Thursday, April 10, 2008
Financial Times wins newspaper of the year
Paul Dacre, the Daily Mail editor, was given the special award by events organiser Press Gazette, while London Evening Standard investigative reporter Andrew Gilligan was named journalist of the year.
Dacre and Gilligan's awards were presented by the Conservative leader, David Cameron, last night's guest speaker.
Cameron praised the 800 journalists gathered at the event for respecting the news blackout of Prince Harry's deployment to Afghanistan, saying it showed a free press acting responsibly. "I thought that was something everyone in this room can be incredibly proud of," he said.
The Sun won more awards than any other paper, taking home four - two individual prizes for Newton Dunn, and two more for its Help for Heroes campaign, in which he was a key player. The FT won three awards, as did the Guardian, including best newspaper website.
As well as the top prize of newspaper of the year, the FT's Philip Stevens was named political journalist of the year while Gillian Tett won business and finance journalist of the year.
The Sun's defence editor, Tom Newton Dunn, went to the stage four times. He won scoop of the year for his story on the friendly fire killing of corporal Matty Hull and also won reporter of the year.
Newton Dunn also collected the Sun's two other prizes, the Cudlipp award for excellence in popular journalism and campaign of the year, both for its Help for Heroes series.
Gilligan won journalist of the year for his series of articles investigating misuse of public funds at the London Development Agency. He beat Nick Davies of the Guardian, Sun editor Rebekah Wade, Christina Lamb of the Sunday Times and the late Bill Deedes of the Daily Telegraph.
At the end of the night, the Press Gazette special award, presented only occasionally, was given to Dacre for his 18-year career as editor first at the Evening Standard and later at the Daily Mail and for overseeing the launch of Metro as editor-in-chief of Associated Newspapers.
The Guardian won website of the year, while Ghaith Abdul-Ahad won foreign reporter of the year and Sean Smith won the new award, digital journalist of the year.
For the first time, the British Press Awards also honoured journalists outside the UK, with the inaugural international journalist of the year award.
This went to Iranian journalist Emadeddin Baghi, who has been imprisoned by the state for a second time. Baghi was unable to attend last night's BPA ceremony at London's Grosvenor House hotel and a representative from Amnesty International collected his award.
The Sunday Mirror picked up two awards, with Kate Mansey named young journalist of the year and Sean Hamilton winning in the showbusiness reporter category for scoops including Led Zeppelin reforming.
Associated Newspapers cleaned up in the photography categories, with Andy Hooper of the Daily Mail winning sports photographer of the year, and Jeremy Selwyn of the London Evening Standard landing photographer of the year.
The Mail and Evening Standard's Associated stablemate, the Mail on Sunday, won the supplement of the year, which was awarded jointly to its Live and You magazines.
Interviewer of the year went to freelance journalist Chrissy Iley for her work on both the Observer and Sunday Times magazines. Charles Spencer of the Daily Telegraph won critic of the year.
The sports journalist of the year was Martin Samuel of the Times, while AA Gill of the Sunday Times was named feature writer of the year, which he also won in 2005. Matthew Norman of the Independent won the hotly contested columnist of the year category.
Matt Pritchett won cartoonist of the year for his work on the Daily Telegraph and Sunday Telegraph.
As Gilligan took to the stage, event host Jon Snow said the judges had awarded him the prize for his relentless investigations and that the reporter was "back in the news for all the right reasons".
Gilligan paid tribute to the Evening Standard, which hired him after he was forced to leave the BBC in the wake of the Hutton report. He said he felt the award vindicated his work.
The judges described Dacre as "a unique journalist and editor who translates conviction, passion and vast experience into enduring success for his newspapers".
"I would just like to thank all the wonderful, selfless, brilliant journalists I have worked with on the Mail past and present," Dacre said. "And I would also like to thank the Rothermeres for giving editors that priceless gift - the freedom to edit."
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British Press Awards: Andrew Gilligan named journalist of the year
Andrew Gilligan has been named Journalist of the Year at the British Press Awards.
The judges described Gilligan’s work for the Evening Standard as “relentless investigative journalism at its best from a man who has put himself back in the headlines for all the right reasons”.
Tom Newton Dunn of The Sun, who has already collected two awards, was highly commended, along with Bill Deedes, the legendary former Daily Telegraph editor who died last year.
• Emadeddin Baghi or the Iranian newspaper Jomhooriyat, won the inaugural International Journalist of the Year Award.
Baghi, who has been speaking out against the Iranian regime for more than 25 years, is currently serving a one-year prison sentence on charges of “acting against national security”.
He founded Jomhooriyat in 2004, and included coverage of human rights, trade unions and civic institutions. The Iranian judiciary has since banned the paper and called for Baghi’s dismissal.
• Associated Newspapers editor-in-chief Paul Dacre won the final award of the evening when he was presented with Press Gazette’s Special Award in recognition of two decades of achievement as editor of the Evening Standard and Daily Mail and his continuing work on the Press Complaints Commission.
He was described as “a unique journalist and editor who translates conviction, passion and vast experience into enduring success for his newspapers”.
All three awards were presented on Tuesday night during a ceremony hosted by Channel 4 News presenter Jon Snow at the Grosvenor House Hotel in London.
Emadeddin Baghi, Tehran, Iran Statement for the British Press Awards
The print media has always been the platform of raising awareness, integrity, moral standards and scientific progress in the world; it has advanced Montesquieu’s notion of “separation of powers” and has, in its position as the Fourth Estate, complemented it.
Tonight, friends, I am addressing you from a land that still tastes the bitterness of bans on the press in spite of having a history of 150 years of striving for democracy. In the past 10 years, about 150 publications have been banned, although none of them were hostile to the Islamic Republic. They were only independent and reform-minded.
I am addressing you from a land with an ancient civilisation, yet where some people have changed Darwin’s theory of survival of the fittest to that of ‘death of the fittest’. Many newspapers have been sent into darkness as soon as they have neared their professional maturity and wielded influence; as if a newspaper’s chances of survival grew dimmer the higher its print run, the more its number of readers and the stronger it became.
I am addressing you from a land, where newspapers are not seen as civil but rather as political institutions. Instead of the intelligentsia, press associations and people, it those that wield power - the rulers - who decide the fate of the press.
They fear freedom of the press. Here in Persia the power wielders have freedom of expression and the scope to slander, libel, threaten and imprison the dissidents.
There have been many instances where citizens have been prosecuted for having exercised their right to freedom of expression, despite having complied with the law of the land and human rights principles
Tonight, friends, I am addressing you from a land where I have personally been eye-witness to the tearful eyes of journalists, whose emotions and livelihood were plunged into crisis when their newspapers were banned. They whispered the question:
Would a factory or an organisation be shut down or a large number of people and an organisation destroyed if an individual allegedly committed an offence?
Yet, many newspapers were banned and their journalists detained before their guilt was established by any a fair judicial process.
I wrote back in 1999 that the closure of each newspaper is tantamount to murder and we that should organise a movement for the “collective commemoration” of banned newspapers and hold memorials on the anniversary of their ‘deaths’; we should build memorials for them to shine a light on the ugliness of the war on the press1.
Today, I say we should create a monument – similar to monuments in many countries for the fallen of the patriotic and liberation wars where their names are inscribed – for these banned newspapers, in order to prevent history from forgetting; to prevent the forgetting of history.
As a scholar and writer, who has simultaneously worked as journalist, occasionally as editor or advisor in the press for the past quarter of a century, who has been imprisoned for the second time for an anthology of articles in lawfully published newspapers of the country, and will return to prison next week at the conclusion of a temporary leave from prison for medical treatment.
I console myself with the thought that it is not only Persian journalists and writers but also journalists and heralds of freedom of expression in the UK and throughout the world who endeavour to prevent the forgetting of newspapers fallen on the path of knowledge and free flow of information.
I bring my address to a conclusion by citing the first and last stanzas from a poem of the great Persian intellectual and journalist, Ali Akbar Dehkhoda, which he wrote one hundred years ago to mourn Sur-Esrafil, the first martyr of Persian newspapers, who was hanged at the hand of tyranny:
O’ bird of dawn!
When the dark night,
Has finally ended its darkness,
Remember the dead candle, remember!
Expressing my gratitude to British Press Awards and wishing for a world of peace, tolerance and freedom of expression! To freedom, my friends!
Emaddedin Baqi