CPJ International Press Freedom Award
| International Press Freedom Awards | |
|---|---|
| Awarded for | courage in defending press freedom in the face of attacks, threats or imprisonment |
| Location | New York City |
| Country | United States |
| Presented by | Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) |
| First awarded | 1991 |
| Official website | Awards website |
The CPJ International Press Freedom Awards honor journalists or their publications around the world who show courage in defending press freedom despite facing attacks, threats, or imprisonment. Established in 1991, the awards are administered by the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), an independent, non-governmental organization based in New York City. In addition to recognizing individuals, the organization seeks to focus local and international media coverage on countries where violations of press freedom are particularly serious.
Every November four to seven individuals or publications are honored at a banquet in New York City and given an award. The ceremony also honors the winner of the Burton Benjamin Memorial Award for "lifelong work to advance press freedom". Past hosts have included crime correspondent and former hostage Terry A. Anderson,Amanpour host Christiane Amanpour, and NBC Nightly News anchors Brian Williams and Tom Brokaw. In 1998, the ceremony was briefly disrupted by protesters who unfurled a banner calling for the release of former Black Panther Mumia Abu-Jamal from Pennsylvania's death row.
The first awards were given in 1991 to American photojournalist Bill Foley and his wife, journalist Cary Vaughan; Cameroonian reporter Pius Njawé; Chinese dissidents Wang Juntao and Chen Ziming; Russian television news anchor Tatyana Mitkova; and Guatemalan reporter Byron Barrera. In 2014, the organization awarded its twenty-fourth group of journalists. On three occasions, an award was also given to a news organization of which multiple staffers have been at risk: Tajikistan newspaper Navidi Vakhsh (1994), several reporters of which murdered during the 1992–97 civil war; Guatemalan newspaper Siglo Veintiuno (1995), which was subject to police and army raids for its uncensored coverage of government corruption and human rights violations; and Turkish newspaper Özgür Gündem (1996), which was subject to a campaign of publication bans, assassinations, and arrests for its reporting on the conflict between the Turkish Armed Forces and the Kurdistan Workers' Party.
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