77th Annual Overseas Press Club Awards
The 22 award-winning entries for the annual Overseas Press Club (OPC) Awards highlight the increasing hazards facing foreign correspondents around the world. The Associated Press, the Center for Public Integrity, Foreign Policy, “Frontline,” Reuters and the New York Times won multiple awards; the Associated Press won two awards for its story, “Seafood from Slaves.”
While the award-winning stories reflect themes of conflict, corruption and disaster, they also show how, in a hyperconnected world, these dangers spill over and quickly present global perils. Journalists covering these events now face a more hazardous climate with a growing number of limitations to free speech across the globe.
“Our jobs have become more dangerous and harder to come by as our profession faces economic and technological change,” says Marcus Mabry, president of the Overseas Press Club of America and managing editor of Twitter Moments. “We gather tonight not to bemoan this reality, but to confront it. Our role as journalists is to bear witness, and ensure that suffering is not in silence, injustice is not unknown.”
As part of confronting this new reality, the OPC joined last year with the Frontline Freelance Register, Reporters Without Borders, the Committee to Protect Journalists, Dart Center for Journalism and Trauma and other advocacy groups and news organizations to sign the global safety principles and practices for protecting freelancers in dangerous overseas assignments.
Kai Ryssdal, host and senior editor of American Public Radio’s “Marketplace,” will MC the awards night, and the OPC will honor David Fanning, founder and executive producer at large of “Frontline,” with its President’s Award. Jason Rezaian, journalist and former Tehran bureau chief for the Washington Post, who was released from Iran in January after more than 18 months in jail, will light the press freedom candle in memory of journalists who have died in the line of duty in the past year and in honor of those imprisoned or missing.
Photography awards go to Bassam Khabieh, international photojournalist with Reuters, who will receive the Robert Capa Gold Medal Award honoring the best photographic reporting from abroad requiring exceptional courage and enterprise. Mr. Khabieh is being honored for “Field Hospital Damascus,” a photo-essay that puts into perspective the tremendous dangers and difficulties facing journalists in Syria today.
Stephen Dupont receives the Olivier Rebbot Award for best photographic reporting from abroad in magazines or books. His book “Generation AK: The Afghanistan Wars, 1993-2012” is a compelling body of work documenting life in a war-torn nation for nearly two decades.
Mauricio Lima, Sergey Ponomarev, Tyler Hicks and Daniel Etter for the New York Times receives the John Farber Award for best photographic reporting from abroad in newspapers or news services for “Exodus,” a series of images on the migrant crisis that tells the broad story of the plight of the migrants and what they endured in hopes of a better life.
Daniel Berehulak for the New York Times receives the Feature Photography Award for best feature photography published in any medium on an international theme. In “High in the Himalayas, A Search After The Nepal Quake Yields Grim Results,” Daniel Berehulak’s images convey grief, humanity and the scale of the tragedy, telling the story from different perspectives and getting close enough to connect readers with his subjects and communicate their emotions and loss. (OPC)
See below for a look at some of the award-winning photography.
For more images by the award-winning photographers visit the OPC. The OPC Awards will be live-streamed on Thursday night, April 28, 2016. Follow the OCA awards on Twitter @opcofamerica and tweet using #OPCAwards.
Find more news-related photo galleries on the Yahoo News Photo Tumblr!
