First french town liberated on 7th June 1944, Bayeux created in 1994 this award, a tribute to war correspondents who, at the risk of their lives, open for us a window on the world. During the week: exhibitions, public screenings, book fairs and debates. With many journalists present, the closing evening talks about the burning issues of the moment and finishes with the prize-giving ceremony.
Bayeux - from October 2nd to 8th - 2017
Bayeux-Calvados Award for war correspondents
For over 20 years, the town of Bayeux, in association with the Calvados General Council, has been hosting this event with the intention of paying tribute to journalists who work in hazardous conditions to provide us with information.
Every year, the news and the targeting of reporters and their teams around the world bear out the legitimacy of this tribute and commitment.
Bayeux, the first town in France that the Allies liberated in 1944, launched this annual international event in the framework of the 50th anniversary of D-Day in 1994. Its purpose is to award journalists from around the world prestigious prizes in four media: the written press, radio, television and photography. In addition to the awards ceremony, the Prix Bayeux-Calvados War Correspondents Prize offers a week of exchanges, encounters and debates with the public (young and less young) to take the time to understand international news better.
The various activities (evenings, book fair, exhibitions, etc.) focus on notorious and more obscure conflicts and shed light on the news and on the reporter's profession in the presence of people who cover violent conflicts all over the world year round. The journalists gathering for the occasion and the quality of exchanges with television, radio, print and photo reporters make the Bayeux-Calvados Prize an incomparable event.
Jeremy Bowen, President of the jury
For the last 30 years, Jeremy Bowen has covered every major event on the planet for the BBC. From the war in El Salvador to the Romanian revolution, Afghanistan, Iraq, Lebanon, South Africa, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the Arab revolutions, the war in Syria... Jeremy Bowen has been everywhere. He has received many awards, as both a television and radio journalist, including three Bayeux-Calvados Awards.
Born in 1960 in Wales, Jeremy Bowen joined the BBC in 1984 and has spent a large part of his career as a war correspondent, beginning in El Salvador in 1989. He has produced reports from more than 70 different countries (including the Romanian revolution, the Tiananmen Square demonstrations, Afghanistan, Iraq, Lebanon, South Africa, Israel and Palestine, Rwanda, Algeria, Chechnya, Yugoslavia, 11 September 2001 and Yemen) He covered the conflicts of the Bosnia-Herzegovina civil war and in Kosovo in 1999. He was the BBC's Middle East correspondent, based in Jerusalem, from 1995 to 2000, and has been the BBC's Middle East Editor since 2005. In February 2011 he was the first British journalist to interview Muammar Gaddafi at the start of the civil war in Libya. He has been covering the war in Syria for the past six years and is currently covering the battle for Mosul.
« It is a great honour to be this year's President of the Bayeux jury. The Bayeux war reporting prize has a brilliant reputation, and I've been proud to have been a winner in the past. Bayeux's history makes it the perfect place to be able to discuss - and celebrate - the best journalism from the most demanding parts of the world.
Good journalism, in all different media, has never been more necessary. All the players in modern conflicts want to control the media battlefield. It is our job to shine a light into the world's darkest corners, to do the best we can to find the truth and report it.
Plenty of bad people want to stop that happening, which is why it's a dangerous time to be in the news business. The welcome offered by the people of Bayeux at this unique festival offers a moment of peace to think about what we do - and to work out how we can do better.» Jeremy Bowen
A Memorial for reporters
To ensure that the names of the journalists killed in the line of duty are never forgotten, the City of Bayeux, in collaboration with Reporters without borders, is welcoming a Memorial entirely dedicated to reporters killed across the world since 1944.
"This is the only place in the world where my husband's name is written in stone," declared Michèle Montas, the widow of the Haitian journalist Jean Dominique, on the inauguration of the first phase of the memorial on 7 October 2006.
This unique space in Europe will be opened in its entirety on 2 May 2007. It has been designed and built by the architect and landscape designer Samuel Craquelin. It consists of a landscaped promenade punctuated with 27 white stones, on which are engraved the names of more than 2,000 journalists who paid with their lives in their bid to keep us informed.
This concrete fixture perpetuates throughout the year - over and above the Bayeux-Calvados Award for war correspondents - the City's commitment to defending freedom of the press and democracy.
thejournalistsmemorial.rsf.org
More than 2,000 journalists have been killed since 1944. They are now honoured and commemorated on the Internet in an online memorial. It will be possible for anyone to find out who these journalists were, who they worked for and how they met their deaths. It will be a memorial to keep their names alive and has been conceived and created by the Doha Centre for Media Freedom, Reporters without Borders and the town of Bayeux. The new memorial brings together the names of the 2,069 media professionals killed while carrying out their duties since 1944. It will be a database unique of its kind in its size and the amount of information it provides about each of these men and women.
Program 2017 - Press kit 2017
Normandy pays tribute to freedom and democracy