ARI RATH PRIZE FOR CRITICAL JOURNALISM 2022
ARI RATH AWARDS FOR CRITICAL JOURNALISM TO SIMON INOU AND VANESSA SPANBAUER
Exile, flight, expulsion
Greeting: Franz Vranitzky, Former Federal Chancellor, Founding and Honorary President of the Kreisky Forum
Jury's Reasoning: Gertraud Borea d'Olmo, Secretary General of the Kreisky Forum
About Rubina Möhring: Cornelia Krebs, ORF
Award winner: Simon Inou, journalist and media critic from Cameroon
Laudator Fritz Hausjell, Institute for Journalism and Communication Studies, President of Reporters Without Borders
Prize winner Vanessa Spanbauer, freelance journalist and historian from Vienna
Introducer: Clara Akinyosoye, Journalist, ORF.at
The 2022 award ceremony is dedicated to Rubina Möhring, who left us on 2 March 2022.
The „Ari Rath Prize for Critical Journalism“ was established on the basis of a private initiative to honour journalists, in the spirit of the renowned former editor-in-chief of The Jerusalem Post who passed away in January 2017, who have earned distinction in their work for reporting on flight, displacement, and asylum in a critical manner committed to upholding human rights.
A jury of experts chaired by Gertraud Auer Borea d'Olmo, Secretary General of the Bruno Kreisky Forum for International Dialogue and close confidant of Ari Rath, has unanimously nominated Simon Inou and Vanessa Spanbauer for this year's „Ari Rath Prize for Critical Journalism“.
With the kind support of Vienna Energy
Vanessa Spanbauers Her journalistic work can be found on platforms such as taz, BIBER, ORF, gotv, Vice/Noisey, enemy.at & derStandard.at. She is currently also editor-in-chief of the magazine „fresh - Black Austrian Lifestyle“ and a member of the editorial team at the feminist magazine an.schläge. She spent a short time at an agency for digital communication & PR before moving into public relations at the ZARA Civil Courage & Anti-Racism Work Association in 2020.
Since the end of 2015, she has been working on the children of Austrians and African-American GIs in the contemporary history research project „Lost in Administration“. In 2018, she was also entrusted with the „Blackening Vienna“ project, which focuses on the presence of people with African roots in Vienna since 1918. She is currently also working as a historian and is preparing an exhibition for the Volkskundemuseum Wien for the end of 2021. She is also researching a project for the Vienna Museum of Technology, which is dedicated to the reappraisal of colonial artefacts in Austrian federal museums.
Simon Inou After studying sociology in Douala, he co-founded „Le Messager des Jeunes“, the first youth newspaper in Cameroon, where he remained editor until 1995. At the same time, he worked for the then weekly newspaper „Le Messager“. Inou moved to Austria in 1995. There he was editor-in-chief of Radio Afrika International from 1998 to 2005. From 2000 to 2005 he also worked for the Wiener Zeitung, and from 2004 he was also co-founder and editor-in-chief of Afrikanet. In 2005, Inou founded M-Media, an association for the promotion of intercultural media work, which campaigns for more ethnic diversity in Austrian media organisations and an appropriate representation of immigrants in the Austrian mainstream media. Since 2008, M-Media has organised an annual media fair at which ethnic media in Austria are given the opportunity to present themselves. From 2008 to 2013 and in 2014/2015, M-Media published the Austrian media handbook Migration and Diversity.
From 2007, M-Media employees worked with editors from the daily newspaper Die Presse to create a weekly editorial page on Austrian topics. In 2008, M-Media received the „Förderungspreis für Projekte des interkulturellen Dialogs 2008“ from the Ministry of Education for this project. In addition, special training and further education programmes enabled migrants to gain a foothold in Austrian journalism. In October 2012, he founded the Lichtfarben picture agency, whose aim is to facilitate the media illustration of migration-related content for Austrian media. In 2007, together with Béatrice Achaleke, Inou initiated the BlackAustria communication campaign to reduce prejudice against black people living in Austria. In summer 2009, Inou criticised the Eskimo advertising campaign with the slogan „I will Mohr“ as racist, whereupon the ice cream producer had the advertising posters removed. Inou is frequently present in the media in articles, commentaries and interviews on topics relating to Africans in Austria.