Channel 4’s Jamal Osman was named Journalist of the Year at last night’s One World Media awards for coverage of the developing world.
His winning submissions included a report about a Somalian runner determined to compete in the London Olympics which highlighted some of the difficulties of daily life in Mogadishu and coverage of the drought in south-central Somalia for which he followed the plight of one extended family.
Channel 4 documentary Sri Lanka’s Killing Fields, presented by Jon Snow (who also presented last night’s awards), won both the television and documentary award.
The special investigation into alleged war crimes in Sri Lanka was described by the two juries as ‘a searing piece of rigorous and unflinching journalism’and ‘an extraordinary and powerful piece of television testimony that forensically analysed a terrible atrocity and built a compelling case to be answered”.
Guardian News and Media dominated the print categories, with all three nominations for the press award. This prize was won by Will Storr for his feature in the Observer Magazine on the rape of men in Uganda.
The award for best print news article went to The Guardian’s Jack Shenker for his exclusive exposé of the plight of migrants trying to reach Lampedusa in a story headlined: ‘Nato units left 61 migrants to die of hunger and thirst”. The award for best broadcast news piece went to ITV News for a report on the Somalian famine from Hagadera Hospital.
BBC Two picked up the popular features award for Toughest Place to be a Binman, following a London dustman who spent 10 days living and working in the Indonesian capital of Jakarta.
The Radio Award went to the BBC World Service for Assignment – Haiti Cholera Epidemic, an investigation presented by correspondent Mark Doyle into the largest outbreak of cholera in the world today in a country where the disease had been absent for over a century.
The Children’s Rights Award went to Al Jazeera English for Africa Investigates: Spell of the Albino, which looked at the discrimination and abuse endured by people with albinism in parts of sub-Saharan Africa.
And the Student Award was won by Zena Merton and Giselle Santos from the London College of Communication for their documentary Bagong Silang about the lives of a community in the Philippines who have made a home out of a graveyard.
A group of young Ethiopian filmmakers from the back streets of Addis Ababa won the special award, sponsored by the Thomson Media Foundation. Ethiopian production company, Gem TV, is staffed by filmmakers who were recruited as young people from among the poorest communities in Addis Ababa and taught filmmaking. Originally conceived as a community filmmaking project, Gem TV has gone on to establish itself as one of Ethiopia’s top TV production companies, making festival-winning documentaries and films for international NGOs.
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