People Column

By Susan Kille

OPC SCHOLARS

Mark Anderson, who won the 2014 Emanuel R. Freedman Fellowship from the OPC Foundation, began a new job in June covering global development for The Guardian in London. Anderson, who is fluent in Swahili, has a Master’s degree in journalism and African studies from the University of California, Berkeley.

Haley Sweetland Edwards, a political correspondent in Time magazine’s Washington bureau, received an honorable mention in this year’s MOLLY National Journalism Prize competition, which honors the memory of Molly Ivins, the legendary reporter, columnist and former editor of The Texas Observer. Edwards, who won the 2009 Irene Corbally Kuhn Scholarship, was recognized for “He Who Makes The Rules,” an exploration of the workings and power of the rule-making process that she wrote for The Washington Monthly.

WINNERS

The Presidents Award of the National Press Club is presented “only on special occasions” and requires approval of the club’s Board of Governors. On July 30, the award will be given to Anja Niedringhaus and Kathy Gannon of The Associated Press. Niedringhaus, a photographer, was killed and Gannon, a reporter and OPC member, was injured April 4 while covering the lead up to elections in Afghanistan. The two had worked together repeatedly in Afghanistan since the 2001 U.S.-led invasion. An exhibition of Niedringhaus’s photos will be on display at the end of July in the club’s lobby in Washington.

The OPC was well represented in June among winners of this year’s Gerald Loeb Awards. Peter S. Goodman, the editor-in-chief of The International Business Times who is running for a seat on the OPC board, won the commentary award for work he did at The Huffington Post. Four Loeb awards were presented to reporters who won OPC awards for the same work in April. Steve Stecklow shared honors for explanatory writing for “Assets of the Ayatollah” with his Reuters colleagues, Babak Dehghanpisheh and Yeganeh Torbati. “The Shortest Route to Riches” in Forbes won the international award for Kerry Dolan, who was once editor of the Bulletin, and Rafael Marques de Morais. Other OPC members among the Loeb winners were Cam Simpson of Bloomberg Businessweek for “Stranded: An iPhone Tester Caught in Apple’s Supply Chain” and Alex Blumberg of NPR for “Planet Money Makes a T-Shirt.”

OPC member Matthew Winkler, editor-in-chief of Bloomberg News, and his boss, Michael Bloomberg, won the President’s Award For Impact on Media on June 30 at the 56th Annual Southern California Media Awards Ceremony sponsored by the Los Angeles Press Club. Winkler attended and spoke, but Bloomberg appeared only on video.
In honor of his remarkable career in journalism, OPC member Dan Rather received the DeWitt Carter Reddick Award in April from the Moody College of Communication at The University of Texas at Austin. Established in 1974, the Reddick award recognizes excellence in the field of communication.

PRESS FREEDOM

To mark World Refugee Day on June 20, the Committee to Protect Journalists released its annual report on journalists in exile. During the last five years, CPJ has supported more than 400 journalists forced to flee their home countries because of their work. The top countries that journalists fled in the past five years were Iran, Syria, Somalia, Ethiopia, and Eritrea. These countries consistently rank poorly on other press freedom ratings. Iran is one of the world’s leading jailers of journalists; Syria was the most dangerous country for journalists for the past two years; Somalia is the most lethal country for journalists in sub-Saharan Africa.

Press freedom has been a casualty of the offensive launched in June in north and west Iraq by the Jihadi group Islamic State in Iraq and Syria that is allied with Sunni tribal groups. ISIS has seized media outlets in captured territory and Iraqi authorities have taken a number of measures affecting communications, including the blocking of social networks and the suspension of telecom services in captured areas. Two weeks after the start of the offensive, Al-Ahad TV cameraman Khaled Ali Hamada became the first media fatality when he was killed June 17 in Diyala, northeast of Baghdad. Al-Ahad TV is linked to the Shiite Islamist group Kutla Asaib Ahl Al-Haq.

After 32 years of publication, the Ecuador newspaper Hoy ceased daily publication June 30, blaming government harassment and a related advertising slowdown. Hoy, known as an opposition paper, will publish online and has plans for a weekly print edition. According to CPJ, the government of President Rafael Correa has stifled independent media through the Communications Law, an “official straightjacket on the press” adopted last summer. Earlier in June, Hoy and three other newspapers were accused of violating the Communications Law for not providing what the government viewed as adequate coverage of Correa’s two-day trip to meet with Chile’s president and received an honorary university degree. If the papers are found guilty, they could be fined thousands of dollars.

Rwandan journalist Agnès Uwimana Nkusi was freed June 18 after serving a four-year sentence on charges prompted by her reporting. Her unflinching commitment to information freedom led Reporters Without Borders on May 3 to name her one of 100 “information freedom heroes.” Nkusi, who had written articles critical of President Paul Kagame, initially faced up to 17 years in prison on charges including inciting “civil disobedience” and “harming state security.” Her charges were later reduced but she served a year longer than Saidat Mukakibibi, a colleague who was arrested with her.

Press freedom organizations welcomed the U.S. Supreme Court’s unanimous ruling on June 25 that the police need warrants to search the cellphones of people they arrest. “Today’s decision closes a dangerous loophole faced by journalists who use mobile devices for newsgathering and reporting,” said Geoffrey King, CPJ Internet advocacy coordinator. “Under the old rule, an officer could search a reporter’s electronic devices with an arrest for any alleged minor offense.”

MURDERS

Three Russian journalists were killed in June in eastern Ukraine. Anatoly Klyan, a cameraman for Russia’s Channel One TV station, died June 29 after a bus he was traveling in was attacked by gunfire. Klyan was on a bus of mothers traveling to a military base in Donetsk to demand that their sons be allowed to go home. According to reports, Ukrainian forces opened fire when the bus approached the military base. Two correspondents from VGTRK, a Russian central television and radio broadcasting company, special correspondent Igor Kornelyuk and sound engineer Anton Voloshin, were killed June 17 during a mortar attack near Luhansk while filming a report about militias helping to evacuate refugees from the combat zone.

The June 9 death of Edgar Pantaleón Fernández Fleitas, a radio host and a lawyer, was the second murder within a month of a journalist in Paraguay. Fernández was killed in his home office in Concepción by a gunman who entered and then fled. Fernández had just returned home after hosting his radio program “City of Fury,” which was harshly critical of local judges, lawyers, and officials.

Elisabeth Blanche Olofio, a radio journalist in the Central Africa Republic, died June 23 from injuries sustained during a brutal January 2013 attack by armed rebels who accused her of having “a sharp tongue.” The rebels attacked and destroyed Olofio’s home, reportedly in response to her reporting.

Yusuf Keynan, a Somali journalist, was murdered June 21 when a bomb planted under the seat of his car exploded as he started the vehicle to travel to work in Mogadishu. Keynan, who worked for privately owned Radio Mustaqbal and a U.N. humanitarian station, is the second journalist to be killed this year in Somalia.

Nilo Baculo Sr., a Filipino radio journalist who was denied protection in 2008, was gunned down June 9 by a gunman on a motorcycle as he was going home in Calapan, in the central province of Mindoro Oriental. Baculo, who made many enemies because of his investigative coverage of crimes and irregularities involving local officials, had been granted provisional protection after he was told in 2008 that a price had been put on his head. An appeals court later rescinded the order for lack of evidence and Baculo went into hiding, although he continued working.

UPDATES

MUSCAT, Oman:

Daniel Sieberg, an associate OPC board member, was the keynote speaker in June for a reception for the top individual and institutional clients of Oman Arab Bank.

Sieberg, who had been a technology reporter for ABC News, CBS News, CNN, BBC News and the Vancouver Sun, is a senior marketing manager at Google. He spoke about using technology to achieve a balance between productivity and efficiency.

LONDON:

Beverly Pepper told The Telegraph in London that Curtis Bill Pepper, a long-time OPC member who died in April, was “the perfect husband. He was never threatened by my work. He did everything to make it possible and I did everything for him. We were a good team.” At 91, Beverly still works as a sculptor and opened her first show in London in July at Marlborough Fine Art. Her work has been collected by major museums around the world. Her site-specific pieces include three cast iron sculptures called Manhattan Sentinels that stand in New York City’s Federal Plaza. The Peppers made their home in Italy, where Bill worked for United Press, CBS News and Newsweek before becoming an author.

PARIS:

For the first time, a woman will head the global news operation of Agence France-Presse, which has 2,260 journalists spread across almost every country. Michèle Léridon, who joined the news agency in 1981, was named to replace News Director Philippe Massonnet, who announced he was stepping down for personal reasons. Léridon, who will begin her new job Aug. 1, has been Rome bureau chief since 2009. She has worked in senior positions at AFP’s Paris headquarters and in Africa, including as Abidjan deputy bureau chief, deputy editor-in-chief for Europe and Africa, head of the social affairs service and as managing editor from 2006 to 2009.

PHNOM PENH:

OPC member James Brooke in July became editor-in-chief of The Khmer Times. “The KT is the youngest newspaper for this fast growing nation,” Brooke wrote in an e-mail. “Only two months old, the paper has a lot of energy, a lot of color, and a lot of enthusiasm. Making the KT a must-read in Cambodia’s competitive media market is going to be a lot of fun!” Brooke first visited Cambodia in 2004 on assignment for The New York Times. He returned in March for a short stint at The Cambodia Daily. Brooke, who has reported from almost 100 countries, was a correspondent for The Times in Africa, Latin America, Canada, Japan and the Koreas. This year he left as bureau chief for Voice of America in Moscow, where he moved in 2006 to report for Bloomberg.

LISBON:

In foreign postings, competitors often become friends but rarely collaborators. Now, senior correspondents for two of the world’s biggest news agencies have together written Lisbon Water Kills, a crime novel set during the Portuguese financial crisis. The authors are Axel Bugge, who has reported from Portugal for Reuters for nine years, and Barry Hatton, who covered the country since 1977 for The Associated Press.

WASHINGTON:

The Newseum in June added the names of 10 journalists to a memorial now listing 2,256 journalists who have died while covering the news since 1837. International organizations that work to protect journalists have counts that range from 70 to 120 for journalists killed in 2013. Gene Policinski, Newseum chief operating officer, said the decision to limit the number of names was made this year because the expansion of digital media makes it difficult to determine who is a journalist and who has died pursuing the news.

NEW YORK:

Martin Dickson, a former OPC board member, retired in June from a 37-year career at the Financial Times with plans to return home to London. As U.S. managing editor since September 2012, he oversaw print and online editions in North America and led the FT to numerous honors, including a Gerald Loeb Award. Gillian Tett, who Dickson succeeded in 2012 when she went on book leave, is returning as managing editor. Dickson has held senior writing and editing positions at the FT and has won numerous awards, including Business Journalist of the Year and Best Opinion Writer of the Year in Business Journalist of the Year Awards and a Wincott Foundation award as Senior Financial Journalist of the Year.

Sonya K. Fry may have stepped down as executive director of the OPC but she says she doesn’t want to step away from the many friends she made during 20 years with the club. She can be reached at her personal e-mail sonyafry9@gmail.com.

OPC member David Muir, who served as presenter at this year’s OPC awards banquet, will succeed Diane Sawyer on Sept. 2 as anchor of “ABC World News.” Muir has been a lead correspondent for the ABC on major news stories, a weekend anchor and since 2011 served as Sawyer’s chief substitute. Sawyer will become a full-time anchor for investigative reports and major interviews. Muir will continue to anchor ABC’s magazine show “20/20.” In a break from tradition, the “World News” anchor will not be the lead anchor for breaking news coverage: that job will go to George Stephanopoulos, a co-host of “Good Morning America” and the host of the Sunday talk show “This Week.”

Mike Pride, the former editor of The Concord Monitor, will replace Sig Gissler in September as the administrator of the Pulitzer Prizes. Pride served four times as a juror for the Pulitzers and was a Pulitzer board member from 1999 through 2008. Gissler, former editor of the Milwaukee Journal, oversaw the prizes for 12 years, succeeding Seymour Topping, an OPC board member and former managing editor of The New York Times who held the post from 1993 until 2002.