Hanna Geissler and Dan Dove of the Daily Express pick up the Campaign of the Year prize at the British Journalism Awards 2025. Picture: Press Gazette/Adam Duke Photography
Daily Express health editor Hanna Geissler said the Give Us Our Last Rights campaign to legalise assisted dying gave a voice to “ordinary people who have something really important to say”.
She described Give Us Our Last Rights as a “slow burn” campaign lasting more than four years but said it represented “what journalism should do”.
Geissler was speaking after picking up the Public Service Journalism prize at the British Journalism Awards alongside Daily Express new formats editor Dan Dove in December.
Geissler wrote about the stories of those who are terminally ill, who have seen loved ones suffer painful deaths or had relatives travel to Dignitas, a Swiss non-profit organisation providing assisted death.
In June 2025 MPs approved a bill, which had been led by Labour MP Kim Leadbeater, designed to give terminally ill adults in England and Wales the right to end their life. It is now being scrutinised by the House of Lords.
After receiving the award, Geissler said: “I think so much of what journalism should be [is] in service of the public, and this campaign, particularly… it applies to everyone, and it was about recognising voices that maybe weren’t being heard.
“And so, we really share this award with everybody who shared their personal stories in the pages of the Express to make the case of change. And that’s what journalism should do – amplify voices of ordinary people who have something really important to say.”
Geissler added that while “assisted dying is often seen as a really controversial, taboo topic”, running the campaign showed her “a lot of people do support this”.
“There’s opposition too, and that’s to be respected,” she said. “But when you actually look in detail at what a change in the law might mean, it’s often not what people would initially think, and so I think really trying to show what this would actually mean for real people, and the difficulty in what’s happening now and what could happen if you change the law, has been really important in this campaign.”
‘I knew it would be a slow-burning campaign’
Asked about the campaign taking four years to get to this point, Geissler said she expected the process to take a lot longer.
“I think it’s almost the other way around that when we launched it, I knew it would be a slow burn campaign, and I never actually thought we would get to this point where we’re close to never before to change the law within just three, nearly four years,” she said.
“So it’s almost the other way around, that I’m surprised that we’ve got to this point so quickly, but really happy that we’ve made it.”
Dove, who picked up the award alongside Geissler, said the Give Us Our Last Rights campaign is “something that affects everyone, and it’s something that loads of people have got behind, everyone’s got an opinion on it”.
“It’s… a story that’s activated so many people, and that’s the point of journalism,” he said.
“Tell a story, get people talking, and that’s what Hanna and the Express have done amazingly this year.”
The British Journalism Awards judges said: “Since early 2022, the Daily Express has led a campaign that has given a voice to some of the most vulnerable and forgotten members of society.
“It has explored every angle of a difficult debate, putting the voice of those affected at the heart of the story, and undoubtedly played a huge role in securing a major change in the law.”
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