Reuters has been named a winner of four prestigious Overseas Press Club Awards, presented by the Overseas Press Club of America, the nation’s oldest and largest association of journalists engaged in international news. The strong showing marked the most OPC Awards Reuters has ever won in a single year.
Reuters photojournalist Mohammed Salem received the Olivier Rebbot award for best photographic news reporting from abroad published in any medium. Salem was recognized for his series of images from Gaza since the start of the Israel-Hamas war. Judges said that “while his portfolio included scenes of the widespread destruction in Gaza, it is his empathetic and poetic documentation of unimaginable loss, grief and terror that really moved the judges. What is clear is that Mohammed sees himself and his loved ones in every frame – we see and feel his love for his people.”
“Slaughter in Sudan,” a series by Maggie Michael, El Tayeb Siddig, Ryan McNeill, Zohra Bensemra, Khalid Abdelaziz, Nafisa Eltahir, Aidan Lewis and Reuters staff, won the award for Continuing Coverage of Conflict. The series of investigations exposed how the Sudanese civil war unleashed a murderous, racially charged campaign of ethnic cleansing by Arab forces against the Masalit people of West Darfur. The team spent almost two months on the Chad-Sudan border interviewing, filming and photographing over 300 survivors of the ethnic bloodletting spearheaded by the Rapid Support Forces, an Arab-dominated paramilitary, and its allied Arab militias in Darfur. Data journalists fortified the on-the-ground reporting with analysis of hundreds of satellite and still images and a review of video footage. And colleagues in Cairo provided early and exclusive insight into how the conflict broke out. Judges said the series “bore witness to a systematic massacre in Sudan that has gone overlooked. Trenchant, moving, and deeply reported, the series lays bare how the Sudanese civil war unleashed a campaign of ethnic slaughter against the Masalit people of West Darfur.”
“The Bat Lands” was named the winner of the Whitman Bassow award for best reporting in any medium on international environmental issues. The Reuters teams developed a groundbreaking statistical model and fanned out around the world to pinpoint where and how future outbreaks of bat-borne viruses with epidemic potential are likeliest to occur, drawing praise from global health officials. Judges called it “a tour-de-force of graphics presentations, narrative writing, data analysis and on-the-ground reporting on six continents” and said “the reporters were able to draw a connection between many of the all-too-common environmental problems the world faces and the risk of life-threatening disease. The result was eye-opening, convincing and terrifying – truly an environmental story of our time.”
“Narcos Inc,” by Drazen Jorgic, Diego Oré, Jackie Botts, Sarah Kinosian and Stephen Eisenhammer, won the Robert Spiers Benjamin award for best reporting in any medium on Latin America. The series exposed the shifting ways Mexico’s drug cartels are making and moving money as regional security policies falter, going far beyond competing coverage through a combination of data analysis, courageous field work and patient source building. Judges said “the Reuters team illustrates the evolution of Mexico-based drug trafficking into a vast fentanyl empire that kills thousands of Americans and rots Mexico’s already fragile institutions from the presidency to the army and the remittance financial system. The series ties together numerous themes underlying this criminal enterprise and digs up hard facts to expose fresh examples of the corruption that feeds it.”
Reuters Editor-in-Chief Alessandra Galloni said in a note to staff that “these recognitions are a testament to the professionalism, commitment, courage and brilliance of you all. I am so proud of the teams involved for these four well-deserved wins.”
Media contact:
Heather Carpenter
Heather.Carpenter @ tr.com