On Friday, Noble Peace Prize 2021 was announced and the prize was won by journalists Maria Ressa and Dmitry Muratov “for their efforts to safeguard freedom of expression”. Ms Ressa is co-founder of Rappler, a digital media company for investigative journalism and Mr Muratov is a co-founder of Russia's leading independent newspaper Novaya Gazeta.
The committee said, “The award of the 2021 Nobel Peace Prize to Maria Ressa and Dmitry Muratov is intended to underscore the importance of protecting and defending these fundamental rights”.
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While announcing the award, the Norwegian Nobel Committee chair Berit Reiss-Andersen said that Ressa used the right of expression to expose abuse of power, violence and growing authoritarianism in her native country, the Philippines. About Dmitry, the committee said that he has for decades defended freedom of speech in Russia under “increasingly challenging conditions.”
After winning such an award, journalists were interviewed by many of the news organisations. In such an interview, to Indian media house NDTV, Ressa told about journalism and journalists around the world. She was quoted saying, “The way that news organisations have lost our gatekeeping powers to technology platforms that have made facts available has rippled through our society. So I think this is recognition of the importance of facts in any shared reality to find solutions and facts, with journalists holding that line. This recognizes not only how difficult it has been to continue doing what we used to do, the job of holding power to account, but at the same time, I think will give us more energy to try to crafts the years ahead.”