COLLEGE PARK — The University of Maryland’s Philip Merrill College of Journalism has selected the 2025 winners of the Maria Ressa Prizes for Courage in Journalism, four annual awards central to the college’s press freedom mission.
The awards honor Ressa, the 2021 Nobel Peace Prize winner and acclaimed champion of global press freedom, and each of the four comes with a $3,000 cash prize. The Ressa Prizes have been made possible by the generous support of First Look Institute.
“This year’s honorees range from a documentarian who was imprisoned and tortured for flying a drone to journalists amplifying truth amid a wave of conspiracy theories that affected the Haitian community during the 2024 presidential election to students who stood up to power at their universities to report on campus protests about the war in Gaza,” Merrill College Dean Rafael Lorente said. “The courage they displayed to simply practice journalism is unparalleled and Merrill College is proud to recognize these models of our profession.”
Myanmarese documentarian Shin Daewe, the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project, The Haitian Times and student journalists at UCLA, Indiana University and Columbia University have been selected as the 2025 Ressa Prize winners. Journalists who have died covering the war in Gaza are also recognized with a special citation.
The Ressa Prizes were selected by a committee of Merrill College faculty members. The prize winners will receive their awards and be honored on campus this month by speaking with Merrill College students about what went into their courageous journalism.
The Maria Ressa Prize for Courage in Journalism is awarded each year to the individual journalist or news organization anywhere in the world that exhibits journalistic courage in the face of serious threats from governments or other powerful forces.
The 2025 prize is awarded to Shin Daewe, who was arrested in 2023 for having a drone, which she bought to film aerial footage for a new documentary. She was sentenced to life in prison and tortured. Her sentence has since been reduced to 15 years in prison.
She is one of two journalists in prison in Myanmar who have ties to news outlets funded by the U.S. Agency for Global Media, which had its budget cut by the Trump administration this year. The Agency for Global Media has funded Voice of America and other outlets, including Radio Free Asia, where Daewe contributed reporting on environmental and human rights issues.
The Maria Ressa Prize for Courage in Investigative Journalism honors reporting by any news organization or individual reporter in the United States that showed uncommon courage, and required the journalists to stand up to powerful interests.
The 2025 prize is awarded to the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project. OCCRP has developed an impressive track record of taking on many of the most important and dangerous investigative reporting projects in the world. Working as a network of journalistic partners, it has sought to expose corruption at the highest levels of power around the globe.
The OCCRP’s recent work includes its partnership with The Boston Globe for reporting on the financial mismanagement of a major hospital chain, which was a finalist for a Pulitzer Prize.
The Maria Ressa Prize for Courage in Local or Independent Journalism recognizes courage displayed by small city newspapers, freelancers or other journalists in the United States who have stood up to powerful forces despite not having many resources.
This year’s winner is The Haitian Times, which covers the Haitian community in the United States. The Times bravely told the truth about the conspiracy theories amplified by then-candidate Donald Trump and others about Haitian refugees during the 2024 campaign.
The Maria Ressa Prize for Courage in Student Journalism honors student journalists in high school or college in the United States who exhibited courage and fought for press freedom while standing up to powerful forces.
The 2025 prize is awarded to a collective of student journalists who stood up for press freedom by covering campus protests about the war in Gaza. Student journalists at UCLA, Indiana University and Columbia University are recognized as representatives of all student journalists around the country who covered student protests under enormous pressure.
This year, a special citation is made for journalists and media workers who died in Gaza, the West Bank and Lebanon while covering the war in the Middle East. Despite the deaths, courageous journalists have continued to try to report from the war zone.