Weekly Digest: Awards in Ukraine, Major Changes at BBC

Two weeks ago, prominent Palestinian-American journalist Shireen Abu Akleh was killed while covering clashes between the Israeli military and Palestinian gunmen in the West Bank. This week, more evidence appeared that the Israli military might be directly responsible for Abu Akleh’s death.

As the CNN’s investigation concludes, “videos obtained by CNN, corroborated by testimony from eight eyewitnesses, an audio forensic analyst and an explosive weapons expert, suggest that Abu Akleh was shot dead in a targeted attack by Israeli forces.”

Israeli authorities deny the country’s military deliberately targeting the journalist, and the Israeli government is conducting an investigation into the attack. 

This week, winners of the Gongadze Award – one of the most prestigious journalism awards in Ukraine – were revealed. The prize went to journalists Mstyslav Chernov and Yevhen Maloletka, who gained prominence in March thanks to their world-renowned reporting from besieged Mariupol.

Chernov and Maloletka were the only international journalists remaining in Mariupol in early March. One of the most prominent pieces of reporting they did was covering a Russian attack on the maternity hospital in Mariupol. They left the city in mid-March.

The list of finalists for the 2022 Gongadze Award includes Serhiy Sydorenko, editor of media outlet European Pravda, and Tetyana Troshchynska, editor-in-chief of public broadcaster Suspilne Radio.

Georgiy Gongadze was a prominent Ukrainian investigative journalist who co-founded Ukrayinska Pravda, a major online news outlet. He was assassinated in 2000 because of his investigations into high-level corruption, marking the most prominent journalist killing in the history of independent Ukraine. The award in his name was founded in 2019.

The BBC announced a slew of closures this week, moving some of its services to online-only – namely, CBBC, BBC Four and Radio 4 Extra. BBC News channel will be merged with BBC World; a number of World Service languages will be shifted to be digital only. The changes will erase about 1,000 jobs in the coming years. 

In recent years the organisation has faced financial issues amid the uncertainty over the future of its funding model. Notably, earlier this year the government announced it would freeze the licence fee – an annual tax paid by British citizens and a major source of funding for the British Broadcasting Corporation; the fee would not be increased before 2024, contrary to BBC’s requests. The cuts announced this week are the results of this policy, as well as the organisation’s shift into digital (the company’s announcement calls the changes a “plan to deliver a digital first BBC”). 

At the same time, the changes will likely be met with opposition from the BBC’s loyal audience and will have negative effects, The Guardian highlights. As the newspaper notes, “several million Britons – often older and poorer people – do not have access to the internet, while many more do not have the home broadband required to access streaming services.” Thus, they could be hit most by the cuts to traditional radio and television services. 

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