Photo: European Press Prize

By Wouter De Leeuw, intern at AEJ Belgium

The first Community Event of the European Press Prize was organised on Sunday (9 October) in Athens. It brought together academics, judges, media partners and the whole journalists’ community around it.

The winners of the European Press Prize were revealed in June – including an Investigative Reporting Award for “Investigation is closed”. The piece exposes serious, widespread irregularities and misconduct in how the Finnish police deal with human trafficking cases

The European Press Prize, which has been supporting journalism for ten years, features a collection of stories which help us understand our societies in Europe and beyond.

As they are keen on increasing the community, they organised their Community Event in cooperation with iMEdD, the Incubator for Media Education and Development and one of their members.

One of the winners, Spanish journalist Carlos Hernández-Echevarría, described the value of coming together: “Sometimes our communities are amazing sources of information. Let’s not be afraid of the people, let’s engage with them”.

This event also marked the ending point of iMEdD’s International Journalism Week.

Events like these are important to an organisation like AEJ Belgium, as we aim to encourage and facilitate contacts between journalists and professionals all over Europe. The creation of a growing European community of journalists can only benefit the public debate and help find solutions to the many obstacles that journalists are confronted with every day.