Last month, the Hollywood Foreign Press Association announced an additional grant of $75,000 to the New York-based non-profit organization, the Committee to Protect Journalists, targeted to help their efforts in Ukraine. Since 2017, the HFPA has granted them almost $2 million to defend press freedom worldwide and protect journalists and their right to report the news freely and without fear.

In this episode of our podcast series, Golden Globes Around the World, HFPA member Bárbara de Oliveira Pinto talks to Said Gulnoza, CPJ’s program coordinator for Europe and Central Asia, about their meaningful work and the unprecedented challenge they are facing following Russia’s February 24 assault on Ukraine.

“We have seen so many cases of journalists being killed, wounded, taken hostage by Russians or just missing,” says Said, a veteran journalist, and communications expert originally from Tashkent, Uzbekistan. “Every day we receive multiple requests from journalists, both in Ukraine and those who fled outside the country and have been displaced. This war has already claimed the lives of at least seven journalists and right now we are looking into the killing of another veteran journalist and trying to establish whether he was killed for being a journalist because Russians definitely have a record of targeting journalists specifically.  There are at least two journalists right now in the hands of the Russians who were taken hostage and we may not hear about them for a long time.”

As a journalist who was herself forced to flee her own country after being put on trial for her reporting, Said needs help. If you’d like to join us in supporting the Committee to Protect Journalists, please visit their website: www.cpj.org