The competition for the “Gordana Susa” 2022 Regional Journalism Award for Television Journalism is announced on the basis of Article 63 of the Statute of the Independent Journalists’ Association of Serbia (IJAS), the Rules on Awards and Recognitions of the IJAS, and the decisions of the IJAS Executive Board dated 10 June 2022 and 7 October 2022.
Independent Journalists’ Association of Serbia, in cooperation with partner organizations from the region, awards the annual “Gordana Susa” Award to journalists from the region of former Yugoslavia for:
– outstanding achievements in television journalism;
– independent, professional and responsible journalism, in accordance with the universal ethical journalistic code, and in the service of public interest and media freedom;
– journalism that represents and respects the interests and diversity of all citizens, regardless of their ethnic, religious or gender identity;
– understanding, cooperation, mutual respect and solidarity among journalists, media and media associations in the former Yugoslavia.
CONDITIONS OF THE COMPETITION
Journalists may be nominated by individuals, newsrooms, associations and informal groups, as well as jury members of the “Gordana Susa” Award.
Journalists cannot apply directly to the competition.
The application should include an explanation of the nomination (up to 4,000 characters), links to video attachments that illustrate the work of the nominated journalist, or a portable video database (CD, flash drive, etc.) containing the video content. The video content accompanying the nomination must not be older than one year from the date of the publication of the contest.
The nomination deadline is 10 January 2023.
The decision on awarding the “Gordana Susa” Award will be made by an expert jury made up of journalists and media experts from the region.
Questions regarding the competition procedure may be addressed no later than 9 January 2022 to: [email protected].
The application should be sent via the application form available at this link: https://forms.gle/1yVccowhnaAELc6e7 (in Serbian) or via email [email protected] (the subject of the email should be: “Gordana Susa Award 2022”).
Since this is a regional competition, the applications have to be submitted in native languages of the applicants.
The regional journalism award for television journalism “Gordana Susa” for 2022 will be handed on 2 February 2023.
GORDANA SUSA (1946-2021)
The “Gordana Susa” journalism award was established with the aim of preserving and maintaining the memory of one of the best Serbian and Yugoslav television journalists and to support the ideas for which Gordana Susa fought uncompromisingly throughout her career: unconditionally professional and fair reporting, the fight for media freedoms and human rights, tolerance among all national and social groups, anti-war activism, as well as the fight for professional standards and the safety of journalists.
Gordana Susa was born on February 2, 1946 in Belgrade. She spent part of her childhood in Zagreb, and then graduated from the Fifth Belgrade Gymnasium and the Faculty of Political Sciences in Belgrade. She started her journalistic career during her studies, working for Radio Belgrade where spent a decade first as a reporter, then as an author and finally as an editor.
In 1978, she continued her career at Television Belgrade, where she quickly became one of the most reliable and respected journalists and editors of Yugoslavia at the time, and a recognizable television personality with her talent, personal and strong professional integrity.
The universality of her professional engagement was reflected in all television formats, both in reporting and editorial work in central news programs and in programs she authored.
Due to the professional standards she believed in and consistently adhered to, including the fight against war-mongering propaganda and hate speech in the late 1980s, she was removed from the screen by the force of growing nationalist trends.
In early 1991, she moved to Jutel, a newly founded television station of the then Federal Government, located in Sarajevo, which was made up of leading journalists from all the Yugoslav republics and which tried to be an integrative media factor in a country where the leading television centers of the republics spread nationalist propaganda.
The disintegration of the country in which she was born, lived and worked, did not change her professional views in any way. She only changed media in search of media spaces that put professional ethics at the center of their editorial policy.
She continued to work in the daily newspaper Borba, which defied the army of state and pro-regime media with its professionalism. She was among the founders of the daily Nasa Borba, launched after the state brutally occupied the original Borba.
Her further path was marked, for that time, by enormous courage – in 1993 she founded the production company VIN – Video Weekly, whose product was an extraordinary television magazine under the same name (VIN), which was broadcast on the few free local television stations in the 1990s. To this day, VIN remains a rare and precious video testimony of the darkest and most depressing period of recent history in the region.
Gordana Susa was among the founders of the Independent Journalists’ Association of Serbia in 1994 in Belgrade, and then the president of IJAS from 1999 to 2002, during the period of the regime’s greatest repression of the media in Serbia. She led the association conscientiously and courageously during the last two years of Milosevic’s rule, when journalists were silenced, persecuted and killed.
Her professional path after the fall of Slobodan Milosevic’s regime was marked by a new and short stay at RTS, continued work on the production of VIN, one term in the Council of the Republic Broadcasting Agency (RRA, now REM) at the suggestion and with the unconditional trust of journalists’ associations, after which authored columns for the newspapers Blic, Danas and Sarajevo Oslobodjenje, in which she uncompromisingly and critically dealt with the pathology of all segments of society.
The price of her professionalism was high for both her and her family. But she didn’t give up. Consistent with herself, she continued to support freedom of the media and her colleagues, tolerance and reconciliation, the values of civil society, and above all – the work of the media in the public interest.
Gordana Susa was a persistent and brave journalist – she did her job without concessions or bowing, she pushed the boundaries of freedom and bravely fought against propaganda and hate speech. At the same time, she uncompromisingly protected her colleagues, their credibility and safety.
In one of her last interviews, in the IJAS Media File, in January 2021, she explained the role and importance of journalists:
“A journalist who respects the code of ethics is by definition a rebel, because she or he follows professional principles and is obliged, I emphasize, to resist pressure to violate those principles.” It is the journalist’s duty to accurately, objectively, completely and timely report on events of interest to the public… and then everything else follows from that. A journalist is under the greatest pressure. If she or he gives in once, he will always give in, and that’s why I like to tell my younger colleagues that they must have a stable and strong psycho-physical condition, in order to effectively resist the pressures of politicians, editors and media owners.”
Gordana Susa passed away on 22 June 2021 in Belgrade.
