Slain journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia has been awarded an honorary Deutscher Reporterpreis for Investigative Journalism by Reporter-Forum in Berlin.
The presentation took place at an awards ceremony this week attended by over 300 reporters and editors from German newspapers including Die Zeit, Der Spiegel, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, and Suddeutsche Zeitung.
In his laudatory speech for Ms Caruana Galizia, undercover reporter Günter Wallraff said: “People long for truth and truthfulness. Especially in times of rapidly increasing wealth for some and growing poverty for others. This desire for truth and truthfulness was shared by Daphne Caruana Galizia with many citizens of her island. She was popular with ordinary people. And that is why she was so hated by large parts of the economic and political elite.”
Earlier, a video projected onto a large screen showed footage of Ms Caruana Galizia talking to German reporters while a narrator described her work.
The footage included a clip of Prime Minister Joseph Muscat repeatedly denouncing Ms Caruana Galizia’s Egrant revelations as ‘fake news’ at the European Parliament last June. Only four months later, the narrator concluded, Ms Caruana Galizia was dead.
Reporter-Forum said on its website: "We must not stop illuminating the dark world of dirty money with our research."
The presenter, German news anchor Claus Kleber, also announced the creation of a scholarship for the production of a feature in honour of Ms Caruana Galizia and her work in text or film.
Contributions to the scholarship are being collected until December 31 by Reporter-Forum. Any amount can be transferred to IBAN DE97200505501082210699, the account of Reporter-Forum at Hamburger Sparkasse, including the reference "Donation Galizia". More details (in German) are available at www.reporter-forum.de