The Centre for Excellence in Journalism at the Institute of Business Administration (CEJ-IBA), Karachi and Centre for Communication Programs Pakistan (CCPP) organized the first ever “Excellence in Journalism Awards 2016”. Thirteen journalists received excellence awards in health reporting, for news stories published between July 1, 2015 and June 30, 2016 at a ceremony held at CEJ on Monday.
The winning reporters in mainstream broadcast (TV, Radio) were Ovais Ahmed Tanveer of Express News and Danyal Hasan of Dawn News. In the category of mainstream print/online Zofeen T Ebrahim, an Independent journalist and Muhammad Suleman of News Lens Pakistan were declared winners.
In the category of district correspondents (Print, Online, TV, Radio) Adnan Khatri of The Nation and Mohammad Shahid of AWKUM VOICE emerged as winners.
Besides the winners and runners-up, work of three senior journalists including Mukhtar Alam, Asif Chaudhry and Shahida Parveen was also recognized for their vast contribution to health journalism.
Speaking on the occasion, CEJ director Kamal Siddiqi said, “Health is a neglected area in journalism and we need to do more in terms of highlighting the issues that relate to health in Pakistan.” He added that these awards would recognize people who have written on health and encourage more reporting on this subject.
The panel of judges included Rahimullah Yousufzai, resident editor of The News Peshawar, Wusatullah Khan, freelance journalist and popular talk show analyst from Dawn News and Farah Zia, editor of The News on Sunday.
The “Excellence in Journalism Awards” will become an annual event offered by CEJ and expand in future years to focus on other areas of beat reporting.