Europe's 2015 migration crisis saw arrivals via the Mediterranean peak at more than one million. The numbers may have dropped to 41,000 this year, according to the United Nations, but the mass movement of people has become the biggest story of our time, even swaying elections, including in France, Germany, Austria and Italy.
We are now witnessing the highest levels of migration on record. With that has come a troubling tendency for journalists to produce stories that indulge in what Aidan White, president of the Ethical Journalism Network, describes as victim journalism - focusing on the ordeal of migration and the misery of the process, rather than identifying solutions, holding those responsible to account and signposting positive outcomes.
Well-written, powerful and emotional testimony from victims is not enough for journalism to tell stories effectively and ethically. Revealing the horrors of the crisis is important. But when we do so, we should think about what we can do to make a difference, White says.
We have acknowledged the best, and often bravest, in migration coverage from across the spectrum.
David Quin, director of development, Thomson Foundation
Rising to the challenge Many of the submissions to the second OPEN Media Hub-supported Migration Media Award, do rise to this challenge. The best of which have been announced at an event in Tunis this September.
The purpose of the EU-funded journalism competition is to recognise excellence, relevance and newsworthiness of journalistic pieces dealing with migration in all its aspects in the Euro-Mediterranean region.
In order to win the award, eligible entries need to consist of an already published story and a proposal for winning an EU-funded contract to produce new content covering migration.
For the last two years we have acknowledged the best, and often bravest, in migration coverage from across the spectrum. Journalists covering not just crisis but context, human faces behind statistics, challenges to communities , said David Quin, director of development at Thomson Foundation, the leading implementer of the OPEN Media Hub.
"What I saw was the resilience and the dignity of these people
Jaime Alekos, first prize winner In the six categories of video, print, online, photo, multimedia or radio in the English, French or Arabic languages, the winning entries feature fact-based and impartial reporting on migration, its many challenges and opportunities.
Forty-one journalists from 18 countries were rewarded for journalistic excellence in the way they reported on migration. All winning entries are available here.
#MigrationMedia #OPENMediaHub
Above image: Preethi Nallus story for Al Jazeera, Europes Outsourced Refugees
First prize winners
-- Play
-- --
Migration Media Award 2018 The OPEN Media Hub-supported Migration Media Award
-- Play
-- --
Alessandro Puglia, Italy The Barefoot Nun Amongst the Nigerian Prostitutes
-- Play
-- --
Anne Ilcinkas, France-Lebanon Two Syrian Families in the Land of One Hundred Valleys: The Story of a New Departure
-- Play
-- --
Arafat Duhib, Tunisia Rest of the Story
-- Play
-- --
C cile Debarge, France A Death Certificate Leads to a New Life
-- Play
-- --
Daniel Howden, UK Refugees Deeply
-- Play
-- --
Ibrahim Mustafa, Egypt Europe is not Paradise
-- Play
-- --
Jaime Alekos, Spain Welcome to Refugee Purgatory
-- Play
-- --
Le la Beratto, Algeria Migrants Become Part of the Black-Market Economy
-- Play
-- --
Preethi Nallu, India Europe's Outsourced Refugees
-- Play
-- --
Abdellatif Salhi, Algeria African Workers in Algeria
-- Play
-- --
Sally Hayden and Ziad Algahandour, Ireland & Syria The Road Back to Damascus
Sara Loane Communications Manager
About: Sara is responsible for the creation and delivery of engaging and effective messages, campaigns, publications and print and digital design concepts that support and promote the foundation.
We get around. Explore our project map
More from Thomson
12/11/2019
What's the best to way deal with fake news? Should TV and radio give equal airtime to every candidate in a presidential election? And how can we be sure jou...
06/11/2019
An ambitious proposal to ensure justice for survivors of sexual abuse in Nigeria is the winner of the 2019 Commonwealth Digital Challenge, a competition designe...
11/10/2019
There are some particularly powerful examples of how investigative journalism prompted national debate, remarks Thomson Foundation chief executive, Nigel Baker....
21/09/2019
From sword-wielding gangs in Sri Lanka inspired by the movies and the residents of Assam declared stateless in India, to the mysterious death of a Kashmiri in c...
24/08/2019
Which way would you hold the phone if you were filming for TV? ask trainers, Kate Middleton and Feras Saleh.
I have never seen a TV came a reply.
It was th...
15/08/2019
Step inside this year's Thomson Foundation summer course in London where we influence international journalists to mastermind innovation, imagination and mo...
14/08/2019
An eye-opening experience which has given him the courage and zeal to pursue the stories that really matter is how one journalist described winning the Young Jo...
19/07/2019
A new Thomson Foundation competition, the Journalism Now Team Challenge, has been won by a team of four reporters spread across four countries: Jordan, Libya, M...
11/07/2019
Concern over the growing threat to the safety of journalists is at the heart of an international campaign to defend media freedom.
Led by the UK and Canadian ...
11/06/2019
One of Thomson Foundation's longest-serving trustees has received a knighthood for his humanitarian work in the birthday honours of Britain's Queen Eliz...
09/05/2019
Now in its fifth year, the Thomson Foundation mobile journalism ( mojo') competition, in partnership with Mojofest, has allowed journalists from around the ...
09/05/2019
Now in its fifth year, the Thomson Foundation mobile journalism ( mojo') competition, in partnership with Mojofest, has allowed journalists from around the ...
15/04/2019
Thomson Foundation announces an exceptional judging panel for the Commonwealth Digital Challenge 2019: Media Tech Accelerator.
The three judges are Kate Adams...
11/04/2019
After decades of peace, tensions have flared and fighting has broken out in the Sultanate of Qumar. International and local news organisations are scrambling ...
09/04/2019
Every summer, organisations around the world send us their best journalists to participate in the Thomson Foundation summer course.
Based at our London headqua...
02/04/2019
The world is changing, and technology is taking the lead. Today, everything is going digital, which means traditional media outlets are having to jump online to...
15/03/2019
Senior figures from scores of countries and international organisations gathered for a three-day European Union-hosted conference on Syria, in which journalists...
15/03/2019
Thomson Foundation has announced the dates for its mobile multimedia journalism programme 2019. This intensive five-week course in London brings together digita...
14/03/2019
To mark International Womens Day, we salute the seven female journalists featured in our latest review for their brave reporting, often in regions that are war-...
08/03/2019
To mark International Womens Day, we salute the seven female journalists featured in our latest review for their brave reporting, often in regions that are war-...
02/03/2019
A campaigner for conflict prevention in northern Kenya has won a scholarship to study the topic at the University of London - partly thanks to his experience in...
28/02/2019
Thomson Foundation has long had a commitment to help strengthen quality journalism in the Western Balkans, and this will continue in 2019 with an expanded progr...
28/02/2019
In 2017, young Syrian filmmaker Waad Al Kateab received a special award from the Thomson Foundation to recognise her outstanding coverage of the suffering in th...
28/02/2019
The growing percentage of journalists and communicators having affordable access to smartphones and the internet means they no longer have to wait for classroom...
26/02/2019
Regional media in Belarus are being helped to find a more modern voice - to deal with the complex challenges presented by their belated entry to the Internet Ag...
26/02/2019
Honduran journalist Wendy Funes received special recognition at the Index Freedom of Expression Awards in 2018 for her hard-hitting investigative journalism.
...
24/01/2019
Three journalists trained by Thomson Foundation have banded together in efforts to ensure coverage of Sudan's deadly uprising is fair, accurate and verifiab...
23/01/2019
One of the first rules for reporters should be Don't Make Predictions'. It is popular at the start of a new year for journalists to write about the yea...
17/01/2019
This time last year I said 2018 was going to be the year of the podcast and it certainly seems to have been for some us at least. Nearly 6 million adults in the...
14/01/2019
One of the first rules for reporters should be Don't Make Predictions'. It is popular at the start of a new year for journalists to write about the yea...
11/01/2019
A summary of an article by mobile journalism expert Wytse Wellinga produced for our Journalism Now e-learning platform on the best of 2018 and the year ahead.
...
08/01/2019
The future regulation of the world's five most popular and best performing tech companies - Facebook, Apple, Amazon, Netflix and Google - was top of the age...
04/01/2019
One person who should be glad to see the back of 2018 is Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg.
It's fair to say that last year was a catalogue of disasters for...
03/01/2019
Regional media in Belarus are being helped to find a more modern voice - to deal with the complex challenges presented by their belated entry to the Internet Ag...
02/01/2019
The corner of London that has become home to Wikileaks founder Julian Assange, the shame attached to drying your underwear in public in India and the lessons fo...
27/11/2018
Alisa Kustikova, an investigative reporter from Russia, has won the 2018 Thomson Foundation Young Journalist Award.
The prize, part of the UK Foreign Press Ass...
23/11/2018
Multi-award winning photographer, Marco Panzetti, has invested significant periods of time making images that matter. His work on migration was exhibited in Tun...
19/11/2018
Democracy rests on a vibrant, independent and truthful media and it's important that communities across the world are served by such a media, which is why, ...
31/10/2018
A Yemeni photojournalist, trained by Thomson Foundation, produced work that even experienced photographers from the Middle East had not seen before. An exhibiti...
22/10/2018
Podcasts are having a moment. The beauty is that anyone with a microphone and editing software can tell stories and share their opinions. There are even apps to...
20/10/2018
Initiatives such as UNICEF Gen2030, which aims to get every young person into quality education, training or employment by 2030, are helping to fill the gulfs o...
08/10/2018
Three journalists from Pakistan - and for the first time - Vietnam and Russia, are the finalists for the 2018 Thomson Foundation Young Journalist Award.
The p...
06/10/2018
When you stand up for the dignity of human beings, you are immediately perceived as politicised, said Francesco Rocca, president of the International Red Cross ...
04/10/2018
When you stand up for the dignity of human beings, you are immediately perceived as politicised, said Francesco Rocca, president of the International Red Cross ...
27/09/2018
Europe's 2015 migration crisis saw arrivals via the Mediterranean peak at more than one million. The numbers may have dropped to 41,000 this year, according...
14/09/2018
Child brides of China sold for less than the price of a buffalo , once-ostracised transgender candidates now running for Pakistans parliament, Ghanian youths a...
08/08/2018
Gareth Price, a former director of the Thomson Foundation and a staunch advocate of public service broadcasting, has died aged 78.
He led the foundation for 15...
24/07/2018
Meehika Barua, winner of our Journalism Now Scholar competition, tells us why she parked the architecture career to pursue journalism, why she was keen to enrol...
16/07/2018
Young reporters from across the world are invited to submit their work to the Thomson Foundation to enter the competition for the sixth Young Journalist' A...
12/07/2018
Chewing away furiously at a green wad the size of a golfball is a daily male ritual on the grimy pavements in Yemen as well as in smart cafes equipped with comf...
Europe's 2015 migration crisis saw arrivals via the Mediterranean peak at more than one million. The numbers may have dropped to 41,000 this year, according to the United Nations, but the mass movement of people has become the biggest story of our time, even swaying elections, including in France, Germany, Austria and Italy.
