ICIJ unveils Daniel Pearl Awards finalists

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The International Consortium of Investigative Journalists is pleased to announce the finalists for the 2011 Daniel Pearl Awards for Outstanding International Investigative Reporting.

This award is unique among journalism prizes in that it was created specifically to honor cross-border investigative reporting. It is presented by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, a project of the Center for Public Integrity.

This year’s biennial competition drew 70 entries from 30 countries. Topics ranged from the World Health Organization and Center for Disease Control’s handling of the swine flu and H1N1 flu pandemic to the world of human trafficking and sex slavery in Eastern Europe. The seven finalists represent some of the world’s best investigative reporting and include stories from Afghanistan and Iraq, Eastern Europe, Africa, Latin America, and the United States.

“I’m honored to present this outstanding work,” said ICIJ Director Gerard Ryle, the group’s first non-American director. “We are acknowledging journalists whose work often places them in great danger and does more than grab headlines; it generates meaningful impact and exposes the truth.”

William E. Buzenberg, the executive director of the Center for Public Integrity said, “I’m delighted to announce these seven finalists. Their work exemplifies investigative journalism’s capacity to uncover hardships that affect people from all corners of the globe.”

A panel of five international judges selected the seven finalists for the two, $5,000 first-place prizes. One will go to a U.S.-based reporter or news outlet, and the second to a non-U.S.-based journalist or news outlet. Five additional finalists will each receive $1,000 prizes. The winners will be announced in October at this year’s Global Investigative Journalism Conference in Kyiv, Ukraine. The finalists are:

  • Tamiflu: This multi-country investigation involving collaboration with NPR, Radio Canada/CBC, and Swiss TV TSI, examined the decisions made by the World Health Organization and The Centers for Disease Control in light of the swine flu and H1N1 flu pandemic that compelled governments around the world to spend billions of dollars to stockpile the anti-viral drug, Tamiflu.
  • Lethal Commerce: Bloomberg Markets Magazine senior writer Michael Smith’s investigation followed the stories of impoverished victims, brokers, and doctors involved in illicit organ transplant trafficking in Latin America.
  • The Invisible Army: Freelance writer Sarah Stillman’s story appeared in the New Yorker as a feature-length investigative piece that reveals the plight of more than 70,000 low-wage foreign workers on U.S. military bases in Afghanistan and Iraq and detailed the grave abuses against so-called “third country nationals” in both war zones.
  • Peace Corps - Trust Betrayed: The ABC News investigation by Anna Schecter and Brian Ross uncovered the Peace Corps leadership’s mistreatment of volunteers who were raped or sexually assaulted at their posts and a shocking failure to protect these young American women abroad.
  • Offshore Crime, Inc.: The report by the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project uncovers how Eastern European criminals and corrupt politicians are using offshore havens as fronts for money laundering, tax evasion, and drug and weapon smuggling.
  • The Price of Sex: For years, photojournalist Mimi Chakarova has investigated the world of human trafficking and sex slavery. She reveals in riveting detail the underground criminal networks and the experiences of Eastern European women forced into prostitution abroad.  
  • Pirates, Smugglers and Corrupt Tycoons: Five reporters from the Forum for African Investigative Reporters (FAIR) followed development projects in African countries and found that criminal activities like piracy and oil smuggling are supporting economies and communities when weak and inefficient governments fail.      

Formerly the ICIJ Award, the Pearl prize was renamed in 2008 in honor of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl, who was slain by Pakistani militants in 2002. Selections this year were made by a distinguished international panel of judges:

  • Sheila Coronel, director, Stabile Center for Investigative Journalism, Columbia University; former executive director, Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism.
  • Manny Garcia, executive editor, El Nuevo Herald, Miami, leads international staff of journalists at one of the most important daily newspapers focused on Latin America.
  • Ginger Thompson - staff writer, The New York Times; former Mexico bureau chief for the Times, reports on international affairs.
  • Margo Smit, director, Dutch-Flemish Association of Investigative Journalists, University of Groningen journalism teacher, and TV news producer.
  • Bill Kovach, former New York Times reporter and Washington Bureau chief, founding chairman of Committee of Concerned Journalists and consultant to the Project for Excellence in Journalism

 

Advisory Committee

Bill Kovach, United States, former curator of the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard University and an American newspaperman for 30 years, is the North American representative and chair of the ICIJ Advisory Committee.

Kovach has been a journalist and writer for 40 years, including 18 years as a reporter and editor for The New York Times. As an editor, Kovach supervised reporting projects that won four Pulitzer Prizes, including two during his two-year tenure as editor of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, the first Pulitzers awarded to that paper in 20 years.

Kovach was a 1988-89 Nieman fellow at Harvard University and remained as curator of the Nieman Foundation journalism fellowship program until 2000.

Among his many other awards are the Sigma Delta Chi Award for contributions to journalism research in 2000, the National Mental Health Award in 1968, the New York State Bar Association Award in 1968, the AEJMC Professional Freedom and Responsibility Award in 1992, the Sigma Delta Chi First Amendment Award in 1996, the Goldsmith Career Award for Excellence in Journalism in 2000, and the Elijah Parish Lovejoy Award, which was accompanied by an honorary doctorate from Colby College.

Kovach served on Pulitzer juries from 1987-1990 and is a board member of the Committee to Protect Journalists.

He is co-author of Warp Speed: America in the Age of Mixed Media, The Elements of Journalism: What Newspeople Should Know and the Public Should Expect, and Blur: How to Know What's True in the Age of Information Overload.

Kovach is a long-time advisory board member of the Center for Public Integrity.

Rosental Calmon Alves, United States/Brazil, is a journalism professor at the University of Texas at Austin, where he holds the first John S. & James L. Knight Chair in International Journalism. For a decade, Alves worked as a foreign correspondent for Brazil’s daily newspaper, Jornal do Brasil, reporting from Spain, Argentina, Mexico, and the United States. He taught journalism at two Rio de Janeiro universities and in 1987-88 became the first Brazilian to be selected as a Nieman Fellow at Harvard University. As a correspondent and editor, he has participated in or directed several investigative reporting projects. Alves is the Latin American representative on the Advisory Committee.

Phillip Knightley, Britain, was a member of The Sunday Times' Insight team in its heyday, and it was there that he first uncovered the Kim Philby spy scandal. He later discovered that the newspaper’s executives had informed British intelligence about the activities of their journalists.

The Australian-born Knightley also played a central role in investigating and exposing thalidomide birth defects and later detailed the scandal, which came to be known as the Profumo affair, in his 1987 book An Affair of State.

The author of nine books, Knightley wrote A Hack’s Progress about his life as an investigative reporter in 1998. In 2000, Knightley released his latest book, Australia: A Biography of a Nation.

He is the European representative on the Advisory Committee.

Read Phillip Knightley's essay on how to be a great investigative reporter in ICIJ's Secrets of the Masters series.

Gwen Lister, Namibia, founded The Namibian in 1985 during apartheid colonialism in the country. The newspaper and staff were consistently targeted by right-wing elements and security forces because of the perception that the newspaper supported the liberation movement. Lister was jailed twice, in 1984 under the Official Secrets Act, and in June 1988, when she was detained without trial and denied access to a lawyer. Authorities jailed her the second time in an attempt to force her to reveal the source of a secret document she had published, which proposed sweeping new powers for the police. She was four months pregnant at the time. Attacks on the newspaper and harassment of its staff culminated in an arson attack that destroyed the offices of The Namibian in October 1988.

After independence in 1990, the newspaper was again targeted by right-wing elements after a front-page report about a possible coup attempt against the new government. The editorial offices were damaged in a phosphorous grenade firebombing. In these and other bombings, The Namibian never missed an edition.

The role of The Namibian in pre-independence Namibia has been honored by a number of international awards. In 2000, Lister was named one of 50 World Press Freedom Heroes of the last half century by the International Press Institute. In 1992, she was awarded a Committee to Protect Journalists’ International Press Freedom Award and the Press Freedom Award of the Media Institute of South Africa.

In October 2011, after 26 years at the helm of The Namibian Lister handed over the reins to Tangeni Amupadhi. At the same time she formalized the non-profit Namibia Media Trust which owns the newpaper, and appointed other Trustees. Lister is Executive Director of The Free Press of Namibia (Pty) Ltd and Chairs the Trust - in terms of which the profits of The Namibian are ploughed back into promotion of free and independent press, excellence and training in journalism in the wider media community.

Lister was a 1996 Nieman fellow at Harvard.

Goenawan Mohamad, Indonesia, is founder and editor of Tempo magazine, Indonesia's most-respected newsmagazine. It was banned by the Suharto government in 1994 after publishing details of the government’s purchase of aging East German destroyers, a confidential subject of dispute among Suharto’s cabinet members. In 1995, Mohamad founded the Institute for the Studies on Free Flow of Information (ISAI) which produced alternative media intended to circumvent censorship. Mohamad later formed the Alliance of Independent Journalists, the only independent journalism organization in Indonesia. Following Suharto’s resignation in May 1998, Mohamad led a group of reporters in restarting Tempo online and in print. Mohamad was a 1990 Nieman fellow at Harvard University and in 1997 received the Nieman fellows’ Louis Lyons Award for Conscience and Integrity in Journalism. In 1998, he was awarded the Committee to Protect Journalists’ International Press Freedom Award. Mohamad is a visiting history professor at the University of California at Berkeley this year, where he will teach courses in Indonesian and Southeast Asian culture. Mohamad is the Asian representative on the Advisory Committee.

Reginald Chua is Editor, Data and Innovation at Thomson Reuters, based in New York. From July 2009 to March 2011, he was Editor-in-Chief of the South China Morning Post, responsible for the editorial operations of the Hong Kong-based news media company. Prior to that, he had a 16-year run at The Wall Street Journal, including as a Deputy Managing Editor in New York, where he managed the global newsroom budget, supervised the graphics team, and helped develop the paper’s computer-assisted reporting capabilities. He began a 16-year career at the Journal as a correspondent in Manila, opened the paper’s bureau in Hanoi, became the longest-serving editor of the Journal’s Hong Kong-based Asian edition, then moved to New York, where his initial duties were to manage the paper’s global newsroom budget and administration. During his eight-year tenure as editor of the Asian Journal, the paper won numerous Society of Publishers in Asia awards for editorial excellence; staff at the paper also won a Pulitzer Prize and an Overseas Press Club of America award. He also covered the Philippines for the Straits Times, worked at Reuters in Singapore, and was a television and radio journalist at the then-Singapore Broadcasting Corp. A native of Singapore, Reginald graduated with a Master’s in Journalism from Columbia University and a Bachelor’s in Mathematics from the University of Chicago.

Brant Houston, United States, is a journalism professor at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, where he holds the John S. & James L. Knight Chair in Investigative Reporting. Houston served for more than 10 years as executive director of Investigative Reporters and Editors (IRE), a nonprofit organization of more than 4,000 members, and as a professor at the University of Missouri School of Journalism. He co-founded the Global Investigative Journalism Network in 2003 and is chair of the recently formed Investigative News Network. Before joining IRE, Houston was an award-winning investigative reporter for 17 years at metropolitan papers in the United States. He is author of Computer-Assisted Reporting: A Practical Guide and co-author of The Investigative Reporter’s Handbook. He has taught investigative reporting and computer-assisted reporting in more than a dozen countries.

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