{"id":9778,"date":"2020-12-03T16:15:47","date_gmt":"2020-12-03T12:15:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/pressreleasenetwork.com\/site\/?p=9778"},"modified":"2020-12-03T16:15:50","modified_gmt":"2020-12-03T12:15:50","slug":"winners-of-2020-kurt-schork-awards-in-international-journalism-announced","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/pressreleasenetwork.com\/site\/2020\/12\/03\/winners-of-2020-kurt-schork-awards-in-international-journalism-announced\/","title":{"rendered":"Winners Of 2020 Kurt Schork Awards In International Journalism Announced"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Three\u00a0winners of\u00a0awards<\/a>\u00a0that honour brave, yet often unrecognised journalists for their reporting on conflict, corruption and injustice are announced today.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Shah Meer Baloch, a journalist from Pakistan, wins the Kurt Schork Freelance Award for his reporting on child labour in the country\u2019s coal mines, the persecution of the Kalasha community and systemic government negligence in the national polio vaccination programme. The judges highlighted how \u201cthe high degree of personal risk involved in tackling such stories in Pakistan cannot be understated\u201d and that Baloch \u201chas demonstrated admirable moral determination\u201d in bringing these stories to light.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Nigerian journalist Fisayo Soyombo is the winner of the Local Reporter Award for his undercover investigation on the west African nation\u2019s criminal justice system. Under a pseudonym, Soyombo feigned an offence for which he was arrested and spent five days in a Lagos police cell and then eight days in Ikoyi prison. The judges commended his \u201cvivid and compelling three-part series\u201d which exposed \u201cthe everyday corruption and abuses of Nigeria\u2019s criminal justice system\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This year\u2019s News Fixer Award goes to Kamiran Sadoun from Syria. The Kurdish fixer has worked with journalists from major news outlets reporting on conflict in north-eastern Syria and the enduring suffering following the collapse of the Islamic State \u2013 including Yazidi mothers forced to choose between their children born to IS fighters or acceptance back into their communities in Iraq. The judges applauded the calibre of the articles written by the reporters with whom Sadoun worked, which were \u201ca testament to his exceptional ability as a fixer\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The News Fixer Award aims to recognise the rarely credited yet often at-risk individuals who typically act as the correspondent\u2019s eyes and ears on the ground. It is the fixers\u2019 local knowledge, as well as their network of official \u2013 and unofficial \u2013 contacts that helps to secure critical interviews and access for the out-of-town correspondents. The prize was inspired by the freelance journalist, author and friend of Kurt Schork, Anna Husarska, and pays tribute to the vital role that these unsung heroes play in coverage from difficult, dangerous and hostile locations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Now in their 19th year, the Kurt Schork Awards in International Journalism are named in honour of American freelance journalist Kurt Schork who was killed in Sierra Leone while on assignment for Reuters in 2000.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A shortlist of eight in both the Freelance and Local Reporter categories was judged by Pulitzer Prize-winning author and journalist Tina Rosenberg, The Intercept\u2019s Peter Maass, and The New Yorker\u2019s Jon Lee Anderson.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The 2020 Freelance category finalists were\u00a0Jiaming Xu (China), Xavier Aldekoa Morales (Spain), Jason Motlagh (USA), Kwasi\u00a0Gyamfi Asiedu\u00a0(Ghana), Pilar Cebrian (Spain), Mohamed Dawjee Haji (South Africa) and Philip Obaji (Nigeria). The Local Reporter category finalists were\u00a0Olha Omelianchuk (Ukraine), Rafael Soares (Brazil), Kourosh Ziabari (Iran), Olatunji Ololade (Nigeria), Hisham Arafat (Syria), Riyaz Wani (India) and Tabassum Barnagarwala (India).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The 2020 News Fixer category finalists were\u00a0Abu Bakr Bashir (Palestine), Barzan Jabr Mohammed Barzan (Iraq), Kareem Sulaiman (Iraq), Khabat Abbas (Syria), Mohammed Hassan (Syria), Seme Luate Khemis (South Sudan) and Ossama Muhammad (Syria).\u00a0The judges in this category were CNN\u2019s Christiane Amanpour, the BBC\u2019s Jeremy Bowen and Lindsey Hilsum from Channel 4 News. \u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The three winners will each receive a cash prize of US $5000.\u00a0Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, in lieu of a physical award ceremony, the Thomson Reuters Foundation will be announcing the winners on its\u00a0Twitter<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0Facebook<\/a>\u00a0social media channels.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Three\u00a0winners of\u00a0awards\u00a0that honour brave, yet often unrecognised journalists for their reporting on conflict, corruption and injustice are announced today. Shah Meer Baloch, a journalist from Pakistan, wins the Kurt Schork Freelance Award for his reporting on child labour in the country\u2019s coal mines, the persecution of the Kalasha community and systemic government negligence in the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":9779,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9778","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pressreleasenetwork.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9778","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pressreleasenetwork.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pressreleasenetwork.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pressreleasenetwork.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pressreleasenetwork.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9778"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/pressreleasenetwork.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9778\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9780,"href":"https:\/\/pressreleasenetwork.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9778\/revisions\/9780"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pressreleasenetwork.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/9779"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pressreleasenetwork.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9778"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pressreleasenetwork.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9778"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pressreleasenetwork.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9778"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}