Journalists in ICFJ Network Honored for Pandemic Coverage in Five Languages

By: ICFJ | 02/05/2021
The winning reports on COVID-19 were published in Arabic, English, French, Portuguese or Spanish, and by news outlets in 25 countries.

The story contest is part of the ICFJ Global Health Crisis Reporting Forum.

The International Center for Journalists (ICFJ) is honoring more than 50 journalists for COVID-19 reporting in five languages. Their coverage has explained complicated science, revealed pandemic-related corruption and exposed inequalities that have harmed society’s most vulnerable.

Winners are members of the ICFJ Global Health Crisis Reporting Forum, an initiative that connects journalists covering the COVID-19 crisis with experts, resources and each other. Judges selected the winners from 672 entries, and evaluated them based on the rigor of the reporting, use of data and multimedia, and overall storytelling. The winning journalists will receive cash prizes. 

“This reporting contest showed us the breadth of the coverage journalists in the ICFJ network are providing to their communities about the pandemic, a crisis that has touched us all,” said Stella Roque, ICFJ Director of Community Engagement. “Despite misinformation, declining newsroom revenue and even attacks on journalists, reporters worldwide are providing accurate and life-saving information on COVID-19. We congratulate our winners on their excellent coverage.”

First, second and third place winners were selected across three categories for reporting in Arabic, English, French, Portuguese and Spanish. The story categories were science and health; transparency, crime and corruption; and inequality, business and economics. The top winners of the contest in each of the story categories are as follows:

Arabic

Science and Health 

Transparency, Crime and Corruption 

Inequality, Business and Economics

English

Science and Health

  • Priscila Pacheco, Alexandre de Maio, Cecilia Marins, Maskra, Alessandra de Maio, Lola García-Ajofrín, Piotr Kliks, Marcin Suder and Małgorzata Mrozek (cross-border team based in Brazil, Poland and Spain)

  • Favelas vs. COVID-19, published in Outriders

Transparency, Crime and Corruption 

Inequality, Business and Economics

French

Science and Health

Transparency, Crime and Corruption 

Inequality, Business and Economics

Portuguese

Science and Health

Transparency, Crime and Corruption 

Inequality, Business and Economics 

Spanish

Science and Health

Transparency, Crime and Corruption 

  • Errol Caballero (Panama), Susana López (Bolivia), John Machado (Ecuador), Alejandro Melgoza (Mexico), Johanna Osorio (Colombia), Grisha Vera (Venezuela) and all the CONNECTAS community. 

  • Sick Health Systems, a story part of the reporting series #HuellasDeLaPandemia, published in CONNECTAS

Inequality, Business and Economics

  • Delsy Loyola, Anthony Niño de Guzmán, César Campos, Melissa Valdivia, José Penadillo (Peru)

  • Public Education in Crisis, published in El Comercio

Journalists and health experts are invited to become members of the ICFJ Global Health Crisis Reporting Forum in ArabicEnglishFrenchPortuguese and Spanish. You can also subscribe to our newsletters in each of these languages to get updates on Forum events. 

The ICFJ Global Health Crisis Reporting Forum has been generously supported by a series of donors. A special thank you to Google.org, the Facebook Journalism Project, the Scripps Howard Foundation, Dow Jones, the Fortune Family Foundation, and the Hearst Foundation for making the Forum possible.

The second and third prize winners across all Fora are as follows:

Science and Health

2nd Place

3rd Place

Honorable Mention: English - Tobore Ovuorie (Nigeria) for The Nation, How Nigeria’s Ongoing Water Crisis Could Worsen COVID-19

Transparency, Crime and Corruption

2nd Place

3rd Place

Inequality, Business and Economics

2nd Place

3rd Place

Honorable Mentions 

Spanish Forum: Jesús Abad (Spain), for GLOCAL, COVID-19: What Happens When the World Looks the Other Way? 

Latest News

A Reporter's Guide to The History of Tariffs

This piece was produced in collaboration with the Global Business Journalism program at Tsinghua University. The program is a partnership between ICFJ, Tsinghua University and Bloomberg News.

For most of human history, governments have taxed goods crossing their borders. Tariffs — taxes levied on imports or exports — have financed

Hans Staiger Award Winner Investigates Russian Soldiers Secretly Treated in Belarus Hospitals, Including Those Linked to War Crimes

Leaked data from the Russian Defense Ministry shook the story loose. A team of investigators found that during the first 21 months of the invasion of Ukraine, nearly 1,000 Russian soldiers were treated at Belarusian hospitals, including war crime suspects. These “secret patients,” as they were known, directly tied Belarus to Moscow’s war effort.

I Blew Up on TikTok with Journalism — Here's How You Can, Too

l'll never forget the day when an editor at the BBC told a 25-year-old me that journalists shouldn’t be on TikTok because “there’s so much misinformation on there.” By that point, I had maybe 10,000 followers on the platform, possibly more, and the comment stung. My TikToks, which had amplified my journalism as well as my passion for learning new languages, were well researched and I hoped the direct opposite of misinformation.