(CPJ/IFEX) – The following is a 17 October 2001 CPJ press release: Four International Journalists Honored With CPJ Press Freedom Awards CPJ’s Prestigious Burton Benjamin Award Honors Joseph Lelyveld Eleventh Annual Awards Ceremony in New York City on November 20 October 17, 2001 – The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) will present its 2001 International […]
(CPJ/IFEX) – The following is a 17 October 2001 CPJ press release:
Four International Journalists Honored With CPJ Press Freedom Awards
CPJ’s Prestigious Burton Benjamin Award Honors Joseph Lelyveld
Eleventh Annual Awards Ceremony in New York City on November 20
October 17, 2001 – The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) will present its 2001 International Press Freedom Awards to four journalists from China, Zimbabwe, Argentina, and the West Bank who have defied death threats, braved bullets, and endured jail to report the news.
The 11th Annual Press Freedom Awards will be presented at a dinner ceremony at the Waldorf-Astoria in New York City on Tuesday, November 20.
The 2001 CPJ International Press Freedom Award recipients are:
Jiang Weiping, a veteran journalist currently imprisoned in China on charges of “revealing state secrets” for his aggressive reports on official corruption;
Geoff Nyarota, the editor of Zimbabwe’s only independent daily newspaper, which has been a relentless critic of President Robert Mugabe. Nyarota has been threatened and jailed, and his paper has been bombed twice;
Horacio Verbitsky, who has blazed a trail for Argentina’s press by exposing government corruption, reporting fearlessly on past atrocities, and battling for the repeal of the country’s restrictive press laws;
Mazen Dana, a cameraman for Reuters in the West Bank city of Hebron who has been beaten repeatedly and shot on several occasions while covering clashes between Palestinians and Jewish settlers.
CPJ will also honor Joseph Lelyveld, former executive editor of The New York Times, with the Burton Benjamin Memorial Award for a lifetime of distinguished professional achievement and devotion to the cause of press freedom.
Gene Roberts, chairman of CPJ’s board of directors, said, “We pay tribute to these four brave journalists who have risked their lives to challenge tyranny, oppose censorship, and search for the truth.”
Robert W. Pittman, co-chief operating officer of AOL Time Warner, will chair the dinner, which will be hosted by NBC News anchor Tom Brokaw. Joining Brokaw as speakers at the awards ceremony are: Dan Rather, CBS News anchor, Carol Guzy of The Washington Post, Alberto Ibargüen of The Miami Herald, Dean Baquet of The Los Angeles Times, and Andrea Koppel of CNN.
Ann Cooper, CPJ executive director, said of the awardees, “Each of these journalists, with pictures or words, has revealed stories that others wanted to hide. Each has been attacked for doing his job too well.”
Information on the award recipients follows:
2001 International Press Freedom Award Winners
JIANG WEIPING is a veteran journalist currently jailed on charges of “revealing state secrets” after pushing the boundaries of censorship and aggressively reporting on the taboo subject of official graft in China’s industrial northeast region. He is former Dalian bureau chief for the newspaper Wen Hui Bao and reporter for the state news agency Xinhua. Jiang was detained in December 2000 after writing a series of articles exposing government corruption for the Hong Kong tabloid Front-Line. Though he was brought to trial on September 5, 2001, no verdict has been announced.
Jiang’s reporting uncovered several corruption scandals involving high-level officials, including such well-connected leaders as Bo Xilai, governor of Liaoning province and son of Communist Party elder Bo Yibo. Jiang also revealed that the vice mayor of Shenyang gambled away 30 million yuan (US$3 million) of public funds, and he reported that the mayor of Daqing used state money to buy apartments for each of his 29 mistresses.
Though Chinese government leaders have urged journalists to help fight corruption, few legal protections exist for reporters who do so. Courageous investigative journalists like Jiang who work independently to expose official impropriety risk harassment and imprisonment. According to CPJ records, at least 25 journalists are imprisoned in China, more than any other country in the world.
GEOFF NYAROTA is the editor of The Daily News, Zimbabwe’s only independent daily newspaper. Launched less than two years ago, the Harare-based paper has managed to become Zimbabwe’s most influential voice despite repeated attempts by President Robert Mugabe’s government to silence it.
Nyarota’s office still bears the scars of the homemade bomb that was thrown at the front door from a passing car in April 2000. And in January 2001, unknown assailants blew up the paper’s printing presses. Police investigations have languished and no arrests have been made, although credible sources have attributed these attacks to the Zimbabwean military.
Most recently, on August 16, 2001, Nyarota and three other journalists from The Daily News were arrested and charged with publishing “rumor or false information likely to discredit security forces” after a front-page article reported that police vehicles had been used to support violent raids on some white-owned commercial farms. A judge invalidated the charges and the journalists were freed days later.
HORACIO VERBITSKY is one of Argentina’s leading investigative journalists, and a columnist and press freedom activist. He has built his distinguished career by fearlessly exposing government corruption and battling restrictive press laws. A working journalist since 1960, Verbitsky’s relentless pursuit of a story has earned him his nickname el perro, or the dog.
In January 1991, Verbitsky was thrust into the national spotlight after writing an article alleging that Argentine president Carlos Menem’s brother-in-law had demanded a bribe from a company in return for tax exemption. The scandal became known as Swiftgate. Menem called Verbitsky’s scoop “a journalistic crime,” but the affair forced the president to purge half his cabinet and put corruption on the national agenda.
His best-selling book The Flight contained the first public confessions of an official involved in Argentina’s “dirty war” and related how hundreds of prisoners of the military regime from 1976 to 1983 were thrown to their deaths from airplanes. Verbitsky has played a front-line role in strengthening democracy and safeguarding press freedoms in Argentina and Latin America.
MAZEN DANA is a cameraman for the Reuters news agency covering one of the most dangerous beats in the world, the West Bank city of Hebron, where journalists are routinely targets of violence. Dana has been wounded repeatedly during the seven years he has documented the clashes in his hometown for Reuters.
Despite the great physical risk, Dana’s commitment to his work keeps powerful images of Hebron’s clashes in the public eye. Hebron is a cauldron of religious and political tension. In a city of 150,000 Palestinians, some 400 Jewish settlers live in the center of town, protected by hundreds of Israeli soldiers.
In May 2000, Dana was shot in the leg with a rubber-coated bullet while filming Palestinian youths throwing rocks at Israeli soldiers. Two months later, Jewish settlers beat him unconscious while he tried to film a conflict. The next day, an Israeli police officer slammed Dana’s head in the rear door of an ambulance while he was filming the evacuation of a Palestinian youth wounded in clashes. Dana was shot again last October, in the same leg, two days in a row.
Burton Benjamin Memorial Award
During nearly four decades at The New York Times, Joseph Lelyveld helped define the highest principles of American journalism. Lelyveld began at the Times as a copy boy in 1962. His distinguished reporting included years as a foreign correspondent in London, New Delhi, Hong Kong, and Johannesburg. His 1985 book, Move Your Shadow, based on his reporting on South Africa under apartheid, won several major awards, including the Pulitzer Prize. Other honors for his reporting have included the George Polk Memorial Award and a Guggenheim fellowship.
Lelyveld moved from foreign correspondent to foreign editor in 1987, then he became managing editor and finally executive editor of the Times from 1994 until his retirement last month.
In an interview during his tenure as executive editor, Lelyveld said that communities need a “free and rambunctious press” in order to create “a place where issues can be defined, redefined and debated.”
The Burton Benjamin Memorial Award, given for a lifetime of distinguished achievement for the cause of press freedom, honors the late CBS News senior producer and former CPJ chairman, who died in 1988.
The Committee to Protect Journalists is an independent, nonprofit organization dedicated to the defense of press freedom worldwide.
