Beat of the Week

(Honorable Mention)

AP team dominates coverage of controversial Belarus vote

overcame a beating at the hands of police and an internet blackout to deliver compelling footage and images, including exclusive interviews, throughout the disputed Belarus presidential election. When the state-run exit poll was announced after the vote, showing longtime authoritarian president President Alexander Lukashenko with 80% of the vote, thousands took to the streets. They were met with force by riot police as the government shut down the internet and tried to close the country off from the rest of the world. Video journalist Mstyslav Chernov was among those beaten and detained as police clashed with protesters.Despite the obstacles, AP outperformed the competition, working around the blackout to transmit strong all-formats coverage to the world ahead of other agencies.https://bit.ly/31PWEWahttps://bit.ly/2DCMZKNhttps://bit.ly/2XSMuCYhttps://bit.ly/3kysJdT

Beat of the Week

(Honorable Mention)

Persistence lands exclusive interview with Belarus president

delivered an exclusive, agenda-setting session with President Alexander Lukashenko, the authoritarian leader of Belarus, in his first in-depth interview since the Russian invasion of Ukraine.AP spent more than two years in increasingly difficult negotiations to secure the interview, conducted by Ian Phillips, AP vice president for international news. The all-formats interview, including Lukashenko’s description of the war as “dragging on,” made headlines and was used around the world.Read more

Beat of the Week

(Honorable Mention)

AP team documents accounts of Belarus election fraud

gained the trust of poll workers in Belarus who gave exclusive, on-camera interviews detailing extensive fraud in the Aug. 9 election. Protesters and opposition politicians have called the election rigged since the moment the results were announced showing authoritarian President Alexander Lukashenko won with 80% support. Reports of fraud at the polls have appeared on social media and in some local independent media, but often featured anonymous interviews and piecemeal accounts. Litvinova and Manenkov wanted to go deeper. They reached out to poll workers who at first were too afraid to speak on-the-record and on camera – especially since protesters had been beaten by police and arrested. The pair worked tirelessly to gain the trust of several poll workers, eventually convincing several poll workers to share their stories with the AP, on camera and with still photos by Grits.What the workers told them was stunning: One said she was asked to sign a document summing up the results with the vote totals blank before voting ended for the day. Another who pointed out violations during the vote counting was fired on the spot. A third said he falsified results to favor Lukashenko and was now overcome with guilt for betraying the trust of the voters.

As they worked on this story and continued to cover the protests, Manenkov and AP Russia-based photographer Dmitri Lovetsky were arrested and ordered out of Belarus. Minsk-based photographer Grits and reporter Yuras Karmanau also were arrested and had their press credentials revoked. As a result, the two made the decision to leave Belarus.https://bit.ly/32dyjv0https://bit.ly/2RczmoF

Best of the Week — First Winner

Dual honorees: Stunning coverage of Belarus protests, and a Ganges River odyssey

This week two distinctly different bodies of work share AP’s weekly honors for their outstanding coverage:

An all-formats team in Minsk, Belarus, facing constant police intimidation, continued to provide extensive coverage of mass protests over the nation’s disputed presidential election. That work included exclusive video of a bloody protester falling to the ground dead in front of heavily armed police, footage that forced the government to reverse its narrative of the incident.

And in work of a different dimension entirely, New Delhi photographer Altaf Qadri spent many months documenting life along the 1,700-mile River Ganges, considered sacred by almost 1 billion Hindus in India. 

Starting with a treacherous two-day hike to the foot of the Himalayas – the remote source of the Ganges – and ending in the fast disappearing mangrove forests of the Sundarbans, Qadri captured a breathtaking range along his odyssey: celebration and death, solitude and fellowship, daily life and holy rites. 

For extraordinary work in enterprise and spot news journalism, Altaf Qadri and the Belarus team of Mstyslav Chernov, Sergei Grits, Yuras Karmanau, Dimitri Kozlov and Dmitri Lovetsky share AP’s Best of the Week award.

Beat of the Week

(Honorable Mention)

AP team finds first evidence of Belarus facilitating migrant wave

collaborated on an “Only on AP” package documenting Belarusian authorities’ involvement in a recent surge of immigration from Belarus into Lithuania. In the past two months more than 1,700 have crossed the border — 20 times the total for all of 2020.Lithuanian and European Union officials have accused Belarus of assisting the migration in retaliation over EU sanctions against the regime of President Alexander Lukashenko, but no evidence had been provided and no media outlets had been able to speak to the migrants themselves, who are held in heavily guarded, makeshift camps in Lithuania.The determined all-formats trio of Chernov, Dapkus and Kulbis, seeking to hear from the migrants themselves, drove from camp to camp, more than 600 kilometers (375 miles), eventually finding two smaller, remote camps where police allowed the journalists to speak with migrants. People confirmed they were paying to be taken to Europe via Belarus, and that Belarus had helped them get to Lithuania. AP was allowed inside one of the camps to briefly make photos and video of the migrants’ living conditions.With Karmanau reporting from Belarus and Isachakov in Moscow pulling all the reporting into a cohesive piece, the resulting all-formats exclusive revealed how migrants have once again been caught up in a game of political brinksmanship.https://aplink.news/fwdhttps://aplink.video/flk

Beat of the Week

(Honorable Mention)

Only on AP: ‘Impossible’ access, stunning visuals of Ukraine hospitals

Video journalist Mstyslav Chernov and freelance photographer Evgeniy Maloletka used their extraordinary access to western Ukrainian hospitals to produce powerful images of medical workers desperately treating COVID-19 patients despite a medical system in crisis. They also visited one hospital’s makeshift morgue and a cemetery where families grieved over lost loved ones. Chernov had driven 2,500 kilometers (1,600 miles) across three countries, then worked tirelessly to earn the trust of medics who eventually gave him and Maloletka rare access to document the dire situation. The play was impressive among AP customers and across media in Ukraine. One foundation even reached out to the pathologist who had set up an outdoor morgue, supplying the medic with protective gear, disinfectants and a tent.https://bit.ly/2LmvBKuhttps://bit.ly/2WsZdvWhttps://bit.ly/2WwwUNb

Beat of the Week

(Honorable Mention)

Ukraine revisited: A surge of COVID, a shortage of doctors

returned to the Ukraine to follow up on their May coverage of the country’s outbreak of COVID-19, finding that over the past five months the situation has deteriorated even more. Amid a critical shortage of doctors, the virus has recently made a fierce comeback and many of the healthcare workers they previously documented have since died of the virus.The pair focused on a small hospital in the western part of the country that had been designed for 100 patients but already held 106. They also told the powerful story of a 51-year-old therapist, featured in their earlier story describing the challenges of the outbreak. The man had died the previous week of double pneumonia, which his colleagues believe was caused by the coronavirus, even though he tested negative for it. The therapist’s widow told Chernov she was grateful for AP’s coverage earlier in the year: The stories were so widely published that the whole country knew of her husband and was mourning his death with her.Working with reporter Yuras Karmanau, currently in Kyiv, Chernov and Maloletka produced a deeply reported text story, two exclusive video stories and a comprehensive photo package that gave an intimate look at the crisis in Ukraine. The all-formats work was used by numerous key AP customers.https://bit.ly/3iUbjGv https://bit.ly/3nMI63Mhttps://bit.ly/3lLt64Ghttps://bit.ly/2SO71G6