For outstanding reporting by a Russian journalist who displays courage, insight, balanced yet aggressive reporting, and independence of thought
AWARD YEAR: 2001
AWARD NAME: The Artyom Borovik Award 2001
RECIPIENT: Vitaly Cherkasov
AFFILIATION: Effekt
HONORED WORK: Investigative Reporting on Crime, Corruption, and Injustice in the far eastern region of Chita
Kids who bullied and targeted their schoolmates for extortion but got no more than a slap on the wrist. A drunken driver who killed an 18-year-old girl but served only seven months in jail because a friend was the deputy district attorney. Soldiers who sold supplies from their army post in a neighboring village in exchange for vodka—and beat up villagers who objected to the practice. These are only a sampling of Cherkasov’s remarkable body of work, which exposed corruption, injustice, and social ills in his hometown of Chita, a city of 320,000, located 2,760 miles east of Moscow. Cherkasov’s newspaper, the weekly Effekt, is itself a fine representative of the Russian regional press, keeping its readers well informed about often-uncomfortable social issues. The prize awarded to Cherkasov is named for Artyom Borovik, who was one of the earliest and boldest practitioners of glasnost (openness) in Mikhail Gorbachev’s Soviet Union in the 1980s. Borovik, who won an Overseas Press Club award in 1991 for a 60 Minutes segment on a Soviet lab where the brains of Vladimir Lenin and other Soviet heroes were stored, was relentless in exposing the malfeasance, corruption, and dirty secrets of Russian officials. He was best known for his critical reporting — while in his 20s—from Afghanistan during the Soviet occupation. He died tragically in a plane crash in 1999 at the age of 39.
Citation for Excellence:
Mikhail Markelov
Moscow Channel 3
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