Journalism anti-discrimination award

The "For Diversity. Against Discrimination" Journalist Award is an EU initiative aimed at promoting and awarding excellence in journalism that explores the benefits of diversity and the fight against discrimination throughout the EU.

The winners of the 2004 Journalist Awards were recently announced by EU Commissioner for Employment, Social Affairs and Equal Opportunities, Vladimir Spidla, who commented that "EU-wide legislation against discrimination will only protect people against less favorable treatment in employment if they are actually informed about their rights."

This Journalists Award is part of a five- year EU campaign to disseminate information about the rights of EU citizens when faced with discrimination.

Over 250 journalists from all the member states participated in this prestigious award. Each country appointed its own national jury who assessed their national entries and selected a winner.

These national winners then competed alongside 24 others, one from each EU state. Malta's winner was Sandro Mangion who participated with his article entitled "Xoghol ghall-Izvantaggjati" which had been published in L-Orizzont.

It was selected because of its balanced views of the pros and cons of an active diversity policy adopted by organisations as part of their employment policy. Mr Mangion's article then competed against the other winners, judged by a distinguished EU jury that includes MEPs, leading journalists and experts in the field of discrimination.

The overall EU winner was a team of French journalists, Pascale-Marie Deschamps, Michel Derenbourg, Claire Aubé and Lionel Steinmann with their article Raciste, l'entreprise?

The "For Diversity. Against Discrimination" Journalists Award 2005 was announced by Commissioner Spidla. This year, besides written articles published in print media and the Internet, a new category has been introduced for photojournalism that evokes the benefits of diversity and the harm of discrimination.

This widens the available media by which the message against discrimination and in favor of diversity can be promoted by participants.

Participants articles must be published on a medium for general distribution, between May 2 and December 31, 2005. For details of how to submit entries visit www.stop-discrimination.info

Articles should be at least 4,200 characters long and photos must be a minimum size of 13 x 18cm and a maximum size of 30 x 40cm.