Fintan O’Toole

Fintan O’Toole was born in Dublin in 1958 and has been a columnist with The Irish Times since 1988. He has been drama critic of The Sunday Tribune, The Irish Times and the New York Daily News. He contributes regularly to The Guardian, The Observer and The New York Review of Books. He is the author of 16 books on culture, politics and history. Awards include the PEN Martha Albrand Award, the AT Cross Award for Supreme Contribution to Irish Journalism, and TV3 Journalist of the Year. 

Fintan O’Toole was nominated for the European Press Prize shortlist in 2016 and he won the 2017 European Press Prize Commentator Award with ‘Columns on the Brexit’

Tomasz Lis

Tomasz Lis began his career in 1990 in TVP (Polish Public Television) after winning an open competition for the post of a newsreader for TVP’s main evening news, the most widely watched in Poland ‘Wiadomości’. Between 1994 and 1997 he held the position of a senior correspondent for TVP in Washington, D.C.  From 1997 to 2004 he worked for the TVN network, where he created and anchored the news broadcast FAKTY – second in viewership after TVP’s (Polish Public Television) ‘Wiadomości’. From 2006 to 2007 he was associated with Polsat Network, being a Member of Polsat’s Board of Directors. While at Polsathe was an author and host of Poland’s most watched political talk-show at the time ‘What’s with Poland?”.  From 2008 till 2016 he anchored his own political talk-show TOMASZ LIS LIVE the most watched political show in Poland rating and viewership-wise.

His cooperation with TVP ended when representatives of Law and Justice Party took over public television in Poland and dismissed all independent journalists.   

In February 2012, he founded ‘NaTemat’, a news website, featuring columnists and various news sources. In March 2012 he became editor-in-chief of the current affairs weekly ‘Newsweek Polska’. He is also an author of non-fiction political books with “Co z tą Polską?” (What’s with Poland?)   published in 2003 with which became a bestseller in Poland, selling over 100,000 copies.

During the past 17 years of his career he has interviewed a number of key figures in world politics. Among them are Bill Clinton, George Bush Sr., George W. Bush, Michail Gorbachev, Dmitri Medvedev, Tony Blair, Gordon Brown, Yitzhak Rabin, Benjamin Netanyahu, Hillary Clinton, Condoleezza Rice and Colin Powell. 

Tomasz was awarded nine ‘Wikotor’s’ the equivalent of the American Emmy Awards. Awarded, as he only journalist in Poland, “Journalist of the Year’ prize by PRESS magazine in 1999, 2007 and 2009.

Tomasz Lis was selected for the the 2017 European Press Prize shortlist with his columns for Newsweek Polska