Orwell Prize: Who Made the Cut
We take a look at the shortlist, and ask “what does it take to earn a nomination?”
The Orwell Foundation has announced the shortlist for the 2019 Orwell Journalism Prize, we thought it would be interesting to simply list the nominees and some examples of their work (The Orwell Foundation has not yet released what works were considered).
For those of you who don’t know, the Orwell Prizes are annual awards for political writing and journalism which “turns political writing into an artform”, according to the Orwell Foundation’s website:
The Orwell Prizes aim to encourage good writing and thinking about politics. The winning entries should strive to meet Orwell’s own ambition ‘to make political writing into an art’. They should be of equal excellence in style and content – the writing must be both political and artful – and live up to the values of The Orwell Foundation.
Now “what are these values?” I hear you ask, well you can read them here, and I will summarize.
- Artfulness and clarity of writing
- Quality of critical thought
- Public and educational benefit
- Contribution to the quality of public discourse
- Intellectual courage and critical thought
That said, let’s take a look at the nominees, you can judge for yourself how well they fit these criteria.
1. Suzanne Moore – Columnist
- The Venn diagram of misogyny, anti-Semitism and support for Julian Assange is a very strange thing – The New Statesman
- Whose side is Twitter on: misogynists or women in public life? – The Guardian
- Wikileaks was the future once. Then it became Julian Assange – The New Statesman
2. Steve Bloomfield – Columnist
- No deal is against the will of the people—and here’s the proof – Prospect Magazine
- Until today, I was a Jewish member of the Labour party – Prospect Magazine
- Brexit-led nationalism is destroying Britain’s overseas aid effort – The Guardian
- Ofcom should be looking again at Putin’s TV news channel – The Guardian
3. Robert Guest – Foreign Editor, The Economist
Guest is Foreign Editor of The Economist, as such we can find very few articles directly authored by him in the last year, however here are some of the Economist’s foreign policy cover stories under his editorial guidance:
- Crimea is still in limbo five years after Russia seized it
- How Strongmen Subvert Democracy
- The anointing of Juan Guaidó – The battle for Venezuela’s future
Is there hope for Venezuela? Our foreign editor, Robert Guest, explains how the world should help pic.twitter.com/9vpkcLBw8G
— The Economist (@TheEconomist) February 5, 2019
4. Peter Apps – Columnist
5. Lois Kapila – Managing Editor, Dublin InQuirer*
- Did the Government Build as Much Social Housing as it Says?
- Council Briefs: a New Look for Dolphin’s Barn, Ballymun Shopping Centre, and More
- Council Seeks Another Round of Input on Fitzwilliam Cycle Route
*Dublin InQuirer is a local paper, dealing largely with urban development, community projects and property issues.
6. Jason Cowley – Editor-in-Chief, New Statesman
Maybe we should look back at the Orwell Foundation’s values, and ask: do these people display…
- Artfulness and clarity of writing?
- Quality of critical thought?
- Public and educational benefit?
- Contribution to the quality of public discourse?
- Intellectual courage and critical thought?
For that matter, do any of the previous winners meet these criteria?
You be the judge.
SUPPORT OFFGUARDIAN
If you enjoy OffG's content, please help us make our monthly fund-raising goal and keep the site alive.
For other ways to donate, including direct-transfer bank details click HERE.
Orwell was a literary genius. Works like 1984 and Animal Farm were masterpieces, as was much of his other work, and they will stand for all time. However, his disillusionment with communism from Spain onwards led him along a path of McCarthyite cooperation and snooping with the Spook Agencies. This is a pattern we have seen since – all the present day Neocohens are ex Trotskyists. You see the same in the UK – ex wannabe Revolutionaries like Aaronovitch turned arch reactionaries. Maybe what motivates them is a lust for power for its own sake, like 1984’s Ingsoc. A desire to control and exercise power over others. The ideology is purely secondary. There may be a sadistic sexual element in this, though that’s one for the headshrinkers. They seem to derive a vicarious thrill from harming others, and causing death and suffering at a safe distance. Certainly people like Blair,… Read more »
If we recall that Orwell worked as a propagandist for the BBC, the list is hardly surprising. If, however, we think of the Orwell who wrote “Politics and the English Language” the list is a travesty.
It depends on whether you think of this award as a sort of journalistic igNoble or not. From the titles cited I honestly thought the prize was for the best NewSpeak piece, one awarded tongue in cheek to journalists who masters of the art of DoubleThink. Then I read that the awards are actually for serious journalism. I am humbled.
Running concurrently with
The Road to Wigan Pier angling awards 2019
” … the writing must be both political and artful – and live up to the values of The Orwell Foundation.”
Just the fact that there is an “Orwell Society” is astonishing – unless they’re just having a laugh, rather like the Flat Earth Society.
‘Best wishes’ and ‘good luck’ to all the ‘candidates’.
“Everything I say is ironic, not excluding what I have just said (or written)”.
attributed to: – Not-Orwell.
The 2019 Pusillanimous Pathetic Piss-taking Presstitute Prize™.
Never forget Orwell was a grass who was ratting out his mates in Catalonia to British intelligence
News to me. Have you any evidence for your claims?
Just read any biography. He supplied lists of people for the Spooks to target. If we’d had a House Unamerican Activities Committee here, he would have been their star witness.
Daily Columnist Sarah Macclesfield’s article, “Merkel: Refugees drowning for Russian dolphin livers” would be my pick. It showed me a side of reality that we just don’t ever see or experience.
Brendon O Connell keeping up the groundbreaking work…….
We always have the problem of what it means to be a politician today: Say the nice words today, but do the ugly opposite tomorrow. So many of our social problems can be traced to people like this senator having had a mother, father, grandmother, or whatever, who “LOVED politics”. I don’t know about most of us here, but when I heard her say that, alarm bells rang in my house in places where I wouldn’t have thought there was even room for an alarm bell. About 53 alarm bells altogether, I would guess. What on earth is there to LOVE about politics? It’s like a doctor who says he loves pustules, although I can see the abstract notion of helping others as a rewarding field to pursue. Somebody needs to set the senator straight on one thing: Politics is NOT a lovable thing in the 21st Century. It is… Read more »
(resending as the DDOS seemed to block posting) Orwell described a problem in a way that seemed to be some sort of sketching out of a dystopian trend – though his original title was ‘1948’ … Doublespeak is the mind’s capacity to package toxic contradiction into narrative acceptance so as to avert, escape or mitigate ‘Room 101’. Perhaps the elephant in the room regarding such masked and deceitful tyrannous thought, word and acted-out outcome is fear of pain of loss. Orwell’s crucifiction of his protagonist is without any resurrection or redemption and so is a toxic message that SEEMS to impart privileged information to an actually controlled ‘opposition’. Addressing the fears, hates and denials in our psyche as a willingness for healing instead of the persistence of an opposition to the conditioned and induced hatred, is to stop feeding the Troll and open to other ways of seeing, which includes… Read more »
And the coveted 2019 Government Stenographer of the Year Award goes to…
am sure hyde and moore et al will be chuffed with themselves now.champers all round eh girls? i hope you are pleased with your efforts.slimey bastards.
I’m thinking they should rename the Orwell Prize, calling it the IngSoc Prize instead.
Javid signed the Assange extradition order today. Will be put to the court tomorrow.
Does anyone know how his health is? Will Jeremy Corbyn speak out against the extradition?
I feel a lot of anger at the way he has been treated but I don’t know how to express it or what can be done.
What an ignorant fool Javid is.
Should have been flayed alive by the more intelligent elements in Parliament long ago.
An opportunistic nincompoop, easy for unscrupulous others to manipulate.
Funny how they all hyperventilate about Beijing bringing in an extradition law for Chinese people from one part of China to another to face criminal charges. That’s all wrong, apparently.
But extraditing Assange for a secret trial in a secret kangaroo court on secret charges is perfectly okay, apparently.
I honestly thought this was a satirical award for the most Orwellian contributions to abusing the truth.
Fairly astonishing that they are blissfully ignorant of the irony. Our struggle is resisting the elite’s daily deluge of totalitarian groupthink.
…yup….sort of the Ig-Nobel
Amazing! The world is abandoning democracy, national and personal sovereignty and sleepwalking into a AI based technocratic dystopian corporate/government capitalist surveillance society in the most Orwellian sense possible and none of these people have anything to say about it.
Democracy is a beautiful thing
Democracy is basically mob rule.
Demonocracy, I should say, pardon the mistake!
I was scratching my head trying to work out precisely what you may have meant. If George Orwell were writing today he’d be labelled and smeared as a conspiracy theorist.
British Politicians Signing Pro Israel Pledges…….. More than 200 parliamentary candidates from a range of political parties have signed a pledge created by two pro-Israel grassroots groups. We Believe in Israel and the Israel Britain Alliance, a project of the Zionist Federation, said activists had persuaded 210 candidates to sign the General Election Pledge for Israel. There are 3,300 candidates from all parties standing in this year’s election, meaning six percent of all candidates have signed the pledge. IBA director Michael McCann said activists’ work represented an “unprecedented grassroots mobilisation,” adding: “It means candidates across the UK understand there is public support for Israel and we hope they will reflect this in their contributions and voting in Parliament.” The pledge includes commitments to oppose boycotts and to support the new working definition of anti-Semitism from the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance, which has been criticised by leading lawyers and academics as… Read more »
Where’s Carol Codswollop and Luke Harding; in fact why don’t they just get it over with, announce they are giving just one further prize to last for all time and hang it on the staff-room wall of the Guardian next to the portrait of Big Brother?
Carol won it last year
All award ceremonies are exercises in self-congratulation and in petting the heads of subservient hacks. The general message is, “Hey you were great! And you too! Hell – you’re all great! We’re all great! And over to Bobby who will tell us all how great we are”. etc. Occasionally someone rocks the boat ever so slightly and will be ignored until that is no longer possible. At which point the disruptive one will be neutered as much as possible, accepted into the fold and this acceptance will be taken as proof of how fair and open the whole system is and therefore of how it proves how “great we all are!”
It is difficult to take these people seriously. They are just hacks; centrist extremists bought and paid for. There should be an O’Brien prize, Winston Smith’s interlocutor in room 101. ‘How many fingers am I holding up Winston’? Or perhaps and Emmanuel Goldstein prize, author of the forbidden book ‘The theory and practise of Oligarchic Collectivism.’ The thing that really stands out for me is the way the intelligence services are now embedded in and run the media. This was pointed out by Gekaufte Journalisten by Udo Ulfkotte a work which would rank alongside Goldstein’s subversive book. Shortly before his death Udo pointed out that almost all the journalists in Germany were on the CIA payroll. The German edition is available but the English language edition will cost you £299.99. Yes, Operation Mockingbird is still in full swing and it seems that NATO intelligence services are beginning to merge into… Read more »
O’Brien Award it has to be! Dead right.
Can’t we send them all to room 101?
We could, if all of us here showed up at their offices.
Maybe rename it to the “1984’s – The Surveillance State Awards… ?
Sweet Lord, this is depressing…
A motley crew, if ever there was one.
I’d give Chris Hedges an Orwell…maybe Caitlin Johnstone.
How come Luke Harding didn’t make the list? After all the loyal work he’s done, he must be very disappointed.
Personally, I nominate CJ Hopkins. He seems to meet the criteria. Moon of Alabama is good too – even if his English needs a bit of cleaning up from time to time, the critical thought is definitely there.
If the Foundation is seeking prize donations I am willing to donate a copy of ‘Collusion’ : How Russia Helped Trump Win The White House by Luke cool hand Harding.
It is in very good condition but has tear staining to many of the pages.
I’m sure the nominee who received this would be thrilled to own this truly classic piece of literary craftsmanship and of course Luke would get to bask in some much deserved personal publicity.
I’m just surprised that Old Luke wasn’t nominated himself.
Maybe Tintin Harding was one of the judges.
But then you would think the judges could nominate themselves.
Probably got disqualified for nominating himself.
They promised not to forget to nominate him next time.
OFF TOPIC
In order to access the off-guardian in the USA–I’m being re-directed to a page for a “security check” which forces me to complete a Captcha (I’m not a robot). After I select the correct images, then I’m allowed to continue to off-guardian.
What purpose does this serve?
Who set this up?
Why has this “security check” been put in place?
(I’m sure it’s not off-guardian admins)
thanks for mentioning this. i didnt get a captcha. but a screen that said something about checking something or other. seemed odd. like a virtual checkpoint.
Yes I’ve had a screen briefly saying “Checking your browser for redirection to Off Guardian Website”. On my mobile device and computer. What does this mean, anyone any ideas? Seems odd to me.
Tutti/Nomad/Wardropper/Systemic,
I also have this problem, and it is extremely off putting.
Clearly it has to be CIA/MI6/Mossad/NSA keeping tabs on all of us to see just how much opposition they have to their pesky plans. If only to prove how paranoid we are???
Seriously though… this is obviously a form of big brother surveillance that we have to get used to, until we get a knock at the door.
Until then just keep on keeping on…
God only knows why offG thought it had to ”up date” its profile?
WHY FIX SOMETHING THAT WASN’T BROKEN??
This has happened to me too, along with a huge alert triange with a caption saying “How can I avoid this happening again?” and suggesting I carry out an anti-virus scan of my device. So, I do the scan, and get the all-clear. Then I do the reCaptcha thing, and get through to OffG, thinking all is well, but every time I subsequently try to access this site, the same message comes up, although now I do NOT have to do the reCaptcha thing again, but simply have to check, “I am not a robot”. Okay, having to check the box every time I want to access the site is perhaps no big deal, but I’d just like to know if this is all intentional, or is it part of the recent trouble some of us seem to be having lately? Good luck with any fixing that needs to be… Read more »
It is intentional, don’t worry. We’ll be switching it off today probably, if the DDoS attack has subsided.
Many thanks.
We all want such attacks dealt with.
we are running a DDoS protection program at the moment, to filter out the bogus requests aimed at taking the server down.
Here is a short bio on Peter Apps from one of his Reuters articles:
“Peter Apps is a writer on international affairs, globalisation, conflict and other issues. He is the founder and executive director of the Project for Study of the 21st Century; PS21, a non-national, non-partisan, non-ideological think tank. Paralysed by a war-zone car smash in 2006, he also blogs about his disability and other topics. He was previously a reporter for Reuters and continues to be paid by Thomson Reuters. Since 2016, he has been a member of the British Army Reserve and the UK Labour Party, and is an active fundraiser for the party. ”
No conflict of interest here then!
I see that poor French dude who just killed himself didn’t make the list of finalists. Probably a more accomplished reporter than all of the others put together: https://consortiumnews.com/2019/06/11/the-death-of-a-foreign-correspondent/
Orwellian!
I totally support these nominees.
They are the embodiment of Orwellian writing, indeed.
Isn’t the list of values and incomplete?
Surely should include integrity and initiative?