In powerful remarks, the evening’s honorees – Fareed Zakaria of CNN, Roman Anin of Russia, and Lina Attalah of Egypt – underscored the importance of truth-telling in an era rife with disease, disinformation and discord, as world leaders with authoritarian leanings seek to divide communities and nations.
U.S. journalists, once protected by democratic institutions and liberal values, are now joined in a common struggle with colleagues around the world who find themselves under threat by authoritarians, CNN host and analyst Fareed Zakaria said at ICFJ’s Tribute to Journalists 2020.
Accepting ICFJ’s Founders Award for Excellence in Journalism
I received my first ICFJ Knight Award back in 2013. Seven years ago. Sometimes when I look back at these times I have the feeling that it happened in a different century, on a different planet and with a different person. So many things have changed.
I would like to express my gratitude and that of my team to the International Center for Journalists for this recognition, and for their dedicated team and tireless labor that got us here today.
You all know about our upcoming ICFJ Tribute to Journalists 2020 on Oct. 5 at 7:30 pm EDT. If you haven’t already, please sign up to attend.
What you may not know is that we have a wonderful pre-show that starts at 7 pm. We’ll present a lineup of exciting guests and fun activities. Among the highlights:
Former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg recently visited the new Bloomberg News office in Beijing, where he met with graduates of the Tsinghua University Global Business Journalism (GBJ) program. The meeting marked the eighth anniversary of GBJ, a project of the International Center for Journalists (ICFJ) which has trained more than 230 business journalists to cover China’s markets and the global economy.
There is a new front line in journalism safety – it is where female journalists sit at the epicentre of risk. The digital, psychological and physical safety threats confronting women in journalism are overlapping, converging and inseparable. Where and when they intersect, they can be terrifying - they are also potentially deadly.
Investigative journalist Ani Mejlumyan recalls the onset of COVID-19. The day after Armenia declared a state of emergency in mid-March, the government censored the media to prevent them from reporting on the pandemic. Restaurants, meanwhile, remained open for ten more days.
As COVID-19 spread across Europe, countries like France, Italy, Spain and the U.K. faced high rates of cases, hospitalizations and deaths due to the virus. Germany, meanwhile, eluded similar levels of transmission and suffering among its citizens.
Dozens of Mexican factory workers have died on their way to work at manufacturing plants in at least 52 accidents, a recent investigation by journalists in Tijuana, Baja California, found. The workers were riding in vehicles provided by their employer that were in dangerously poor condition, the investigation revealed.
