Three freelance reporters win this year's Kurt Schork awards

Freelance journalists from India and Canada were this year’s winners of the annual Kurt Schork Awards, named for the American reporter who was killed while working for Reuters in Sierra Leone in 2000.

They were Neha Dixit and Matthieu Aikins, who received their $5,000 awards from Reuters managing editor Paul Ingrassia in a ceremony at Thomson Reuters' London office on Thursday. Priyanka Dubey from India received a special recognition award.

The Kurt Schork Memorial Fund, which administers the awards, said both Dixit and Dubey “won their awards for brave reporting of what’s tantamount to institutionalized rape in India. Matthieu Aikins, a Canadian, won for his courageous and sensitive writing, humanizing both sides of the story in Afghanistan”.

Stephen Jukes, vice-president of the Fund, said their work “epitomises the courageous and tenacious reporting that Kurt Schork was renowned for”.

Ingrassia outlined Reuters’ strategy for covering the Middle East, which he said put journalist safety and security first and foremost. He also said Reuters had made a very deliberate decision not to provide film or photographs of the murder of hostages by Islamic State.

The ceremony was followed by a panel discussion chaired by Christiane Amanpour of CNN with Stephen Sackur of the BBC, Lindsey Hilsum of Channel 4 News and Peter Bale, a former Reuters correspondent who is now a digital news expert.

Discussion on the topic “Driven to polar extremes: when journalists are forced to take sides - truth suffers” included debate on the effects of social media and how well it has been martialled by Islamist extremists in northern Iraq and Syria.

“The West invented this technology and it’s been turned against us”, said Bale.

PHOTO (L-R): Neha Dixit, Matthieu Aikins and Priyanka Dubey ■