Reuters journalists collect two US awards

Reuters journalists were awarded two prizes given by the Overseas Press Club of America on Thursday.

David Rohde (photo) won the President's Award “in recognition of his journalism career and his historic effort to craft a code of conduct for safely reporting global news”.

Rohde is an author and investigative journalist who joined Reuters in 2011 as a columnist. He won a Pulitzer Prize for international reporting in 1996 when he worked for The Christian Science Monitor. It was in recognition of his work during the aftermath of the Srebrenica massacre in Bosnia.

In 2009 he shared a second Pulitzer awarded to the staff of The New York Times for "its masterful, groundbreaking coverage of America's deepening military and political challenges in Afghanistan and Pakistan, reporting frequently done under perilous conditions”. 

In June 2009 Rohde escaped after being kidnapped and held captive for seven months by members of the Taliban in Afghanistan. The International Press Institute made him a World Press Freedom Hero in 2012.

The second Reuters win in this year’s OPC awards went to a team headed by Stephen Grey. It was the Malcolm Forbes Award for best international business news reporting in newspapers, news services or online. The winning entry, titled Comrade Capitalism, examined how Russia does business in the Putin era.

"There has been a lot of tragic foreign news over the past year - from Ebola to Ukraine to the Central African Republic to ISIS - including the tragedy of murdered journalists, like James Foley," says Marcus Mabry, club president and editor at large of The New York Times. "But these awards tell us that despite mortal dangers, foreign correspondence - and foreign correspondents - are more vibrant than ever. And no one can stop a free and courageous press.”

The awards were to be presented at a dinner in New York this evening. ■