The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has announced the winners of the prestigious International Press Freedom Award for 2023. Four journalists from different countries, including one from India have been chosen for the award this year. From India, Outlook magazine’s senior editor, Shahina KK has been chosen along with Nika Gvamaria from Georgia, founder of the Georgian broadcaster Mtavari Arkhi; Maria Teresa Montaño from Mexico, founder and editor of The Observer; and Ferdinand Ayité from Togo, director of the investigative outlet L’Alternative. The awards will be presented on November 16, 2023, in New York City.
The award is meant to honour courageous journalists from around the world. “In the face of a stark decline in press freedom worldwide, these journalists have continued to report the news amid government crackdowns, kidnapping, exile, and the rising criminalization of their work, championing the importance of independent reporting at this critical juncture,” the committee said while announcing the winners.
Shahina KK, a journalist from Kerala, was one of India's first reporters to be charged under the anti-terror law, Unlawful Activities Prevention Act (UAPA). The BJP led government of Karnataka filed a case against Shahina in 2011 in connection with her story which revealed that the witnesses included in the Karnataka police charge sheet in the case against Abdul Nasser Madani were questionable. She had interviewed two witnesses in the 2008 Bengaluru bomb blast case and reported lapses in the police investigations. For more than a decade, Shahina has been fighting this case, with no relief from courts.
Meanwhile, Alberto Ibargüen, the outgoing president of the Knight Foundation, won CPJ’s Gwen Ifill Press Freedom Award for 2023 for extraordinary and sustained achievement in the cause of press freedom.
The International Press Freedom Award has been given by the CPJ since 1996 to honour journalists who carry out courageous journalism. So far only three journalists from India have received this award. The previous winners from India have been Kashmiri journalist Yusuf Jameel in 1996, Chhattisgarh-based Malini Subramanian in 2016, and Delhi-based Neha Dixit in 2019.