CPJ honors fearless journalists at 2024 International Press Freedom Awards

The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) celebrated four journalists from Gaza, Guatemala, Niger, and Russia at the 34th annual International Press Freedom Awards (IPFA) in New York on Thursday, raising $2.4 million to protect journalists around the world.

The 2024 awardees were all honored for their courage in reporting on their communities while experiencing war, prison, government crackdowns, and increasing efforts to criminalize their work.

This year’s awardees were: Shrouq Al Aila, a Palestinian journalist based in Gaza and director of Ain Media, who could not attend as Israel did not permit the Gazan journalist to leave the occupied Palestinian territory to attend the awards; Quimy de León, a Guatemalan journalist and co-founder of Prensa Comunitaria; Samira Sabou; one of Niger’s most prominent investigative journalists, and Alsu Kurmasheva, a U.S.-Russian Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL) journalist and editor jailed by Russia in 2023. ?

In her remarks, CPJ CEO Jodie Ginsberg mourned the unprecedented killing of journalists over the past year, especially in the Israel-Gaza war: “These deaths should shock and appall us. They should enrage us.”

“At CPJ, we have spent more than four decades involving ourselves in mankind,” said Ginsberg. “But this year, this year has been like no other. We have painstakingly documented the ever-growing attacks on the press, we have raised the alarm over those attacks, and we have demanded action from those in power—whether it be killings in Gaza, or arrests in Russia, or harassment in India.”?

The awards were presented by leading journalists and supporters of media freedom: Maribel Perez Wadsworth, president and CEO of the Knight Foundation, presented to Quimy de Leon; Julie Owono, executive director of Internet Sans Frontiers, presented to Samira Sabou; Radhika Jones, chief editor of Vanity Fair, presented to Alsu Kurmasheva; and Melissa Fleming, U.N. Under-Secretary-General for Global Communications, presented the 2024 Gwen Ifill Press Freedom Award to Christophe Deloire. Deloire’s award was received by his widow Perrine Daubas.?

Leila Fadel, host of NPR’s Morning Edition, recognized Al Aila in absentia as Israel did not permit the Gazan journalist to leave the occupied Palestinian territory to attend the awards. Al Aila assumed the role of director of Ain Media following the killing of her husband, Roshdi Sarraj, on October 22, 2023, by the Israeli military.?

“I decided to continue Roshdi’s work because I believe once you are a journalist, you are a journalist for life,” said Al Aila in a video played at the ceremony.

??Watch:

• Shrouq Al Aila – Gaza Strip
• Alsu Kurmasheva – U.S.-Russia
• Quimy de León – Guatemala
• Samira Sabou – Niger
• Christophe Deloire – Gwen Ifill Awardee
• CPJ’s 2024 highlights video: Determined. Undeterred. Persevering.
• Full video: 2024 International Press Freedom Awards

Global press freedom updates

• CPJ, partners document Venezuela’s intensified repression of journalists in new report
• CPJ, others condemn abusive lawsuits against Greek journalists who exposed spyware scandal
• CPJ details Kyrgyzstan’s media crackdown ahead of UN human rights review
• ‘I will always keep fighting,’ José Rubén Zamora tells CPJ before court orders him back to jail
• Haitian journalist attacked as gang violence again surges in country
• Italian investigative team receives death threat referencing Charlie Hebdo attack

Spotlight

In his tireless global campaign to save 77-year-old media publisher Jimmy Lai from life imprisonment in Hong Kong, Sebastien Lai has not seen his father for more than four years.

Sebastien, who leads the #FreeJimmyLai campaign, last saw his father in August 2020 — weeks after Beijing imposed a national security law that led to a massive crackdown on pro-democracy advocates and journalists. Among them Lai, founder of the now-shuttered pro-democracy newspaper Apple Daily.

Lai took the stand for the first time this week on charges of sedition and conspiring to collude with foreign forces, which he denies.

Lai, who has diabetes, routinely spends over 23 hours a day in solitary confinement, with only 50 minutes for restricted exercise and limited access to daylight, according to his international lawyers.

?The United Nations Working Group on Arbitrary Detention has found that Lai is unlawfully and arbitrarily detained, and British Prime Minister Keir Starmer has called for his release.

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What we are reading

• Trump tells Republicans to ‘kill’ reporter shield bill passed unanimously by House — Charlie Savage, The New York Times
• Catherine Herridge wants Trump ‘sit-down’ on bipartisan press bill – Rich Johnson, NewsNation
• ‘We have taken risks to tell the stories,’ says press freedom awardee – Liam Scott, VOA
• Inside an American reporter’s Russian prison ordeal – Manuel Roig-Franzia, Washington Post
• A survey of Gaza's journalists during the war – Arab Reporters for Investigative Journalism (ARIJ)