Swiss Press Awards top prize goes to Le Temps journalists

According to the foundation, their research revealed that a law of silence about lewdness, assaults and abuse of power prevailed at the French-speaking Swiss television station RTS. "The jury praised the work of the three journalists from the Swiss Federal Parliament. Le Temps. They succeeded, among other things with courage, tact and teamwork, in breaking the law of silence at a public media company in Switzerland, the statement continued.

Exposure of grievances

For years, the management of the French-speaking Swiss television station RTS had apparently allowed a cloak of silence to spread over cases of mostly sexual harassment, assaultive behavior or abuse of power. The journalists Revello, Busslinger and Héron exposed these abuses and therefore rightly deserved the title "Journalist of the Year," the jury said in justifying its decision.

The second main prize and thus the title of "Photographer of the Year" was awarded to Sarah Carp. This is the first time in the thirty-year history of the award that a woman has received this honor. She was honored for her work "Parenthèse - Rester à la maison" at Le Matin Dimanche because it was a particularly impressive portrayal of moments during the coronavirus pandemic.

Second prize in the Print category went to Christoph Lenz of The magazine for his article "The climate disgrace of Visp". In the article, he discussed the fact that climate-damaging nitrous oxide escapes as a waste product from a vitamin factory belonging to the Lonza chemicals group in Visp. And third place in the print category went to Tugba Ayaz. She also wrote for The magazine the article "The Switzerland of Others," in which she got to the bottom of a brawl among young people in the Tivoli shopping center.

Face recognition experiment

Valentin Felber and Sylke Gruhnwald won first prize in the online category for their work "Bangladesh: Left in the lurch" on Reflekt.ch. They addressed how the coronavirus crisis revealed that the South Asian country of Bangladesh is heavily dependent on the global textile industry. Andrea Arezina, Marie-José Kolly and Thomas Preusse also won second prize for "Schwangerschaftsabbruch: Sag, wie hast du's mit der Frist?" on Republik.ch. The article addresses the question of what should be given greater weight - the protection of unborn life or a woman's right to self-determination over her body.

And Timo Grossenbacher and Felix Michel took third place in the online category with "It's so easy to build a surveillance machine" on Srf.ch. The journalists demonstrated with an experiment that facial recognition on the Internet - i.e. the assignment of an identity to a person's image - works.

In the audio category, Simon Meyer, Katharina Bracher and This Wachter won with the NZZ on Sunday-podcast "Missing: Ursula Koch". The first prize for local journalism went to Julian Witschi, Catherine Boss and Marius Aschwanden for "Umweltskandal Blausee" in the Bernese Newspaper.

145,000 Swiss francs in prize money

The Fondation Reinhardt von Graffenried awards were presented Wednesday evening in Bern per category - print, online, audio and video, local journalism and photography. This year, they are endowed with a total of 145,000 Swiss francs, as Michael von Graffenried of Swiss Press Awards told the Keystone-SDA news agency on Wednesday.

Each of the winners was presented with a diamond in recognition of their work. The two main winners also received CHF 25,000 each, and the winners of the online, audio, video and local journalism categories each received CHF 15,000. The Fondation Reinhardt von Graffenried, which is independent of publishing houses, was founded with the aim of promoting Swiss journalism. (SDA)