Czech Radio's Jan Fingerland received the Ferdinand Peroutka Award
Czech Radio columnist and commentator Jan Fingerland was awarded the Ferdinand Peroutka Prize for 2023. He received the prestigious journalistic award from the Ferdinand Peroutka Society on Tuesday, 6 February 2024 at the DOX Centre for Contemporary Art. Jan Fingerland has been preparing commentaries for the Czech Radio Plus programme Názory a argumenty (Opinions and Arguments), where he has been covering topics related mainly to the Middle East, but also Asia and Africa.
The annual award for the best journalist is given on the anniversary of Ferdinand Peroutka’s birth. Jan Fingerland won for his in-depth analysis and profound knowledge he employs in his journalistic work. He joins a list of award-winning personalities at Czech Radio that includes foreign correspondent Martin Dorazín, economic analyst Jana Klímová, presenter Lucie Vopálenská and commentators Jan Bednář, Petr Nováček and Milan Slezák.
"I am happy to congratulate Jan Fingerland, whose journalistic work has been rightly recognised with the Ferdinand Peroutka Award. Jan Fingerland has long been highly esteemed and respected for his excellent knowledge, thanks to which he is able to reflect the events in society particularly well and at the same time help put them in context," said René Zavoral, Director General of Czech Radio
Jan Fingerland studied political science at the Faculty of Social Sciences of Charles University, where he subsequently lectured for several years. Gradually, however, he was lured into the world of journalism, gaining his first experience with newspapers at Večerník Praha. In addition to political science, he was also interested in political philosophy and religious studies, which he studied in York, Stockholm and Jerusalem. He also gained work experience as a foreign news editor at Czech Television. Externally, he contributed longer texts to Czech daily and weekly newspapers, especially Mladá fronta Dnes, Lidové noviny and Reflex. He has been part of Czech Radio Plus since 2008 and has been in charge of preparing the programme Názory a argumenty (Opinions and Arguments) in which he not only covers political topics, but also writes articles on culture, history and religion. In 2022, he published a literary debut called Hebrew Women, focused on the stories of disadvantaged women in the Bible from a variety of interpretive perspectives.
The Ferdinand Peroutka Prize has been awarded by the Ferdinand Peroutka Society on the anniversary of his birth since 1995. The journalists awarded should exhibit the qualities that Peroutka himself fulfilled, i.e. absolute integrity before the law and their own conscience and high moral integrity. They must also be personally responsible for the consequences of their journalistic activity. Their work should be of exceptional standard, multiplied by precision of expression and beauty of language. They must be based on a democratic orientation that is uncompromising towards all manifestations of totalitarianism and cultural, national and political intolerance.