Czech Radio's Martin Dorazín Receives the Prestigious Ferdinand Peroutka Award
The Ferdinand Peroutka Journalism Award for 2022 went to Czech Radio foreign correspondent Martin Dorazín. He was awarded by the Ferdinand Peroutka Society for his outstanding reporting (not only) from places in crisis on Monday, 13 February 2023. He became foreign correspondent in Ukraine last autumn, from where he has been reporting since the onset of the war.
The awards for the best journalists of 2022 were handed out by representatives of the Ferdinand Peroutka Society on Monday 13 February 2023 in the DOX Centre for Contemporary Art. Martin Dorazín therefore joins the ranks of other laureates such as Czech Radio economic analyst Jana Klímová, presenter Lucie Vopálenská and Czech Radio commentators Jan Bednář and Petr Nováček.
“My heartiest congratulations go to Martin Dorazín on his receiving of the Ferdinand Peroutka Award, which he undoubtedly deserves for his outstanding journalism. Working as a foreign correspondent in Ukraine, he is facing conditions we can hardly imagine. Despite that, to Czech Radio listeners he regularly brings high-quality and authentic content directly from the site of the devastating war,” says René Zavoral, Director General of Czech Radio.
Martin Dorazín’s reports from Ukraine are also used in a new Radiožurnál podcast series titled “Rok ve válce” (A Year in a War), subtitled “Na lince Ukrajina-Praha” (On the Line Ukraine-Prague). The first of the four episodes shall be released on 24 February, i.e. on the first anniversary of the Russian aggression in Ukraine. Apart from Dorazín’s reports, the series draws on phone interviews conducted by Jan Pokorný and their joint war specials.
Martin Dorazín studied at the Valašské Meziříčí Grammar School and graduated in social sciences in Russia. He spent many years traveling the Balkans and worked as a special correspondent in Slovakia and Yugoslavia. Between 2005 and 2009, he worked as a radio correspondent in Poland and the Baltics, then in the Balkans, Libya and Moscow and, from 2019 in Warsaw. In 2014, together with Vít Pohanka, he was held captive by pro-Russian separatists in Donetsk, eastern Ukraine. Mid-January last year, he left Warsaw for Ukraine, where he covered the early days of the war. Since autumn 2022, he has become the first permanent foreign correspondent in Ukraine. Apart from the Ferdinand Peroutka Award, he also received the Karel Havlíček Borovský Award in 2016.
Ferdinand Peroutka Journalism Awards have been handed out by the Ferdinand Peroutka Society since 1995 on the anniversary of Peroutka’s birth. The laureates should possess traits that were distinctive of Ferdinand Peroutka such as great moral integrity, acting always in accordance with law and their conscience. Further, they must be personally responsible for the societal consequences of their journalism. Their work must be of outstanding quality underscored by precise and chiselled language. They must be democratically minded, refusing any form of totalitarianism and cultural, ethnic or political intolerance.