Golden Globes announce $2 million grant for journalism organizations ICIJ and CPJ
One of the highlights of the 75th Golden Globe Awards was the $2 million grants announced for a journalism consortium and a media rights group to combat growing threats to press freedom.
At the Golden Globes ceremony on January 7, the Hollywood Foreign Press Association announced two grants of $1 million each to the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) and the Committee To Protect Journalists.
The grants, coming less than eight weeks after the groundbreaking Paradise Papers investigation by ICIJ, will go toward supporting investigative journalism and providing better protection for journalists.
The Paradise Papers was the latest in a series of global journalistic exposes of the offshore financial industry that have triggered reforms and investigations by governments around the world – from the United States to Vietnam to New Zealand to Pakistan.
“Truth is under attack, both politically and economically, and the brutal reality of recent years is that journalists routinely risk their lives just for doing their jobs, even in countries once thought safe.
“One of the main aims of the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists is to bring accountability on a global scale. We bring journalists together to safeguard the truth and to safeguard each other. Along the way, we bring a new kind of scrutiny to world events and complex problems – using data and document-supported facts that cannot easily be dismissed.
“By joining giant teams of journalists and news organizations from all over the world to work together on issues of global significance, we are able to achieve results and impact that no one outlet could achieve independently. “
This is the first time a donation announcement has been made during a live telecast of the event.
“We HFPA journalists are committed to supporting humanitarian organizations, film restoration, and film education,” said HFPA president Meher Tatna. “To date, we have granted over $30 million to those causes. And being an association of journalists, we are keenly aware of its importance, especially today.”
The ICIJ said it will use the very generous grant from the HFPA towards the purchase of a permanent headquarters in Washington, D.C.
About ICIJ
Based in Washington, the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists is a global network of more than 200 investigative journalists and 100 media organizations in 70 countries who collaborate on in-depth investigative stories. In 2017, the ICIJ, with media partners McClatchy and the Miami Herald, were awarded a Pulitzer Prize for the “Panama Papers” series exposing the hidden infrastructure and global scale of offshore tax havens.
Founded in 1997 by the respected American journalist Chuck Lewis, ICIJ was launched as a project of the Center for Public Integrity to focus on issues that do not stop at national frontiers: cross-border crime, corruption, and the accountability of power. In February 2017, ICIJ was spun off as a fully independent news organization with the goal of further extending its global reach and impact. In July 2017, ICIJ was granted its own 501(c)(3) nonprofit status from U.S. tax authorities.