Starting from 2021, the Independent Press Association (API) offers the "Tudor Iașcenco Award" in memory of the well-known journalist Tudor Iașcenco, the director of the regional newspaper "Cuvântul", one of the founders, the first president and honorary member of the API. This year, the API Board of Directors decided to award the journalist Vitalie Călugăreanu Award for courage and dignity in the exercise of the mission of a journalist.

 

Vitalie Călugăreanu: "Thank you for this appreciation and I hope that from now on we will have as many journalists as possible in the Republic of Moldova who deserve this award, for courage and devotion to this important profession that we all exercise. Unfortunately, in recent times, quite a few journalists accept the challenges of a complicated society, such as the one in the Republic of Moldova. These challenges presupposing certain dangers, know that the job of a journalist, in a society where justice is not very ok, where corruption and people who have made dishonest money control certain segments, is complicated... But in other countries, such as Belarus, things are even more complicated. It is the duty of all of us, as citizens and journalists, to do our best not to become a dictatorship. Investigative journalists, like Tudor Iașcenco, have a difficult mission in a society in transition. I am honored by this award."

 

Vitalie Călugăreanu is a journalist with about 25 years of experience in the mass media of the Republic of Moldova and in the international press. He was a reporter and editor-in-chief at FLUX Press Agency, he moderated political talk shows at Euro TV and TV7, he was program director at "Radio Plai" and "Radio Noroc", currently he moderates the talk show "Shadow Cabinet" from Jurnal TV. Vitalie was a correspondent in Chisinau for some Romanian media institutions, and since 2004 he has been a correspondent in Moldova for Deutsche Welle from Germany. He is also an investigative journalist, being a member of the Romanian Center for Investigative Journalism. The team of investigative journalists from the Republic of Moldova, Romania and Ukraine, coordinated by Vitalie Călugăreanu, won the "Global Shining Light Award" 2010 in Geneva for carrying out journalistic investigations in extreme conditions.

 

The "Tudor Iașcenco Award" was handed out during the annual API awards ceremony held on May 31, 2021. Vitalie Călugăreanu is the first laureate of this award and received a plaque on which the profile of Tudor Iașcenco is sketched and an award money from API.

 

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Five years ago, in February 2016, Mr. Tudor Iașcenco, the then president of the Independent Press Association (API), offered for the first time a personal award, which he called "Courage + Dignity = Reputation", and in the years following it became a tradition for the president of API to give a special award to one of the bravest journalists in the country. After the death of Tudor Iașcenco, the API Board of Directors decided to rename this award the "Tudor Iașcenco Award" and to hand it annually to a journalist from the Republic of Moldova who shows courage and dignity in the exercise of his professional mission.

 

Tudor Iașcenco was one of the best journalists in the Republic of Moldova, director of the independent regional newspaper "Cuvântul" from the city of Rezina, one of the founders, the first president and honorary member of API, member of the Press Council. Tudor Iașcenco died on March 26, 2021 at the age of 72, due to infection with the new Coronavirus.