Awards

Ciudad Juárez, en la sombra del narcotráfico, a courageous blog about drug cartel activities, government repression and police corruption in northern Mexico, is the jury choice in the “Reporters Without Borders Press Freedom” category of this year’s BOBs (Best of Blogs competition), organised by the German radio station Deutsche Welle. The blog’s author, Spanish journalist Judith Torrea, was...

A journalist of newswire Indo-Asian News Service (IANS) has won the prestigious United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) Laadli Media Award for Gender Sensitivity for reportage on women's issues. Azera Parveen Rahman, principal correspondent with IANS, got the Most Promising Young Woman Journalist award for the year 2007. She was among 31 other awardees in the northern region. Rahman was given the...

Aboubakr Jamaï, the co-founder and former managing director of the weekly newspaper Le Journal Hebdomadaire and a pioneer of the independent press in Morocco, has been awarded the 2010 Gebran Tueni Award, the annual prize of the World Association of Newspapers and News Publishers (WAN-IFRA) that honours an editor or publisher from the Arab region. The award honours the editor or publisher who...

Jailed Iranian journalist Abdolreza Tajik and embattled Somali news radio station Radio Shabelle have been awarded the Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) Press Freedom Prize for 2010. The award is given in associated with French retail chain FNAC. “This year we are honouring a courageous journalist, Abdolreza Tajik, and a beleaguered radio station, Radio Shabelle,” RSF secretary-general Jean-François...

Outstanding journalists at the forefront of the battle for press freedom in Ethiopia, Iran, Russia, and Venezuela were honored Tuesday evening at the Committee to Protect Journalists' 20th Annual International Press Freedom Awards benefit dinner. The event raised a record of nearly $1.5 million for CPJ's work exposing press freedom violations, providing assistance to targeted journalists, and...

The United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organisation should cancel the Obiang prize at its next session in October 2010, 96 press freedom and human rights groups have said in a letter to UNESCO Executive Board members. At its last meeting, on June 15, UNESCO agreed to delay the prize to allow for further consultation, following a public outcry from a diverse group of scientists...

Iranian journalist and dissident Akbar Ganji has been declared a World Press Freedom Hero by the International Press Institute (IPI), in recognition of his decades of work defending freedom of speech and equal rights for all, in the face of continued harassment and imprisonment. Often called "Iran’s most prominent political dissident," Ganji spent six years in Iran’s infamous Evin prison for a...

A former Kurdish editor who has been held since January 30, 2009 and sentenced to a total of 166 years in prison with 30-odd cases, has been awarded a Journalists Association of Turkey press freedom prize. on 24 July. Vedat Kursun is former editor of Kurdish-language daily Azadiya Welat. Receiving the award on Kursun's behalf on July 24, his father said, “To Turkish and international public...

Ahmad Zeid-Abadi, an Iranian journalist and political analyst who was imprisoned following Iran’s disputed presidential election in June, has been awarded the 2010 Golden Pen of Freedom, the annual press freedom prize of the World Association of Newspapers and News Publishers (WAN-IFRA). Zeid-Abadi is known for an open letter he wrote from prison in 2000 protesting the judiciary’s treatment of...

Asos Hardi, the Editor-in-Chief and founder of the Awene newspaper in Iraqi Kurdistan, has been awarded the 2009 Gebran Tueni Award, the annual prize of the World Association of Newspapers and News Publishers (WAN-IFRA) that honours an editor or publisher from the Arab region. Hardi, who has gained a reputation as a newspaperman with exceptional leadership skills and high professional standards in...