Best Of RFE/RL: September
Each month RFE/RL’s Editorial Board celebrates the greatest journalistic achievements in breaking news coverage, reporting, features, videos, and photography within its 25 Language Services. Below are the winners for September, 2018.
News And Current Affairs
Escape From Hell, But At Your Own Expense
Reports from RFE/RL’s Crimea Realities team on the excessive release of toxic substances in the city of Armyansk led to officials acknowledging the ecological disaster, which resulted in an evacuation of children from the area. RFE/RL’s reporting had a major impact on the community and was picked up by top media outlets in Kyiv.
Social Content
“No Other Choice”
RFE/RL’s Turkmenistan Service’s video on a 70-year-old man offering payment to marry a 16-year-old ethnic Turkmen girl in Afghanistan shows an appalling situation for the families of girls in the Turkmen community of Afghanistan. It has attracted hundreds of thousands of views on RFE/RL’s Turkmen and Current Time channels.
Feature Long
Medvedchuk’s Wife And Her Energy Business In Russia
Following the latest investigation of RFE/RL’s Ukrainian Service’s Schemes team, pro-Kremlin Ukrainian politician Viktor Medvedchuk publicly confirmed that he receives resources and financial support from the authorities in Russia. This story had more than 157,000 views on YouTube, and more than 7,000 shares from the site alone.
Feature Short
Perpetual Protest
Reporting for RFE/RL’s Russian Service, filmmaker Mumin Shakirov provided a contextually rich feature on a new format of public protests in Russia: a carnival titled Бессрочка or Timeless. His video shows the new youthful enthusiasm and the contrasting tactics of police brutality.
Text/Audio
What Is Tatarstan’s Police Hiding?
Tatar-Bashkir Service journalist Regina Khisamova’s report on police torture cases in Tatarstan, which are being hidden in cooperation with medical experts, was widely shared by Russian media outlets such as Meduza, Newsru.com, Mediazona, Dozhd TV, and Kasparov.ru. Her investigation helped bring the case to the European Court of Human Rights.
Special Project
Unbroken
RFE/RL’s Uzbek Service’s documentary series Unbroken profiling prominent journalists, writers and rights defenders, who had been jailed from 10 to 21 years under president Islam Karimov for opposing his iron-fisted rule, were viewed over one million times on multiple platforms.