Telegraph journalist David Knowles was remembered at the British Journalism Awards 2024 with recognition of his work providing “a voice for those who need it most”.
Knowles was posthumously awarded the Public Service Journalism prize after his sudden death aged 32 in September.
Knowles launched The Telegraph’s daily podcast Ukraine: The Latest, initially on Twitter Spaces, in February 2022. It has now surpassed 700 episodes and 100 million listens almost three years after Russia began its full-scale invasion.
After his death an outpouring of tributes from listeners from as far afield as Australia, Canada and Japan flowed in, with many saying he had inspired them to act in support of Ukraine and its people.
Three months on, Knowles has been awarded the Public Service Journalism prize at the British Journalism Awards. The accolade goes each year to the team, individual or brand that the Press Gazette team feels has most memorably raised the reputation of our trade.
Press Gazette editor-in-chief and chairman of the British Journalism Awards panel of judges Dominic Ponsford said Knowles had “made a global impact in a short life… His work is an inspirational example of the capacity for journalism to create communities, provide a voice for those who need it most and reach a huge audience by simply telling human stories in a sensitive and intelligent way.”
Knowles’ parents Peter and Kaye, and his partner Adélie Pojzman-Pontay, attended the awards evening on Thursday alongside his Ukraine: The Latest colleagues Francis Dearnley and Dominic Nicholls.
Dearnley collected the award on his behalf. He told the room of journalists: “David would be, I think, extremely humbled and slightly amused to win this award.
“He was an amazing journalist, but he was also a rare breed in our business, in that he had no ego. He was a brilliant journalist, but also a brilliant human being, which in these harsh times is, I think, more important than ever.
“He was also an optimist. And in our business, it’s very easy, I think, to be cynical. The horrors that we witness day in, day out are so egregious, and the fact that it seems so rare to see the change we want to see, it can make you pessimistic.”
Dearnley said Knowles would want him to raise the fact that within the past fortnight “an investigation by Yale University found that there have been well over 20,000 children that have been kidnapped by Russia and taken to Russia for re-education.
“The fact that this is happening on European soil with so little awareness in the public, and political circles at large, shames all of us, and I would say that we should all double our efforts to raise attention to the horrors that are being experienced by those children.
“Yet light can shine again. Tyranny can fall, as we’ve seen in Syria in the past week or so. A better world is always possible. David believed that, and I think that it is vital that we all remember that whenever we’re having a bad day, because that’s what David did for us: whenever we had a bad day, he kept our spirits high.
“Idealism should be our compass and pragmatism the way. That was David’s philosophy, and I think we can all do with a little bit more of that in our lives.”
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