earlier this week.
Among them were two Germans, the meteorologist Klaus Hasselmann and the chemist Benjamin List.
Next Monday, the Nobel Prize for Economics will follow, which is the only one of the prizes that does not go back to the testament of the dynamite inventor and prize donor Alfred Nobel (1833-1896).
The Nobel Peace Prize is the only Nobel Prize awarded not in Stockholm but in Oslo and is considered the most prestigious political award in the world.
329 candidates - 234 personalities and 95 organizations - have been nominated this time.
This is the third largest number of nominees ever.
The names of the nominees are traditionally kept secret for 50 years.
Former Chancellor Willy Brandt, the last German prize winner, was honored in 1971 for his Ostpolitik, which contributed to the relaxation of the Cold War.