The cross-border investigative reporting project "Sewn On The Edge" about the impact of Covid-19 in Bangladesh's RMG industry has won the Swiss Press Award 2021.
Bangladeshi journalist Dil Afrose Jahan, also a former reporter of Dhaka Tribune, was involved in the investigation. Dhaka Tribune published the report headlined “How fashion companies abandoned RMG workers in Bangladesh” on July 22 last year, which won the international award under the online category.
The award-winning report can be found at https://reflekt.ch/recherchen/sewn-on-the-edge/. The winners under different categories were announced on Wednesday.
The “Swiss Press Award 2021" recognizes this year’s winners of Switzerland’s national media award, which honours outstanding journalism across all media and is presented annually by the independent and non-profit Reinhardt von Graffenried Foundation, dedicated to the promotion of local, national and international reporting since its foundation in 2009.
The investigation project was run by REFLEKT, an independent and non-profit research team in Switzerland.
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Dil Afrose, well known as Chaity, worked as one of the main researchers. The rest of the team members are Benedict Wermter (main researcher), Sylke Gruhnwald (main researcher), Christian Zeier (main researcher), Maike Brülls (reporting contributor from Germany), Valentin Felber (multimedia production), Opak.cc (illustrations) and Stirling Tschan (web design).
Alexandra Stark, president of the jury, said: "Sewn on the Edge, succeeds on several levels, including the border-transcending teamwork and the artful use of multimedia. An accessible, illustrated summary of the story provides an easy way into this uncomfortable topic. If you don't have much time, you can look at a summarised version of the article.
“The detailed version links to the original source of documents. This supporting evidence combined with details about the authors' journalistic process, creates a transparency which boosts the credibility of their research.”
Research, which, incidentally, largely had to take place online, due to travel restrictions, Alexandra said, however, adding: “This has not diminished the resulting piece. It also merits positive mention that parts of the piece are published in different media and in different languages."
