Reporter lost International Women of Courage award for criticising Trump

The US state department “owes an apology” to a Finnish journalist who saw the International Women of Courage Award, bestowed in part for her work on Russia, taken away because she criticised Donald Trump on social media, a prominent senator said.

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“Secretary [of state Mike] Pompeo should have honored a courageous journalist willing to stand up to Kremlin propaganda,” said Bob Menendez of New Jersey, the ranking Democrat on the Senate foreign relations committee, about Jessikka Aro, an investigative reporter.

“Instead, his department sought to stifle dissent to avoid upsetting a president who, day after day, tries to take pages out of [Vladimir] Putin’s playbook. The state department owes Ms Aro an apology.”

Aro was due to receive the award in March 2019. Rescinding it, the state department insisted she had not been a finalist and blamed the confusion on a “regrettable error”.

But Foreign Policy magazine reported that Aro was punished “after US officials went through [her] social media posts and found she had also frequently criticized President Donald Trump”.

Menendez said the posts concerned “President Trump’s ‘fake news’ attacks on the media”. In one tweet, Aro said Trump and Putin’s summit in Helsinki in July 2018 meant “Finnish people can protest them both. Sweet”.

On Friday, the state department Office of the Inspector General confirmed criticism of Trump caused Aro to lose the award.

CNN quoted its report as saying: “Every person interviewed in connection with this matter acknowledged that had [the Office of Global Women’s Issues] not highlighted her social media posts as problematic, Ms Aro would have received the IWOC award.”

According to the OIG, ambassador to Finland Robert Pence said that “although he appreciated Ms Aro’s work, the risk of embarrassment to the first lady [Melania Trump] and the department was too great to have her appear on stage at the awards ceremony.”

In March last year, the ambassador, a Republican donor not related to vice-president Mike Pence, told the Senate committee he had not been “worried” by Aro’s posts. The then acting director of the Office of Global Women’s Issues said the posts had “not really” caused the withdrawal of the award.

Menendez condemned the Trump administration for “misleading the public and Congress”.

The state department did not immediately apologise.

Aro told CNN: “In my heart I feel like an international woman of courage. That the Trump administration can’t take away from me.”