Alida Juliani
Madrid (EFE) challenge for the profession.
The King of Spain, Felipe VI, presented the awards to those distinguished with these awards, from Mexico, Colombia and Spain, whose work, said the Spanish monarch in his speech at the event, “constitutes an example of professionalism and good narratives that helps us sustain our democracies.”
He asked journalists and journalists “not to stop analyzing and telling what happens to us, it is a laudable and necessary service to society,” he said.
The delivery ceremony was special, since these prizes, awarded annually by the EFE Agency and the Spanish Agency for International Development Cooperation (Aecid), with the support of the Spanish Crown, and endowed with 10,000 euros, which places them At the Pulitzer level, they celebrate their 40th anniversary this year.
Investigative, social, complaint and independent journalism
The winners received the bronze statuette by the sculptor Joaquín Vaqueros from the hand of the Spanish monarch.
In the six convened categories, the authors of the report “Fentanyl: future for drug traffickers, death for humanity”, published in the Mexican media N+, received the Narrative Journalism award.
In the category of International Cooperation and Humanitarian Action, the Spanish journalist Jesús Martínez and the photographer Marc Javierre-Kohan, from the Spanish media Frontera Digital, did it for the work “J’accuse! The looting of Rosario’s house”.
The Spanish public corporation RTVE received the Environmental Journalism Award for the report “Living Soils”, broadcast by Televisión Española on June 16 and directed by Eduardo Laplaza García (director), Marisol Soto (script) and Francesc Tomas (direction), of the environmental program “The green beetle”.
The Mexican Víctor Núñez Jaime received the Cultural Journalism Award for “The Second Exile of Sergio Ramírez”, an extensive profile of the Nicaraguan writer published by the Mexican newspaper “Milenio”.
For his part, Colombian Manuel Salvador Saldarriaga received the award in the Photography Journalism category with “Risking your life crossing the Darién Gap,” a photographic series published in El Colombiano of Medellín.
This is the fourth King of Spain Award for Saldarriaga, three in the Photography category and one in the Multimedia category, and this time he achieves it with his work for this newspaper for images of Haitians crossing this jungle of Colombia on the border with Panama during his route in search of reaching the United States.
Finally, the representatives of the Colombian independent digital media Cuestión Pública collected the Journalism Award for the Ibero-American Media.
good journalism
The president of the EFE Agency, Gabriela Cañas, also spoke at the event, who defended the “good journalism” represented in the works distinguished with the King of Spain International Awards, against the new way of consuming news, transformed by digitization, into the one that prevails social networks and large platforms.
“Digitalization has transformed the way of consuming news. The business model of the media industry has collapsed and people, not just young people, opt for social networks and large platforms to get information. On too many occasions, more attention is paid to the influencer or celebrity than to the work carried out by journalists”, explained the president of EFE.
The Spanish Foreign Minister, José Manuel Albares, also spoke, denouncing the “increase in violence against journalists and communicators”, as well as the “lack of media plurality in many countries” of the world.
Other personalities from Spanish politics also attended the awards ceremony, such as the President of the Congress, Meritxell Batet, the Minister of the Presidency, Felix Bolaños, or the Secretary of State for Latin America and the Caribbean and Spanish in the World, Juan Fernandez Wheat.
Ambassadors from different countries also attended, such as Argentina, Brazil, Uruguay, Ecuador or India, among others.