Just as everybody is drifting further into this summer´s lull, we are coming back with another bang. On their journey with the incredible report “Widowed by Europe´s Borders”, Unbias the News multimedia editor Gabriela Ramírez and journalist Tina Xu had the honour of being invited to the True Story Award Ceremony on June 20 in Bern, Switzerland, as selected finalists. Ramirez attended for both.
The story previously won the European Commission Journalism Award in the category Feature Journalism and the Fetisov Journalism Award for its Outstanding Contribution to Civil Rights.
The global journalism prize “True Story Award” was created for courageous and innovative reporters and aims to highlight first-class journalism that offers challenging perspectives to the ´Western lens`. What makes the award special is its selection of texts that are “narrative accounts of real events, have been researched on location and are based on rigorously researched facts.” The emphasis is therefore on critical, in-depth and on-the-ground reporting. We are especially honoured to represent this kind of journalism.
“Widowed by Europe´s Borders”, which was published by our cross-border newsroom, Unbias The News, as part of the Border Graves Investigation, was selected as one of the three finalist reports in the Storytelling category, which recognises “the journalistic craft, truthfulness and narrative elegance.” The award-winning report narrates the story of one family grieving the pushback and disappearance of their husband and father at the border along Belarus, Lithuania and Poland.
“Against the dominant narrative that we previously lived in times of normalcy with a law-based international order, now threatened by the rise of the new right, this moving reportage depicts the ongoing inhumane treatment of refugees along the Polish-Belarussian border, regardless of the party in power in Warsaw. This is an area in which the push-backs by the border police are brutally enforced despite the severity of winter in the vast forests in this region of Eastern Europe. Constructed like a short-story with several unforgettable characters, profoundly researched over a long period of time, enhanced by a poetic sensitivity, this reportage gives the cynical discourse on migration an insightful and sensitive depth.”
jury statement
Notably, this fifth edition of the True Story Awards received a record number of 1049 applications from all over the world. A big congratulations are to all the winners, including the top prize in the storytelling category, which went to Philippe Broussard for his reportage Looking for the Mysterious Photographer who Snapped the Nazis, an investigation over four years in the making and published in Le Monde.
“The mostly excellent and very diverse entries shed light on relevant stories worldwide, emphasizing the critical role of journalism in building strong democracies that citizens must now recognize and support.”
Rosa Maria Calaf, Judge
As part of the bigger True Story Festival, Ramirez was offered the experience of teaching high school students about journalism and the opportunity to present her journalism on a stage at a live journalism event. Read here about her experience and view some beautiful impressions.
About The Border Graves Investigation
The Border Graves Investigation is a cross-border investigation by eight freelance journalists from across Europe in collaboration with Unbias the News, The Guardian, and Süddeutsche Zeitung. The team verified 1,015 unmarked graves across 65 cemeteries representing individuals who attempted to enter the EU and were laid to rest without identification along European borders in Poland, Lithuania, Greece, Spain, Italy, Malta, France, and Croatia.
The investigation as a whole has received multiple awards and recognitions. For example, the Special Award by the European Press Prize in June 2024 and the IJ4EU Impact Award in September 2024.