Luca Pintér

Luca Pintér was selected for the 2023 Shortlist with All she wanted was a photo of the new-born babies and asked that István and Tamás love the twins.

Luca Pintér graduated from the Department of Sociology at Eötvös Loránd University in Budapest in 2011. She started her career as a journalist in her last year of university as an intern at the biggest tabloid in the country (Blikk), and later worked as an editor-reporter for several TV stations (Hír Tv, RTL Magyarország). Since 2018 she has been working for online media (Index.hu, Telex.hu). Other than covering crime stories, she is mostly interested in general interest stories relevant to a broad range of the population. She particularly enjoys working on the ground, on larger-scale stories, and speaking to people who rarely give interviews. She was the first journalist in Hungary to do a live stream on Facebook of a brain surgery from the operating theatre of the Neurosurgery Clinic in Pécs, which contributed to raising awareness of a new treatment for Parkinson’s disease. She also produced a piece on how births are conducted in Hungarian prisons and the fate of babies born there. Most recently, for an entire year, she and her photojournalist colleague followed the life of a rainbow family who were among the last such family in Hungary to be able to adopt, (and they adopted twins) due to a drastic change in the law. This piece was awarded a special prize by the jury of the Hungarian Press Development Journalism Award in 2023.

Alla Konstantinova

Alla Konstantinova was selected for the 2023 Shortlist with She lost consciousness as it was happening and she’s actually grateful she did.” What we know about the rapes perpetrated in Ukraine by Russian soldiers.

Alla Konstantinova (34) before the start of the Russia’s invasion of Ukraine lived in a small Russian town called Petrozavodsk. She worked as a regional journalist and was a reporter of at small media outlet Mediazona focused on human rights affairs and police brutality. In September 2019, she wrote an article for Mediazonа about regular practice of torturing prisoners at local Correctional Colony No. 9 Petrozavodsk. Konstantinova was harassed by the prison warden and received threats from one of the colony officers during her investigation. That story was selected as runner-up for the 2020 European Press Prize The Investigative Reporting Award https://www.europeanpressprize.com/article/prisoners-of-a-penal-colony-tell-of-torture/. The head of the Colony No. 9 and his deputy were convicted only in February 2023. They were sentenced to seven years in prison.

In March 2022 Konstantinova left Russia because of the anti-war stance and possible threat of persecution, now she is in Lithuania. A month later she was included on the «foreign agents» list compiled by Russia’s Justice Ministry. In Russia, the term «foreign agent» is tantamount «traitor» or «spy». Konstantinova refuses to comply with the requirements of the Ministry of Justice and keeps writing about the war in Ukraine.