The shortlist is today revealed for the Marie Colvin Award – one of the categories at the Press Gazette British Journalism Awards.
The prize is awarded in honour of the late Sunday Times foreign correspondent – who was killed reporting on the plight of people in the besieged Syrian city of Homs in 2012. The judges in this category are looking for a journalist who has raised the reputation of journalism through their efforts to bear witness to events in the way that Colvin did.
The winner will be announced at the British Journalism Awards dinner at the De Vere Grand Connaught Rooms on 10 December 2018.
The full list of finalists for the 2018 British Journalism Awards can be found here.
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The 2018 Marie Colvin Award nominees are:
Nick Southall – BBC Radio Shropshire
Two years ago Southall began a cold case review into Scotland Yard’s Nazi war crimes investigation against Telford resident Stanislaw Chrzanowski. It prompted war crime investigators in Ludwigsburg to take a look at the 96 year-old and in a landmark ruling, Germany’s Federal Court ruled Chrzanowski would become the first UK citizen ever to face criminal proceedings in Germany for war crimes.
Louise Callaghan – The Sunday Times
Callaghan has fought to get to the truth of what is happening on the ground in rebel-held Syria – travelling there several times this year independently to reveal the human impact of a global war.
It was this experience that led her to the story of the White Helmets’ escape from Syria, with the Syrian regime on their heels. Callaghan secured exclusive access to those who had planned the mission, and to those who were rescued, pulling together a powerful account of the night. She found that Britain had played a major role in the Great Escape in an almost unprecedented diplomatic effort.
Ghaith Abdul-Ahad – The Guardian
In the final days of Iraq’s battle to prise Mosul, its second-biggest city, from the clutches of the Islamic State, the Guardian’s special correspondent followed soldiers into its ruined heart where snipers defended the jihadists’ last positions and political pressure from Baghdad to declare a victory kept them pushing beyond their supply lines. It was the latest chapter in a journalistic career from Abdul-Ahad in which he has reported from danger spots across the Middle East and spoken to participants in its wars that no one else has.
Fergal Keane – The BBC
As the BBC’s Africa Editor, Fergal has continually followed events in the complex politics of the DRC. This year he uncovered a massacre in the Kasai region in the DRC after a conflict between government troops and rebel backed fighters following an ongoing humanitarian crisis. Months later in the Congo, Fergal and his team investigate the escalating violence between the Lendu and Hema ethnic groups.
Josie Ensor – The Telegraph
This year Ensor published an exclusive report that revealed that the UK’s allies in Syria, the Syrian Democratic Forces, were releasing European jihadists through secret prisoner swap deals with Islamic State. She has also travelled to northern Iraq to interview Yazidi women who had claimed asylum in Germany, where they say they were confronted by their former Isil captors in a place they had come to feel safe.
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