Dammit, the Propaganda Prize has pupped!

Readers of this blog will know that alongside Hi-Viz clothing the thing I would chuck into Room 101 are the series of EU sponsored prizes. There are utterly unnecessary and frankly wrong. We have the Lux prize the EBBAs and all sorts of other bits and pieces. But in my mind the most monstrous was the Sycophancy prize. Now last thing I heard was the Parliament had got ashamed of this transparent piece of subsidised propaganda and scrapped it.


Buuit somehow it spored and seems to have sprung up over the Rue de La Loi as the 2011 EU Health Prize for Journalists.

Sadly it not about viewing the Brussels press pack as if they were at auction,

"Not sure about that Geoff Meade, bit long in the tooth"
"Have you seen the fetlocks on Ms Mott?" 

and that sort of carry on as it suggests, but about getting journalists around the EU to write articles for their respective outlets that promote the EU line.

The EU Health Prize for Journalists is awarded to stimulate high-quality journalism that raises awareness of issues related to healthcare and patients' rights. The Prize is part of the "Europe for patients" campaign, highlighting 12 health policy initiatives. All these are bound by a common goal: better healthcare for all in Europe.

Or as John Dalli puts it "to stimulate high-quality journalism,  with particular focus on the European Dimension"  So successful is it that 358 hacks from the 27 submitted almost 500 articles. Given the prizes amount to 13,000 EUR that is bloody good value for money at 26 EUR per published article.

Look, if the BMJ or some other Health publication wants to run a Journalism prize across Europe, not problem at all. But it is wrong for such an award to be sponsored by the EU, with taxpayers money.


Ruddy hell there is even a EU-Canada Young Journalist Award!!

Update,
And an Australian one