When the Nor­we­gian No­bel Com­mit­tee award­ed jour­nal­ists Maria Ressa (Philip­pines) and Dmit­ry Mu­ra­tov (Rus­sia) The No­bel Peace Prize for 2021 for their ef­forts 'to safe­guard free­dom of ex­pres­sion, a pre­con­di­tion for democ­ra­cy and last­ing peace' it was a win for jour­nal­ists glob­al­ly.

This prize is a recog­ni­tion of the Fourth Es­tate of jour­nal­ists and their sup­port teams of me­dia work­ers who pro­tect the fun­da­men­tal rights of the free­dom of the press un­der in­creas­ing­ly ad­verse con­di­tions.

As peo­ple ca­su­al­ly switch ra­dio and tele­vi­sion sta­tions and scroll on­line the print me­dia for news, no­body thinks of the in­vis­i­ble army of me­dia work­ers be­hind the scenes, the stu­dio op­er­a­tors, sub-ed­i­tors, tech­ni­cal staff, cam­era peo­ple, graph­ic artists. Giv­en the noise and fake news in so­cial me­dia, jour­nal­ism to­day needs to be but­tressed now more than ever.

When the Min­is­ter of Fi­nance de­clared in his bud­get speech that it was the first time in 59 years as an in­de­pen­dent na­tion that we faced health and eco­nom­ic chal­lenges si­mul­ta­ne­ous­ly–mak­ing this an 'ex­ceed­ing­ly dif­fi­cult pe­ri­od' he was al­so speak­ing of me­dia work­ers. The 'shut­ter­ing of busi­ness­es and loss of in­come' has re­port­ed­ly af­fect­ed some me­dia work­ers so bad­ly they strug­gle to have three square meals a day.

The irony is that the very jour­nal­ists cov­er­ing the sto­ries of peo­ple suf­fer­ing from the fall­out of COVID-19 are them­selves vic­tims of health and eco­nom­ic chal­lenges. And ac­cord­ing to my col­league Wes­ley Gib­bings, re­cent­ly elect­ed to serve on the steer­ing com­mit­tee for the Glob­al Fo­rum for Me­dia De­vel­op­ment, this is not new. The me­dia have felt the brunt of the pan­dem­ic from the very be­gin­ning. He wrote this on his blog.

"A study con­duct­ed by the In­ter­na­tion­al Fed­er­a­tion of Jour­nal­ists on the state of glob­al jour­nal­ism in the cur­rent COVID-19 era, last year polled 1,300 front­line jour­nal­ists in 77 coun­tries and found the fol­low­ing:

1. Near­ly every free­lance jour­nal­ist has lost rev­enue or work op­por­tu­ni­ties

2. More than half of all jour­nal­ists are suf­fer­ing from stress and anx­i­ety.

3. More than a quar­ter lack es­sen­tial equip­ment to en­able them to work safe­ly from home, while one in four lack any pro­tec­tive equip­ment to work in the field.

4. Dozens of jour­nal­ists have been ar­rest­ed, faced law­suits or been as­sault­ed.

5. More than a third of jour­nal­ists have shift­ed their fo­cus to cov­er­ing COVID-19 re­lat­ed sto­ries.

Gib­bings warned that "busi­ness shrink­age" and clo­sure of me­dia en­ter­pris­es due to se­vere con­trac­tions in ad­ver­tis­ing rev­enue have left me­dia work­ers "job vul­ner­a­ble."

"In sev­er­al in­stances, pri­vate en­ter­pris­es that have re­mained rel­a­tive­ly in­tact and re­silient have the po­ten­tial to...im­pose pres­sures on the ed­i­to­r­i­al in­tegri­ty of me­dia en­ter­pris­es in re­turn for the promise of ad­ver­tis­ing rev­enue."

This COVID eco­nom­ic crunch threat­ens the in­de­pen­dence of me­dia work­ers, hin­der­ing their abil­i­ty to pro­vide free and fair in­for­ma­tion. I un­der­stood too how iso­lat­ed my fel­low free­lance jour­nal­ists feel when I be­gan call­ing some of them, urg­ing them to join the Me­dia As­so­ci­a­tion of T&T.

Those with­out sup­port sys­tems have been the worst off, not just suf­fer­ing from anx­i­ety and ill-health giv­en the odd hours we work, but job un­cer­tain­ty while do­ing front­line work. COVID or no COVID, the show must go on, a pa­per must be pub­lished, air time must be filled.

The slate I put to­geth­er of six bril­liant jour­nal­ists across dis­ci­plines and plat­forms who are as de­ter­mined as I am to for­ti­fy and serve our fra­ter­ni­ty was un­con­test­ed at the Me­dia As­so­ci­a­tion of T&T elec­tion on Oc­to­ber 2.

But as the spir­it of democ­ra­cy would have it, jour­nal­ists vot­ed to make mem­ber­ship free for three months even be­fore the hand­ing over.

I trust me­dia work­ers across plat­forms will join MATT us­ing a red-tape free on­line form and feel per­son­al­ly and pro­fes­sion­al­ly sup­port­ed.

For those old enough to re­mem­ber the vir­tu­al me­dia black­out in 1990, with on­ly a sin­gle ra­dio sta­tion (NBS Ra­dio 610) al­low­ing di­a­logue to bring the cri­sis to a close, we un­der­stand the des­o­la­tion when me­dia lights–the mir­ror to our world–is turned off.

While the tenets of the free­dom of the press will re­main for­ti­fied as they have since the for­ma­tion of MATT 35 years ago, it's time to up­lift the in­vis­i­ble ones–my col­leagues, who have been silent­ly, and un­der try­ing cir­cum­stances, hold­ing up the walls of the Fourth Es­tate with for­ti­tude, nev­er fail­ing in their du­ty even when they were crum­bling.

Even as the glob­al fra­ter­ni­ty salute Maria Ressa and Dmit­ry Mu­ra­tov for their No­bel Peace Prize, I be­lieve our na­tion, too, owes our in­vis­i­ble me­dia work­ers a debt of grat­i­tude and sup­port for nev­er let­ting the lights dim on a free and fair press. I ask you to stand with T&T's me­dia fra­ter­ni­ty in sol­i­dar­i­ty.