FCCJ Freedom of the Press

FCCJ Freedom of the Press Award Ceremony 2023, July 21, 2023

The FCCJ honored its 2023 Freedom of the Press winners in a hybrid ceremony July 21st with participants accepting awards in person and online in locations as diverse as the United Kingdom, Okinawa, China, and Palestine. “Freedom of the press is under assault as never before. Not only in autocracies like China and Russia but also in democracies, including India, the United States and Japan,” outgoing president Peter Elstrom said in his opening remarks. Journalists in Japan are relatively free, he added. But the media is often contained through intense cultural pressures and libel laws very favorable to the plaintiffs. Winning the Freedom of the Press Japan Award were Megumi Inman and Mobeem Azhar, who produced the BBC documentary, ‘Predator’, on Japanese talent manager Johnny Kitagawa. The film pushed the long history of Kitagawa’s abuse of children back into the headlines, forcing the Japanese media to reflect on their own negligence in covering the story, allegedly because of their connections to Johnny & Associates. One of the few Japanese media publications that pursue the Johnny’s abuse scandal was another winner, the weekly magazine Shukan Bunshun. Daisuke Takahashi, representing the magazine, said the mainstream Japanese media’s decades of silence on the issue discouraged victims from coming forward and allowed the abuse to continue. Abuse by an organization close to powerful figures of a different kind occurred with the Unification Church, officially known as the Family Federation for World Peace and Unification. But the code of silence ended in July 2022 with the assassination of former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe. For analysis, many turned to freelance journalist Eito Suzuki, who had spent years, almost alone among Japanese journalists, investigating the church. For those efforts, he was awarded the Honorable Mention Japan prize. “The Japanese media did not monitor the relationship between the church and politicians. It was only with Abe’s shooting that they finally began disclosing these connections,” he said. For the Freedom of the Press Asia Award, the winner was the late Palestinian journalist Shireen Abu Akleh of Al Jazeera, who was shot and killed by what appeared to be sniper fire on May 11th, 2022. She was covering clashes between the Israeli army and protestors in the West Bank city of Jenin. Al Jazeera said she was wearing a helmet and vest clearly marked "press,” yet was shot "in cold blood" by a sniper. “Shireen was a household name everywhere in the Palestine territories and the Arab world. Everyone knew her,” said Walid Al-Omari, Al Jazeera Palestine Bureau Chief, in accepting the award on her behalf. The Honorable Mention Asia Award went to the FCCJ’s sister organization in China, the Foreign Correspondents’ Club of China. Koichi Yonemura, a Japanese journalist from the Mainichi Shimbun who was an FCCC member until returning to Tokyo earlier this year, accepted the award on their behalf. “It’s a really sensitive time now. We can’t reveal the names of current FCCC board members or their affiliations,” Yonemura said. Finally, FCCJ’s Lifetime Achievement Award went to broadcast journalist veteran Hisayo Saika, known for her film on attempts by the Japanese right to politicize high-school education. “I’m really worried that this political intervention will change the shape of this country,” she said. The FCCJ's awards for Japan and overseas-based foreign journalists are an integral part of the club’s mission to foster freedom of the press.

Freedom of the Press Award Winners 2022

April 28, 2022

The Foreign Correspondents' Club of Japan named the winners of its Freedom of the Press Awards 2022 at a ceremony on April 26. The Board selected the journalists of Hong Kong as a group as the winners in Asia category, and Thomas Ash, a Tokyo-based American documentary director, as the recipient of the Japan award.

Russian independent news outlet Novaya Gazeta and Japanese TV reporter and broadcaster Shigenori Kanehira received the Honorable Mention awards in Asia and Japan categories, respectively, while the Japanese veteran political journalist Soichiro Tahara received a Freedom of the Press Lifetime Achievement award.

The awards recognize outstanding journalists and media organizations that have made important contributions to upholding the values of a free press in the region, often under extreme pressure, including by pursuing coverage of taboo subjects and even risking their lives while doing so.

"The Freedom of the Press Award ... is actually a landmark in our activities and has been since FCCJ was launched in 1945," said FCCJ President Suvendrini Kakuchi. Reminding everyone that Japan's postwar constitution guaranteed complete press freedom and freedom of expression, she noted: "Of course, the interpretation of democracy is what our awards single out."
Introducing Hong Kong journalists as the winner in this year's category, FCCJ Second Vice-President and co-chair of the freedom of the press committee Ilgin Yorulmaz mentioned the continuous deterioration of press freedom in Hong Kong under the 2020 National Security Law "used as pretext to shut down Apple Daily, the territory's largest Chinese- language opposition newspaper, and the independent media outlet Stand News, among others, as well as to prosecute dozens of journalists and press freedom fighters."
A day earlier, she noted, FCCJ's sister organization, The Foreign Correspondents' Club of Hong Kong, has had to suspend its annual Human Rights Press Awards this year due to concerns it might violate the law.

Ronson Chan, Chairperson of the Hong Kong Journalists' Association, who was himself held for investigation during a police raid on his newspaper's offices, joined online to accept the award on behalf of the country's press corps.

"Hong Kong journalists are kind, passionate, tenacious, and honest," Chan said. "Although the environment for reporting has changed in Hong Kong, most of us have remained in our positions, trying our best to find the truth for the Hong Kong community."
Ronson quoted the 2021 Nobel Peace Prize winner, Filipina journalist Maria Ressa: "Without facts, you can't have truth. Without truth, you can't have trust. Without trust, we have no shared reality, no democracy, and it becomes impossible to deal with our world's existential problems: climate, coronavirus, the battle for truth."

Thomas Ash won for his documentaries on hard-hitting issues such as Japan's inhumane immigration system and the immense damage it causes to vulnerable immigrants and asylum seekers.
"His latest work, Ushiku, takes viewers deep into the psychological and physical environment inhabited by foreign detainees in one of the largest immigration centers in Japan," said David McNeill, co-chair of the freedom of the press committee.

"The nine people who represent so many thousands of others who are either indefinitely detained, or who are out on provisional release, without the ability to work, without health insurance, and without freedom of movement," Ash said, after dedicating his award to them.
 
Ash added: "Article 21 of the Japanese constitution guarantees freedom of speech, press and all other forms of expression ... If journalists, activists, and filmmakers had had the freedom to record and share the voices of those in etention, conditions inside these internment camps would never have deteriorated to this extent. In other words, if we had true freedom of speech and true freedom of the press, this film would not have needed to be made."
Russian journalist Pavel Kanygin accepted the Asia Honorable Mention award on behalf of the Russian independent outlet Novaya Gazeta. "In these dark times, it is invaluable for us to feel support from our global community and from our Japanese colleagues. It helps us feel that we are not alone," Kanygin said.

"For two previous months, the free people of our country have been living in a nightmare. Those opposing the war became enemies of the state. The expression itself, 'no war', became a crime if spoken loudly in a public setting. It's a crime that will put an individual in prison for three years, but for 15 years if you are a professional journalist."

Shigenori Kanehira, one of the few veteran Japanese journalists who is still regularly out in the field, often putting himself in harm's way, accepted the Honorable Mention award for Japan online from Okinawa after a busy two months that saw him on the Ukraine border and in Belarus.
"When interviewing Belarus President Alexander Lukashenko in Minsk, I had to give private instructions to the TBS news team that arrived from Tokyo: 'Don't smile unnecessarily during the interview'. President Lukashenko never smiled and neither did I. The day before, we interviewed random people on the streets of Minsk. To my surprise, most openly said they were against the war," Kanehira noted.

Finally, Soichiro Takahara, the legendary 87-year-old journalist and the winner of an FCCJ Lifetime Achievement Award, remembered his experience as a fifth-grader at the end of the Second World War.
During the war, his teachers and the media told him Japan was fighting a just war, only to switch after Japan's defeat to say that the U.S. and the UK had been right after all. The experience set him on the path to becoming a journalist.

"I knew that you couldn't just follow what you were being told by your instructors and could not believe what you were being told by the people in power," Tahara said. "I learned you can't trust the mainstream media and that the state will deceive the people. I felt the need to have primary information, primary sources and the need to confirm things myself."

FCCJ announces winners of Freedom of the Press Awards 2021 (July 1)

The Foreign Correspondents' Club of Japan named the winners of its Freedom of the Press Awards 2021 at a ceremony on July 1. The Board selected the journalists of Myanmar as a group as the winners in the Asia-Pacific category, and Saori Ibuki, a reporter with Buzzfeed, is the recipient of the Japan award.

The awards recognize outstanding journalists and media organizations that have made important contributions to upholding the values of a free press in the region, often under extreme pressure, including by pursuing coverage of taboo subjects.
 
"I believe that championing the freedom of the press, including through these awards, is one of the most important things we do," said FCCJ President Isabel Reynolds. "And, sadly, the need for voices to speak up for the freedom of the media is only growing as time passes."
 
The coup in Myanmar in February 2021 was followed by a severe crackdown on media organizations and individual journalists who believe in press freedom and democracy.
Simply for covering pro-democracy protests, journalists and citizen journalists have been shot and injured, beaten, arrested and tortured – yet they have continued to risk their lives to get the story to the outside world.
 
"We want to celebrate the courage of the journalists and citizen journalists of Myanmar - their commitment to getting the story out," said Simon Denyer, co-chair of the FCCJ freedom of the press committee. "Without their determination to risk their own lives we would have little or no idea what is really happening there."

Swe Win, editor-in-chief of Myanmar Now, who was himself jailed for seven years during a previous period of military rule, accepted the award on behalf of the country’s press corps.

"We are very honored on behalf of all our colleagues in Myanmar to be recognized like this," he said. "We have been in great mental and physical disarray since the coup … we are on the verge of becoming another North Korea right in the middle of Southeast Asia."

Although some journalists were released last week, Swe Win said many remain behind bars or in hiding, and called the releases "just part of the usual psychological warfare".

"Our reporter who was released from prison yesterday, she saw a number of individuals who were brutally tortured, who had ribs broken," he said. "There are many young girls, there are many women, many family members of activists. If you cannot find me, you take all the immediate family. This is the worst kind of mistreatment we have ever seen."

The Freedom of the Press Japan Award went to Saori Ibuki, a news reporter at BuzzFeed Japan, for her articles on the human cost of discrimination towards members of Japan's LGBTQ community.

"Ibuki-san approaches her subject with a compassion and determination that all of us can learn from," said Justin McCurry, co-chair of the freedom of the press committee.

In a series of moving articles late last year, Ibuki wrote about the suicide of a 25-year-old student at Hitotsubashi University who had been outed against his will. She followed up with articles about his family's fight for compensation and their desire for Japan to become a place where, in their words, "he would have been able to live".
 
"Discrimination and the violation of the human rights of LGBTQ people have always been visible and tangible to me," Ibuki said, recalling conversations she had with a transgender schoolfriend. "I've met so many people who were hurt but still were hoping to make change and willing to share their stories."

Ibuki added: "Every story has empowered me and given me the drive to keep going, and every story is irreplaceable. But one common thing that everybody said is that they don't want the younger generation to experience the same thing they had to in Japan. Change is necessary, it is urgent, the issue is very critical and we have much more work to do as journalists in Japan."
 
Ilgin Yorulmaz, Club Secretary and Board liaison for the freedom of the press committee, saluted the winners for their courage and resilience. Referring to the undemocratic treatment of journalists in her home country Turkey, Yorulmaz said, "The press exists in every regime in the world. But a free press exists only in democratic regimes. Maltreatment of journalism is meant to suffocate democracy ... What is being left out of breath is not just a journalist’s legitimate reporting but also the public's right to know." 

FCCJ Freedom of the Press Related Statements

Other more recent statements are available on the top page, announcements.