ONCE honors 'El País Semanal'

The Spanish blind people’s organization ONCE presented on Tuesday the prizes for the XIV Tiflos Journalism Awards, at a ceremony presided over by the Secretary of State for Communications, Carmen Martinez de Castro, and the Vice President of ONCE, Teresa Palahí. El País Semanal, National Radio, Castilla y León Regional Television and Laveu.cat were the big winners of the fourteenth edition of the ONCE Journalism Awards, in the categories of Print, Radio, Television and Digital Journalism, respectively. Each of the winners was awarded prize money of 9,000 euros.

The Tiflos Awards pay tribute to those works that foster the integration of persons with disability and the removal of physical and mental barriers. For the Secretary of State "socially relevant  news is about real-life people, not to be overlooked in a world of risk premiums and economic crisis data." She added that, "society will turn its back on media who ignore socially relevant news".

Jurors for the Print Media category gave their top prize to "The Cup of Life", written by Jesus Rodriguez Amador, and published in El País Semanal. The report follows the work and daily lives of people with mental disabilities who play for a basketball team. The jury said that "it is a story that gets you hooked from the very beginning, because it gets up close to the characters." The athletes featured in the report are engaging and explain clearly what makes them feel integrated into society. The jury  also stressed "the importance of the photographs (by Sofia Moro) as an important element of the story."

In the Digital Journalism category, the jury selected the work entitled "IntegrARTE" published in www.laveu.cat. In the Radio section, the winner was "Nomads in Venice", broadcast by National Radio. And in the TV category, the jury honored two teams of reporters from the Castilla y León Regional Television station, in which journalists Bidane Galicia and Beatrice Zamorano analyse social issues.