“The sovereignty of the people and the freedom of the press are two entirely correlative things,” Alexis de Tocqueville. Some crises can act as revelators. What was striking during the Covid-19 crisis was this deep dependence on public goods such as water, transit, health infrastructure, and equipment… Goods are so common that we forget how vital they are. Information is one of those fundamental assets. The role of journalists in a society is to inform, investigate and denounce. More than just a right, press freedom is the sine qua non-condition for any democracy.

If people do not know what is happening in their society, if their leaders if economic, moral, or religious powers act under the veil of secrecy, no one can act. Through 5 symptomatic questions of today’s world and by confronting readers directly with the effects of censorship, UNESCO asks us about the individual and collective consequences of a lack of press freedom. Without this possibility to ask questions: those that annoy, those that disturb, we are all deprived of information, and by the same action.

To silence a journalist is to silence all of us.

Credits
Client: UNESCO
Campaign: #QuestionsThatMatter
Advertising Agency: DDB Paris, France
Agency Supervisor: Vincent Leorat, Mathieu Bliguet, Justine Roux
Executive Creative Director: Alexander Kalchev
Copywriter: Léa Laurenza
Art Director: Idriss Dabre
Press Relations Director: Anne-Marie Gibert
Planner: Cédric Ledoux
Social Media: Sébastien Balondrade
Print Producer: Jocya Mallet
Art buyer: Corinne Persch, Gaëlle De-Pompignan

The Challenge:
For a dictator in a country with low literacy, a single picture can be a real threat, therefore every year, news photographers around the world are threatened, injured and killed in the line of work. It is a severe threat to the free press. It is also a threat to the photograph itself as a vital source for trustworthy, impartial and powerful news reporting.

The Solution
Sweden´s leading newspaper, Expressen, and the largest distributor of papers and magazines, Pressbyrån, joined forces on World Press freedom day in collaboration with the now world-famous photographers Nick Ut, Nilüfer Demir, Jeff Widener and Richard Drew.

The Result
On press freedom day, these ads were published in the newspaper to highlight the importance of having a photographer in place at the right time, or the rest of the world will never know what happened. In some sense, these pictures have changed the world and made a stand for the photographers and the photograph itself as a vital source for impartial and powerful news reporting.

Credits
Entrant Company: Åkestam Holst NoA
Creative: Johan Landin
Creative: Filip Laurent
Creative: Erik Nordenankar
Creative: Julia Sebesteny
Account Manager: Bella Lagerquist
Client Director: Jesper Ander
Strategist: Karl Wikström
Creative designer: Kenna Magnusson
Creative designer: Sara Bellafesta
Entrant Company: BKRY
Graphic designer: Jens Broman
Client: Pressbyrån
Marketing Dept.: Lennart Schultz
Marketing Dept.: Madeleine Berglund
Marketing Dept.: Amanda Mompalao de Piro
Client: Expressen
Client: Reportrar utan gränser
President: Erik Halkjaer
Director/Head of Operations: Anna Widmark
Title: “Without the Whole Picture”
Product: Convenience store/Newspaper
Advertiser: Pressbyrån/Expressen

Tags:
Sweden, Media, Pressbyran, Åkestam Holst

In recent years there has been an increased amount of threat to press freedom from leaders around the globe. Our right to have access to all sides of a news story is being undermined.

The campaign uses a combination of print, OOH and social media to dramatize a world without press freedom. The campaign has been delivered across Canada, and relayed by local IFEX teams in 65 countries around the globe.

Credits
Brand: IFEX
Campaign: Leaders on Leaders | #WorldPressFreedomDay
Advertising Agency: Juniper Park\TBWA Toronto, Canada
Chief Creative Officer: Graham Lang
Creative Directors: Andy Linardatos, Hylton Mann
Art Director: Yan Snajdr
Copywriter: Tom Mednick
Designer: Adam Damiani
Planner: Michael Kates
Managing Director: David Toto
Account Executive: Rita Ni
Senior Account Executive: Anne Legrand
Retouching House: Illusion / Bangkok