Eurozine partner Index on Censorship has won the prize for best periodical in the 17th Amnesty International UK Media Awards. The prize was given for a series of articles from the recent issue "How Free is the Russian Media?".

Presenting the award to Index editor Jo Glanville, Private Eye editor Ian Hislop said that the articles, by Fatima Tlisova, Sergei Bachinin and Alexei Simonov, represented "brave, impassioned journalism as stunning defences of principle".

"Crime without punishment": Alexei Simonov, director of the Glasnost Defense Foundation, tells how journalists' lives are of little value in Russia, where deaths go uninvestigated and murderers are rarely brought to account.

"Nothing personal": Journalist Fatima Tlisova was brutally beaten for her uncompromising journalism on the North Caucasus. Here she recounts the tactics used to intimidate her.

"Under pressure": Sergei Bachinin, editor of Vyatsky Nablyudatel', describes how the regional press in Russia has to fight to maintain its independence.

Also in the issue: Maria Eismont writes that just as Russia's economic growth has obviated talk of democracy, the media's financial successes leave no place for ethical debate.

Read Eurozine's review of the issue.

Published 2008-06-19