TVNET GRUPA Editor-in-Chief Toms Ostrovskis Receives Peter Greste Baltic Freedom of Speech Award
The Peter Greste Baltic Freedom of Speech Award was presented to three laureates, one from each Baltic state, at the Riga Graduate School of Economics on 5 November. Latvia's laureate is Toms Ostrovskis, editor-in-chief of the TVNET GRUPA media group.
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At a ceremony held at the Stockholm School of Economics in Riga on 5 November, the Peter Greste Baltic Freedom of Speech Award was presented to three laureates. One of them is Toms Ostrovskis, editor-in-chief of the Latvian news portal group TVNET GRUPA.
The award goes to individuals and organisations in Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia that have made a significant contribution to defending and promoting freedom of speech and independent journalism. This time there were three winners, one from each Baltic country.
The finalists
Nine finalists had been nominated this year.
In Estonia, the nominees were investigative journalist Holger Roonemaa, whose work has helped expose cases of political influence, corruption and disinformation; RusDelfi editor-in-chief Marina Begunkova, who built a platform for discussing education reform; and RusDelfi journalist Roman Starapopov, who has regularly covered war-affected areas since Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
In Latvia, alongside Ostrovskis, who advocates editorial independence and quality journalism of public importance, the finalists were Arta Ģiga, a producer of the TV3 investigative programme "Nekā personīga" who has spent nearly 20 years helping highlight important public issues, and Ērika Staškeviča, editor-in-chief of TVNET and RUS TVNET, who promotes access to reliable information and dialogue between language communities.
In Lithuania, the finalists were the DELFI.lt/ru editorial team, which provides information to Russian-speaking readers; Monika Garbačiauskaitė-Budrienė, director general of public broadcaster LRT; and the Lithuanian Culture Assembly, the Lithuanian Professional Journalists' Association and the LRT journalists' community, which jointly mobilised the public to defend LRT's independence.
Who Peter Greste is
Peter Greste is a Latvian-Australian academic, author and memoirist who has worked for international media including Reuters, CNN, BBC and Al Jazeera. In December 2013, he and two Al Jazeera colleagues were arrested in Egypt and accused of falsifying news and damaging the country's image. In 2014 he was sentenced to seven years in prison, and in February 2015, after an international support campaign and intervention by the Australian government, he was deported to Australia. Since then he has campaigned for press freedom.
