Affirming the prestige and strong influence of the Golden Hammer and Sickle Award

Before the Award Ceremony, Mr. Ngo Minh Tuan, Editor-in-Chief of Party Building Magazine - Standing Agency of the National Press Award on Party Building, discussed with reporters about the contents surrounding this year's Award.

2022 is the seventh year of the Golden Hammer and Sickle Award. With each edition, the National Press Award on Party Building has increasingly demonstrated its prestige, attracting a large number of authors and groups of authors to participate. In your opinion, what are the factors that make the Award successful?

To have a prestigious press award and be recognized by the press as an aspirational award in the journalism career, the first step is the organization. With the Golden Hammer and Sickle Award, the organization is very strict and methodical. First of all, it is necessary to establish a Steering Committee and an Organizing Committee for the award to have general leadership and direction, then assign a permanent agency - a specialized and highly professional support agency.

Second, it is necessary to mobilize all forces to participate. The Golden Hammer and Sickle Award has mobilized all forces to participate, including Party committees and organizations from the Central to local levels; at each level, there is the cooperation of the Party committee's advisory bodies, including the Propaganda Department, the Party Committee's Organizing Committee and the Journalists' Association's political-social-professional organization. At the same time, propaganda and mobilization attract the attention of cadres, Party members and people to participate. It can be said that the National Press Award on Party building has received the response and participation of the entire political system.

Third, the award judging process is guaranteed to be independent, objective, impartial and transparent. The Award Standing Committee has advised the Steering Committee to establish two award judging councils, including the preliminary council and the final council. The councils are joined by prestigious and experienced journalists; those who have in-depth knowledge of Party building work.

In addition, the organization of the Award Ceremony must also ensure the necessary solemnity. The venue for the Announcement and Award Ceremony is the Hanoi Opera House; the awards are the Golden Hammer and Sickle Cups..., so that the recipients truly feel honored and proud when standing on stage to receive the award.

All these factors have contributed to the success and affirmed the reputation and brand of the Golden Hammer and Sickle Award over the years.

How do you evaluate the quality of the works that entered the final round of the 7th Golden Hammer and Sickle Award - 2022?

The quality of the works that entered the final round of this year's competition in general has made a very welcome step forward. This year, the works selected by the Preliminary Jury for the final round are guaranteed to be commensurate with the quality, and to be in harmony with the genres, types, and regions.

The journalistic character and the “quality” of Party building in the works are much clearer than before. If in the first years of the Award, the “quality” of Party building in the journalistic works submitted to the Award was different between central and local press agencies or uneven between print newspapers and radio, television and electronic newspapers, then up to now, in all genres, the “quality” of Party building has been very profound and obvious.

Many works have taken great pains in researching themes, ways of expression, collecting information and documents, reflecting the breath of life, closely following the key points in information and propaganda work on Party building and building the political system in 2022.

2022 is also a year with a lot of works participating in the Award. There are a total of 2,031 works, equivalent to 2021, much higher than previous years, but the overall quality is more even and better than previous seasons.

To achieve this progress, at the beginning of the year, the Central Organizing Committee issued a Plan for information and propaganda on Party building and political system building in 2022, with 5 focuses.

The first focus is to strengthen the building and rectification of the Party and the political system, resolutely prevent, repel, and strictly handle cadres and Party members who have degraded in political ideology, ethics, lifestyle, and manifestations of self-evolution and self-transformation; and prevent and combat corruption, waste, negativity, power abuse, and group interests.

The second focus is to continue to innovate the Party's leadership method over the political system in the new period.

The third focus is to continue to concretize the Resolution of the 13th National Party Congress and the resolutions of the Party Congresses at all levels for the 2020-2025 term; the situation and results of building socio-economic development programs and plans to implement the 10-year socio-economic development strategy for 2021-2030, with a vision to 2045, in the direction of arousing the aspiration to develop a prosperous and happy country.

The fourth focus is to innovate the content and methods, improve the quality of political and ideological education; continue to protect the Party's ideological foundation in the spirit of Resolution No. 35-NQ/TW dated October 22, 2018 of the Politburo, fight against erroneous and hostile viewpoints in the new situation of the 12th Politburo, refute erroneous viewpoints and distorted arguments of hostile forces, and actively fight against peaceful evolution.

The fifth focus is to build the Party in terms of ethics and implement regulations on setting examples for cadres and Party members; implement Resolution No. 4 of the Central Committee (term XI, term XII) and Conclusion No. 21 of the Central Executive Committee, term XIII, in conjunction with implementing Directive No. 05 of the Politburo on promoting the study and following of Ho Chi Minh's ideology, ethics and lifestyle, further tightening the close relationship between the Party and the people, truly relying on the people to build the Party.

Based on the orientations and propaganda focus on Party building in 2022, all press agencies from the central and local levels organize propaganda content and build article lines, from which select good quality works to participate in the Golden Hammer and Sickle Award.

Another factor that helps improve the quality of works in 2022 is the organization of training on Party building and political system building for reporters and editors nationwide. The Central Organizing Committee coordinated with the Ministry of Information and Communications to organize a training course combining face-to-face and online training nationwide, in which some provinces have connected online to the district level. A total of 1,700 officials, reporters and editors from press agencies from the central to local levels attended, were provided with information and orientation, and were equipped with writing skills.

Therefore, up to now, the works participating in the Award have clearer journalistic qualities and a very profound Party-building quality. These things make the quality of journalistic works participating in the 7th Golden Hammer and Sickle Award - 2022 much better.

Can you share more about the highlights of this year's award-winning works?

This year, many works have in-depth research to contribute to the development of theories on Party building. In addition, there are series of articles that delve into the causes of the phenomenon of many cadres and party members deteriorating in political ideology, morality, lifestyle, self-evolution, self-transformation; or delve into the areas of Party building and organization work, such as cadre work, grassroots party organization work and improving the quality of party members.

There are works that defend the Party's ideological foundation, fight against the wrong views of hostile forces, and send messages about Vietnam moving towards building a happy country that ensures human rights.

Particularly on the issue of combating the distorted arguments about human rights in Vietnam, this year there were many articles that presented richly, vividly, deeply, with very tight arguments, and were highly convincing. This is a very difficult topic but has been presented very successfully by a number of newspapers, including 2 works that won high prizes.

In addition, some topics such as how to make resignation a culture; preventing and combating corruption, waste, and negativity, which have been mentioned in previous seasons, now have more progress, such as raising the issue and solution of how to recover corrupt and negative assets; the mechanism of promoting talents, how to recommend to the Party those who are virtuous, talented, and have outstanding qualities without necessarily having to "progress gradually".

In particular, this year recorded many works that exploited a very important topic, which is the implementation of the Resolution of the 13th National Party Congress along with the resolutions of the Party Congresses at all levels, how to soon bring them into life. Accordingly, many press works have reflected good models and creative ways of doing things in many localities.

Overall, in the 2,031 works participating in the 2022 Golden Hammer and Sickle Award, in my opinion, the majority of the works basically follow the mainstream of "building" as the main, dominant, basic, long-term strategy, while "fighting" is urgent and regular. Through the 2,031 works participating in the Golden Hammer and Sickle Award this time, it also shows a panoramic picture of the country's political, socio-economic, security-defense, and foreign affairs life in 2022 with very bright colors, just as the General Secretary said: "Our country has never had such a foundation, potential, position, and international prestige as it does today".

Could you tell us what is new in this year's judging criteria compared to previous years?

The 2022 judging criteria are basically the same as many previous years, such as being clear about the genre; duration and number of episodes according to regulations; honestly reflecting events and phenomena; clear, easy-to-understand and emotional expression.

Along with that, the Organizing Committee of the Award has also noted some points for the Judging Council. Firstly, it is necessary to encourage and appreciate works in which the writers have committed themselves, ventured into difficult places to discover typical examples, groups, and localities with good practices.

Second, works that explore issues should reflect the high determination and efforts of the entire Party, people, and army to implement the Resolution of the 13th National Party Congress, especially in 2022, the year that lays the foundation for the successful implementation of the Resolution, as well as efforts to restore the economy after the COVID-19 pandemic.

From the perspective of the standing body of the Award, in your opinion, what improvements are needed in the coming time so that the Golden Hammer and Sickle Award can continue to develop and strengthen its reputation and position as one of the leading journalism awards in the country?

From an organizational perspective, we will consider learning from past seasons, especially 2022, to advise the Steering Committee and the Organizing Committee to further improve the criteria and standards in selecting works.

The organization of the Award will also be further improved, with attention paid to promoting the Award and the winning works better, creating a wider spread.

Regarding the content, there will have to be additions to make it more suitable to reality, so that the works participating in the Golden Hammer and Sickle Award cover all angles, all fields, all aspects of the country's political, economic, social, security, defense, and foreign affairs life.

Currently, the Golden Hammer and Sickle Award is not only expanding domestically but also internationally. Many Vietnamese people living abroad have written and submitted articles to the Award. And every year the Award honors authors who are Vietnamese living abroad, this year alone there are two authors (one is Vietnamese living in Japan and the other is Vietnamese living in Taiwan (China).

Thank you very much!