The winners of the 15th annual Amnesty International UK Media Awards were announced in a ceremony at London’s Café Royal last night. The awards recognise excellence in human rights reporting and acknowledge journalism’s significant contribution to the UK public’s awareness and understanding of human rights issues.

The ceremony, sponsored by PCI Fitch, took place at the Café Royal, London, hosted by BBC News 24 and Newsnight presenter Emily Maitlis.

As well as categories covering newspapers, periodicals, photojournalism, radio, TV news and documentaries, there was an award for a UK journalist new to human rights journalism, the Gaby Rado Memorial Award, and an international award - the Amnesty International Special Award for Human Rights Journalism Under Threat.

Amnesty International UK Director Kate Allen said: “This year we mark 15 years of Amnesty International Media Awards through which we pay tribute to excellence in reporting on human rights. Those 15 years have helped strengthen Amnesty’s work – and we believe have encouraged great human rights journalism.”

Winners

• National newspapers : 'Iraq special report', The Observer – Peter Beaumont

  Judges: Roger Alton, Mike Blakemore, Dr Rosemary Hollis, John Kampfner, Ann Leslie, Sean Ryan, Ahmed Versi.

• Periodicals: Beasts of prey, The Sunday Times Magazine – Christine Toomey

Judges: Mike Blakemore, Bill Bowring, Jimmy Burns, Ian Hislop, Jenni Murray, Sandi Toksvig.


• Photojournalism: Rwanda - facing the virus, Positive Lives exhibition - Stuart Freedman

Judges: Heidi Bradner, Jon Levy, Judah Passow, Maggie Paterson, Peter Preston, Alex Proud, Mark Sealy.

• Radio: Reports from rural China, BBC Radio 4 - Rupert Wingfield Hayes and Alistair Burnett

Judges: Mike Blakemore, Simon Cadmon, Husain Husaini, Francis Wheen,
Julian Worricker.

• Television documentary and docudrama: Asylum, BBC – Amanda Richardson, Peter Gordon, Edwina Vardey and Nicola Clemens

Judges: David Belton, Yigal Chazan, Simon Israel, Imran Khan, Maggie Paterson, Joan Smith.




• Television news: Conflict - tin: Congo's tin soldiers, Channel 4 News - ITN: Elizabeth C Jones, Jonathan Miller and Mike Radford

Judges: Anton Antonovich, Kevin Bakhurst, Emily Maitlis, Maggie Paterson, Don Redding, Kim Sengupta, Alistair Stewart.




• Gaby Rado Memorial Award (for a journalist at the start of their career): Human rights in the Former Soviet Union, The Guardian - Nick Paton Walsh

Judges: Mike Blakemore, Lindsey Hilsum, Isabel Hilton, Andrew MacDonald, Lorna Martin




• Nations and Regions: Tales from the edge, the Glasgow girls, BBC Scotland, Lindsey Hill, Simon Parsons, Rhiannon Brady and Emma Green McInnes

Judges: Patrick Corrigan, Steve Crawshaw, Paul Donovan, Clare Hudson, Tracy McVeigh, Maggie O’Kane.




• The Amnesty International Special Award for Human Rights Journalism Under Threat: Stanislav Dmitrievskiy and Oksana Chelysheva

Stanislav and Oksana are journalists at the Russian Chechen Information Agency, which specialises in reporting on Chechnya. The two are also leading members of the Russian Chechen Friendship Society, a human rights organisation that co-publishes the newspaper Pravo-zashchita (‘Rights Protection’). Both have received death threats.

Judges: Selected by a panel from Amnesty International.