The 2016 Kurt Schork Memorial Fund Awards will be hosted the Thomson Reuters Foundation headquarters in Canary Wharf on October 27, 2016.
Iona Craig, an Irish journalist based in London, has won the Freelance category award for her undercover reporting of the most under-reported story in the Middle East for Al Jazeera America and The Intercept. Rawalpindi-based Pakistani journalist Umer Ali has won the Local Reporter category for elegant and concise prose that does not shy away from unpopular issues.
Press Release from the Kurt Schork Memorial Fund
Yemen’s civil war and sensitive cultural issues in Pakistan were the stories that motivated the winning reporters in this year’s Kurt Schork Memorial Awards in International Journalism, with results announced today.
Iona Craig, an Irish journalist based in London, has won the Freelance category award for her undercover reporting of the most under-reported story in the Middle East for Al Jazeera America and The Intercept.
The judges praised her “informative, beautiful writing, courageous views and empathy”.
Rawalpindi-based Pakistani journalist Umer Ali has won the Local Reporter category for elegant and concise prose that does not shy away from unpopular issues. The judges said: “tackling sensitive issues such as blasphemy law and ethnic tensions in a country where journalism is a dangerous occupation” made his writing exceptional. His winning stories were published by Dawn and Pakistan Today.
In this, the 15h year of the awards, 93 journalists from 36 countries submitted 279 published stories. A shortlist of eight in each of the two categories was judged this year by freelance journalist and author, Anna Husarska, Eye Witness Media’s Sam Dubberley and Cardiff University’s Professor of Journalism, Richard Sambrook.
The annual Awards were not established to reward risk or to encourage risk-taking but the Kurt Schork Memorial Fund Board recognises that some stories necessarily require great risk reflecting the journalistic spirit of the frontline journalist in whose name the awards were created after Kurt was killed in Sierra Leone in 2000 while on assignment for Reuters.
The two category winners will each receive a cash prize of US $5000 to be presented at a prestigious awards ceremony at the Thomson Reuters auditorium, Canary Wharf, London, on Thursday evening, October 27.
Since 2009, the awards ceremony has been hosted by the Thomson Reuters Foundation, the charitable arm of Thomson Reuters.
More details about the awards and the Kurt Schork Memorial Fund (KSMF) are available at www.ksmfund.org and www.facebook.com/KSMFundAwards
For further information please contact:
Corrie Parsonson, awards administrator
enquiries@ksmfund.org
Tel: +44 (0)20 8416 0116 ; Mob: +44 (0)79 9056 5905
