Delivered at the World News Media Congress, Marseille, 1 June 2026

By David Walmsley, World Editors Forum president, editor-in-chief of The Globe and Mail, Canada

Bonjour mes amis. Bienvenue à la cérémonie de remise du prix de la Plume d’or de la liberté.

Je m’appelle David Walmsley et je suis le président du forum Mondial des rédacteurs en chef – the World Editors Forum.

It is an honour to welcome all of you to this annual highlight. The Golden Pen of Freedom recognizes those who have made supreme contributions to the defence and promotion of press freedom. Sometimes with their lives.

Since 1961, the journalism community has come together annually to reflect on what it takes, today, to be a journalist. To understand the responsibility and to mark the profound contribution of an individual or a group.

The recipients run parallel to the dramatic stories of each era. In 1961 the first award went to Ahmet Emin Yalman, a Turkish journalist and founder of the International Press Institute.

Laureates followed from Burma, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Sri Lanka, USA, Indonesia, Greece, Czechoslovakia, Argentina, France, Brazil, Germany, South Korea and Portugal.

Then in 1977 Roy Lilley, a leading journalist covering the violence in my homeland of Northern Ireland, won the Golden Pen. That brave editor worked in a newsroom that had been blown up by bomb and ensured the job of editor saw him squeezed on all sides, as he pursued the uncomfortable facts that led to the truth.

I hover over the awarding of the Golden Pen to Mr Lilley because that man hired me into my first full time job as a junior reporter in Belfast 34 years ago. His decision changed my life, cementing in me the belief the actions of one person can make all the difference.

And that uplifting and hopeful message is one all of us must cling to in these desperate times, where the storyteller is targeted as much as respected. Where the prosecution of the truth has become all too often a crime. Where those who dare to get the story out are threatened and attacked.

We remember in particular today Jimmy Lai, a previous recipient of the Golden Pen who remains incarcerated in a Chinese prison.

The past few years, it is our sad duty to report, have been the most savage in history toward journalists. Outside of world war, no period comes close.

And at the top of the casualty list is the slaughter in Gaza where a still undefined total number of journalists lost their lives, certainly more than 200 since the beginning of the conflict between Israel and Hamas. Often hidden from view and killed with utter impunity. Indeed, the crime against journalists has a near total impunity rate. Kill a journalist. Get away with it. Unless we, as a journalism community, stand firm.

That’s why this year, WAN-IFRA and the World Editors Forum have awarded the Golden Pen of Freedom to an amalgam of journalists who against all the odds, including the killing of colleagues and family members, have persevered in the most grotesque circumstances – to honour the memories of those killed and to ensure the world can never say – we didn’t know.

The 2026 WAN_IFRA Golden Pen of Freedom is awarded to the Professional Photographers and Videographers Working in Gaza.

Please welcome to the stage: Mohammed Abed from AFP, Fatima Shbair from The Associated Press and Mohammed Salem of Reuters.