Posted: April 15, 2010
Region: worldwide
Ruth Eglash of The Jerusalem Post and Hani Hazaimeh of The Jordan Times won top honors in the first X-Cultural Reporting Competition organized by the United Nations Alliance of Civilizations and the International Center for Journalists (ICFJ). Their columns on the dismal state of relations between Israel and Jordan 15 years after normalization received a great deal of coverage and generated a lively debate.
Asmaa Fathy of Egyptian magazine El Mawqef Al Arabi, Aleksandar Milosevic of Daily Serbia, and Tarek Mounir of Egyptian newspaper Al Raai took second place for their innovative Web site Hijabskirt Info. The site creatively tackles biases in fashion and culture in both the Western and Muslim worlds.
Third-place winners, Naveed Ahmad of Pakistan’s Geo TV, Syria-based Alia Turki Al-Rabeo of the Kuwaiti newspaper, Awan, and Ruzanna Tantushyan, a free-lancer from the United States, produced another outstanding multimedia Web site called Silent Heroes that profiles individuals who challenge stereotypes across cultural divides.
The X-Cultural Reporting Awards will be presented to representatives from the three reporting teams at a ceremony in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, on May 29.
The reporting teams were formed at a conference on Freedom of Expression in the Digital Age held in Alexandria, Egypt, in February, sponsored by the UN Alliance of Civilizations and the Anna Lindh Foundation and administered by ICFJ, with the support of the Alexandria Library. Meeting over a period of three days, 45 journalists participated in hands-on workshops on writing opinion pieces and using new digital tools. They engaged in vigorous debates on stereotypes, loaded language and graphic images. They also heard from a wide range of experts on everything from covering Islam in the Western media to the growing use of social networking in the Muslim world. Prior to the conference, many reporters took part in ICFJ’s five-week online course on digital media that for the first time was taught in Arabic and English. Comments from the participants were translated each day, sparking lively discussions.
