De Volkskrant journalists win Tegel for news about mouth cap deal Sywert van Lienden

The Tile was awarded in twelve categories on Monday for the best journalistic productions of 2021. Won in the ‘News’ category de Volkskrantjournalists Frank Hendrickx and Tom Kreling the prize for a series of articles about Sywert van Lienden’s mouth cap dealswho made millions with two associates at the start of the corona pandemic from the trade in faulty protective equipment, while he had always said publicly that he was involved in the trade “for free”.

The NGO Free Press Unlimited won a special Tile for its efforts for journalists in Ukraine. The audience award went to Stefan Vermeulen and Jan-Hein Strop, who also wrote about the face mask trade of Van Lienden and his partners Bernd Damme and Camille van Gestel for the investigative journalism platform Follow the Money. De Tegel is an important journalistic prize for those productions in daily and weekly newspapers, radio and television and multimedia and has been awarded since 2006.

Annegriet Wietsma and Joram Willink were awarded a Tile for their work in the ‘Audio/podcast’ category. They made with The Deventer Media store about the Deventer murder case for radio program Argos is a “disconcerting reconstruction of what media and public opinion can do with a lawsuit”, according to the jury. In the ‘Data’ category, Coen van de Ven and Karlijn Saris van the Green Amsterdammer awarded for their research into mysogeny as a political weapon on social media.

Television maker Sinan Can won a Tile in the ‘Interview’ category for the program Return Caliphate, for which he traveled through northern Syria and spoke with IS fighters from Europe. He asked them how they looked back on the Islamic State regime. Also in this category were NRCjournalists Wubby Luyendijk and Mark Middel nominated for the interview with the Groningen horse farmers Sijbrand and Richtje Nijhoff, who litigated against NAM and the state because of earthquake damage.

In the ‘Pioneers’ category, Thijs Broekkamp won a Tile for his report from the Sinjar region of northern Iraq, where he recorded testimony from Yazidis after the mass killings of the people carried out by IS. Also in the same category was NRCeditor Wafa Al Ali nominated for her podcast Generation 9/11 and her retrospective article about how she and her contemporaries experienced the period after the World Trade Center attacks in New York.