The 2021 Nobel Peace Prize has been awarded to two journalists continuing their reports from anti-authority positions in their respective countries under authoritarian rule.

       Sharing this year's prize are Maria Ressa of the Philippines and Russia's Dmitry Muratov.

       Freedom of the press is the foundation of democracy and peace, and contributes to international collaboration and disarmament. The two journalists were honored for holding firm to press freedom despite the danger posed to themselves.

       Ressa co-founded the news website Rappler in 2012. The media outlet has, through investigative reporting, continued to criticize the inhumane nature of the killings of suspects under President Rodrigo Duterte's government in the name of an "anti-drug campaign."

       Muratov has served as editor-in-chief for Russia's independent newspaper Novaya Gazeta for 24 years. The paper has consistently condemned corruption and police violence that is rampant in the country, based on solid facts.

       In relation to the Russian paper's reports, Anna Politkovskaya, who denounced Moscow's Chechnya policy under President Vladimir Putin, and five other reporters were killed.

       This year marks the first time for the Nobel Peace Prize to be conferred to journalists since German reporter Carl von Ossietzky won the prize in 1935 for decrying the Nazi tyranny. It's also the first time the Peace Prize has commended anyone in journalism since the end of World War II. Behind this lies the fact that freedom of the press has been in peril amid the global spread of authoritarian rules.

       In Hong Kong, authorities have tightened control of free speech by invoking a national security law. In Afghanistan, the Taliban, an Islamic fundamentalist group, has interfered with news organizations and sabotaged female reporters, raising serious concerns.

       Saudi Arabian dissident journalist Jamal Khashoggi was assassinated in 2018, while other reporters have been detained in China, Turkey and elsewhere.

       Amid the spread of social media, cases have emerged in which those in power have disseminated fake news to serve their own interests.

       In the U.S. presidential election in 2020, unsourced information on vote rigging went viral, leading to the attack on the Capitol building by a mob of supporters of then President Donald Trump.

       Threats to freedom of the press are not only happening afar. Let us take the Norwegian Nobel Committee's decision to award the two journalists with the Peace Prize as an opportunity to renew our awareness that journalism unyielding to power is indispensable to sustain democracy.

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