2025’s Media Freedom Awards celebrated a year of brilliant reporting and investigative journalism. The Daily Mail won the Investigation award, and Ian Birrell took the Freelance Reporting and Columnist of the Year awards, but one winner stood out against the rest. The Guardian’s former Gaza correspondent, Malak A Tantesh, won the Young Journalist of the Year Award at the tender age of 20.
Immense talent and bravery
The UN found that at least 248 journalists had died in Gaza conflicts by September 2025. Not everyone with a journalism degree has the courage or tenacity to endure harsh conditions, but Tantesh did. The young reporter spent 18 months writing about the war’s impact on her loved ones and lost her home during a bombing. She then spent 18 months investigating what she called a gateway to hell.
Meticulous reporting
Organisations such as https://schoolofjournalism.co.uk/ can teach you skill, but no school teaches the kind of courage Tantesh displayed. The Guardian’s editor says she has a brilliant journalistic future ahead of her. She was only 19 when she became a correspondent, but her meticulous and moving reporting has been celebrated throughout the world. She spent two years living in constant fear. When the first bombs struck, she was just another university student waking up to attend an early-morning lecture. When she heard rockets firing, she thought she was dreaming.
In the years that followed, Tantesh would move from home to home, never knowing where she might sleep the following day. Even so, she still finds beauty in the country of her birth.
