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Foundation honours courageous women journalists
United States Government
October 30, 2007

Washington -- Reporting the news from Zimbabwe is a dangerous endeavor causing "a constant state of sadness," veteran journalist Peta Thornycroft said. But despite the constant risk to her personal safety as one of the country's few remaining independent journalists, and her despair at the results of the government's policies and human rights abuses, she pushes herself to continue because "it's a story that has to be told."

Thornycroft, Mexican journalist Lydia Cacho, Ethiopia's Serkalem Fasil, and six Iraqi women journalists from the McClatchy News Baghdad bureau all were recognized for 2007 by the International Women's Media Foundation (IWMF) for their dedication to their profession and their personal bravery.

IWMF Executive Director Jane Ransom told USINFO her organization has been recognizing brave and dedicated women journalists for 18 years, also honoring individuals such as CNN's Christiane Amanpour, South Africa's Gwen Lister, the late Russian journalist Anna Politkovskaya and the Christian Science Monitor's Jill Carroll.

"The award itself is to honor and celebrate women who have exhibited exceptional bravery in the line of their reporting duties in bringing the truth to people," Ransom said, adding that the attention gained through the award can provide the winners with added protection from hostile governments.

"Many of the awardees have told us that they've gotten a lot of visibility in their own countries as a result of receiving the award, which they feel makes it harder for their governments to attack them, just because it can't be done quietly when you're a well-known person," Ransom said. "We're letting them know that people in the United States are watching what's going on here."

Shining a bright light on abuses in Zimbabwe

Along with Thornycroft's many years of intrepid reporting from Zimbabwe, her dedication to training younger journalists in southern Africa, including women, earned her the IWMF's Lifetime Achievement Award.

At a panel discussion in Washington October 25, Thornycroft said that in order to deal with the threats she faces from the authorities, "I make a plan every day." She described disguising herself while traveling through the country to do her job and risking severe consequences such as imprisonment in one of Zimbabwe's notorious jails if she is discovered.

Thornycroft has spent decades covering the country's decline under President Robert Mugabe, even renouncing her British citizenship after the government outlawed the presence of foreign journalists so she could continue documenting human rights abuses under the oppressive regime. She related her anger at witnessing the country's complete reversal from being one of Africa's best-educated countries and a food exporter with falling rates of HIV infection. Her professional demand to report the news freely, fairly and accurately has kept her going, she said.

"I don't think I make any difference. I'm sorry about that," she told the audience. "I'm constantly hacking on about the appalling way people are treated, the appalling abuses in the police cells. . . . [but] the government seems to be completely impervious to the suffering that they have to be able to see. . . . They are just wasting away this clever, talented nation."

"I just carry on because it's there and it's a story that has to be told," she said. "I don't really know any other kind of life."

Giving a voice to Mexico's poor

Similarly, Mexican journalist Lydia Cacho, who won one of the IWMF's Courage in Journalism awards, said she perseveres in behalf of the millions of Mexicans who live without the means to find work or feed their families. She said approximately 430,000 of Mexico's poor attempt to enter the United States every year. "I try to tell their stories because I have a voice and they don't," Cacho said.

Cacho exposed a prominent businessman who she charged was behind a pedophile ring that targets girls from Cancun's poor community. After she went public with her findings, she was abducted by Mexican police at the apparent behest of a Mexican state governor. During her ordeal, she feared that her abductors planned to rape her.

Mexico's Supreme Court has intervened to investigate Cacho's accusations, and she said she remains hopeful that the judicial system will strip the Mexican governor's legal immunity so that he can also face charges.

The IWMF also recognized Ethiopia's Serkalem Fasil, who was jailed and, under deplorable conditions, delivered a child prematurely. She was incarcerated because of articles her publications carried that were critical of the government during the May 2005 elections. According to the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists, only China and Cuba have a worse ranking than Ethiopia for their treatment of journalists.

The third courage award was shared by six Iraqi women journalists who work for the McClatchy News bureau in Baghdad. All six tell the story of life amidst Iraq's continuing violence despite risks to themselves and their families if they are ever discovered.

"I have been in several situations where I have said my last prayer, for certainty that I was going to be killed," one of the McClatchy journalists said. "It was on the way to work, on the way back from work, terrifying situations are in our path every day. We have learned to live with that fear. Otherwise we would sit in our homes, close our doors, and even then we're not safe," she said.

Ransom said her staff received 50 nominations in 2007 for her organization's annual Lifetime Achievement and Courage in Journalism awards. They decided to honor Thornycroft, Cacho, Fasil and the McClatchy journalists after carefully considering the significance of their risks and the press restrictions under which they operate.

"We tend to take people out who have had, maybe, one brush with danger and . . . look at people who have been reporting over a long period of time in dangerous circumstances or were imprisoned for a long period of time," Ransom said- USINFO

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