2018 Bastiat Prize Winners Announced

The Bastiat Prize for Journalism is awarded to writers who best explain the importance of freedom with originality, wit, and eloquence.

The winners were announced Saturday night at the closing banquet, emceed by FOX Business's Kennedy, at the annual FreedomFest conference in Las Vegas, which attracted 2,000 attendees.

The winners were:

Bari Weiss

First prize to Bari Weiss of The New York Times.  Ms. Weiss was formerly an editorial page writer for The Wall Street Journal, and has appeared on The Fifth Column podcast which features a number of reason magazine editors and alumni.  reason now administers the Bastiat prizes.

Jake van der Kamp

Second prize to Jake van der Kamp of the South China Morning Post.  Mr. Van der Kamp is a former investment banker who switched to journalism because it "was more fun" and resides in Hong Kong.  At last night's pre-banquet reception he observed that most of the Las Vegas Strip is reproduced exactly, near Hong Kong, in Macau, China.

Connor Friedersdorf

Third prize went to Connor Friedersdorf, the "house libertarian" of The Atlantic magazine.

Bonnie Kristian

Two other finalists included Bonnie Kristian of The Week and Gustavo Arellano of the Los Angeles Times.

Gustave Arellano

Established in 2002, the Bastiat Prize is named after Frédéric Bastiat, whose brilliant, witty essays explained, “The solution to the problems of human relationships is to be found in liberty.”

“This year’s finalists are all erudite and persuasive writers who consistently make the case for freedom and against tyranny,” said Julian Morris, founder of the Bastiat Prize and vice president at Reason Foundation. “What’s more, they all write for mainstream media outlets, suggesting that there is widespread demand for these ideas.”

This year, nominations for the Bastiat Prize were made by an international committee and then the finalists were selected by the Reason Foundation. The winners were chosen by a panel of five judges:

• Tom Palmer, Executive Vice President for International Programs, Atlas Network
• Louis Rossetto, Founder, Wired
• Mohit Satyanand, Chairman of the Board of Trustees, Liberty Institute
• Rebecca Weisser, Former Opinion Page Editor, The Australian
• Jamie Whyte, Director of Research, Institute of Economic Affairs

The Bastiat Prize winner receives $10,000, the runner-up $5,000 and the third-place $1,000, along with a crystal trophy shaped like a candlestick, in memory of Frederic Bastiat's satirical essay about a petition of candle makers.

In 2017, The Washington Post’s Radley Balko and The Wall Street Journal’s Hugo Restall were co-winners of the prize. The complete list of previous Bastiat Prize winners is here.

Reason Foundation is a nonprofit think tank dedicated to advancing free minds and free markets. Reason Foundation produces public policy research on a variety of issues and publishes reason magazine

FreedomFest is also home to the Anthem Film Festival, the largest libertarian film festival, which also announced awards from among 22 finalist films screened over the week.