Report on Pedrinhas Prison Complex Wins Folha Grand Prix

02/19/2015 - 09h01

The "Barbarism in Pedrinhas" series of articles, which revealed the violence in the Pedrinhas prison complex in Maranhão, has won the Folha Grand Prix 2014 (Grande Prêmio Folha 2014), awarded since 1993 to the best work from the newspaper.

The first report, by Eduardo Scolese, made public the video which shows prisoners in Pedrinhas, in São Luis, exhibiting the decapitated bodies of several victims of a riot in the complex.

Three days after the first report, security at the prison had not improved. Reporter Juliana Coissi and photojournalist Marlene Bergamo were able to enter the complex without being subjected to any search. They walked around freely in the complex and took pictures of the conditions on their telephones.

A survey commissioned by Folha showed that Pedrinhas alone accounted for 28% of the homicides in Brazilian prisons in 2013.

The panel which chose the winning reports was comprised of Folha ombudsman Vera Guimarães Martins, executive-director of circulation and marketing Murilo Bussab, and the columnists Juca Kfouri, Gregorio Duvivier and Leão Serva.

EBOLA

The prize for best report went to a series of articles about the Ebola epidemic in West Africa. The reporter Patrícia Campos Mello and the photojournalist Avener Prado were the only Brazilian media professionals to visit Sierra Leone, where the epidemic is most serious.

They showed how cultural factors have facilitated the spread of the virus, as well as covering deficiencies in local health systems and the stigma that afflicts survivors of the disease.

Leandro Colon's report about life in the old German Democratic Republic and in Poland on the 25th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall received the prize in the special category.

Daniel Marenco won the photography prize with an image that showed elite squad police officers in Rio raising the Brazilian flag in the Vila Kennedy slum, after a conflict with drug traffickers in the neighboring community Vila Aliança.

In the art category, the prizewinning work was "What Folha Thinks", a double-page spread created by Uirá Machado (opinion editor), Fabio Marra, Catarina Bessel and Márcio Sampaio, which lays out the positions defended by the paper.

Last year, Folha launched a campaign to publicize the editorial position regarding various polemic issues, while emphasizing its respect for different points of view.

The coverage of Brazil's 7-1 defeat by Germany at the World Cup was considered the best work in the editing category. The team was led by Naief Haddad (sports editor), Fabio Marra (arts editor), Mateus Benato, José Benedito da Silva and Alan Gripp.

The report "The best theaters", by Fabiana Seragusa and Rafael Balago, from the "sãopaulo" magazine, won the service category with a survey of the best 60 theaters in the city.

Translated by TOM GATEHOUSE

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	Daniel Marenco - 13.mar.2013/Folhapress
	Daniel Marenco won the photography prize with an image that showed police officers raising the flag in the Vila Kennedy slum