FPA MEDIA AWARDS
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The FPA's External Judges
for our 2025 edition #FPAawards25
L-R:
Michael Jermey
Journalist and Broadcast News executive.
Chair, Disasters Emergency Committee
Michael Jermey is Chair of the Disasters Emergency Committee, a Gwilym Gibbon Research Fellow at Nuffield College, Oxford and an Honorary Visiting Professor of Journalism at Cardiff University. He was previously Director of News and Current Affairs at UK Public Service Broadcaster, ITV and in 2025 received the Royal Television Society’s Outstanding Contribution award.
As ITV’s Director of News and Current Affairs Michael led the organisation for 16 years, overseeing coverage of five UK General Elections, seven Prime Ministers, three US presidencies, the Covid pandemic, Brexit, the death of Queen Elizabeth and the wars in Ukraine and the Middle East.
He commissioned the historically important first leaders’ debate at the 2010 UK general election for ITV and oversaw TV debates at every subsequent election, helping to ensure that they became a permanent feature in UK politics
Dawn Alford
Chief Executive of the Society of Editors
Dawn Alford is the Chief Executive of the Society of Editors, a campaigning organisation representing editorial leaders across the UK news industry. A recognised authority on journalism and media freedom, she regularly provides expert commentary in newspapers, on television and radio.
With an extensive career as a national newspaper journalist, columnist and executive, Dawn has held senior roles across the media and has edited numerous magazines and digital content platforms. She is a leading voice on issues including press freedom, open justice, journalist safety and the future of news, and works closely with industry, regulators and policymakers to champion high standards of journalism and protect the public’s right to know
.
Tanya Gold
Tanya Gold is an award-winning freelance journalist. She writes for the Spectator, the New Statesman, Unherd and Harper’s Magazine.
Tanya won the FPA Media Awards Arts & Culture Story of the Year in 201
Chair of the Judges:
Gabi Biesinger
ARD Radio, Germany
*SHORLITSTED*
FPA AWARDS 2024
TV & Radio Story of the Year by a Full Member of the FPA
Ambroise Bouleis, Charline Madini, Léna Soudre
Inside Britain’s grooming gang scandal
France Télévisions
Azusa Suzuki, Yukiko Kishimoto, Simon Bradley
Run as you are
Nippon TV, Japan
Wolf-Christian Ulrich, Joe Evans, Sarah Prietzsch, Jörg Ellmers
London: Stadt der Spione/City of Spies
ZDF, Germany
Print & web Story of the Year by a Full Member of the FPA
Fleur Launspach
Aberdeen struggles with energy transition
Trouw, Netherlands.
Tessa Szyszkowitz, Florian Klenk
Pursued by Putin's hunters
Falter, Austria
Julie Zaugg
London’s use of facial recognition is surging
Le Monde, France
ENVIRONMENT & science Story of the Year
Jenny Kleeman
You tried to tell yourself I wasn’t real: what happens when people with acute psychosis meet the voices in their heads?
The Guardian Long Read
Sophie McBain
Look they’re getting skin!: are we right to strive to save the world’s tiniest babies?
The Guardian Long Read
Anna Meisel, Paul Kenyon, Carl Johnston Jess Staufenberg, Atika Rehman, Leigh Baldwin
The Tyre Scandal
BBC and Source Materia
TV News Story of the Year
Jeremy Bowen
Settler violence
BBC News
Cathy Newman
The Case against the Archbishop (Welby interview)
Channel 4 News
John Sparks, Ameera Harouda, Celine Alkhaldi, Doaa Mohammad, Mahmoud Mashharawi
Inside Gaza’s Nasser Hospital
Sky News
Print & Web News Story of the Year
Manisha Ganguly
A deadly scheme
The Guardian
Jenny Kleeman
Inside Israel's fight to make fathers of its dead soldiers
Financial Times
Natalie Obiko Pearson, Jessica Brice
The Egg: A story of extraction, exploitation and opportunity
Bloomberg Businessweek
Radio/Podcast of the Year
Simon Maybin, China Collins
Currently: One week in Gaza
BBC
Kevin Hirten, Tamara Khandaker, Craig Pennington, Will Thorne
Uprising in Bangladesh
Al Jazeera’s Investigative Unit
Gareth Brown, Sam Colbert, Gemma Newby, Weidong Lin
The hunt for Austin Tice
The Economist
Travel/Tourism Story of the Year
William Lee Adams, Phil Clarkson, Dawn Lake, Mike London, Karolina Mottram
Vietnam: Return to Banana Garden Market
The Travel Show, BBC
Atul Dev
Life in a 'sinking nation': Tuvalu's dreams of dry land
The Guardian Long Read
David Pilling
Deep into the Sahara, on a Mauritanian adventure
Financial Times
Financial/Economic Story of the Year
Steve Boggan
Flipping Hell: How did a group trafficked from eastern Europe end up working as slaves in a car wash, a bread factory - and a branch of McDonald's?
Sunday Times Magazine
Tom Burgis
How oligarchs took on the UK fraud squad – and won
The Guardian Long Read
Juliette Garside, Manisha Ganguly, Ariane Lavrilleux, Harrison Taylor, Hans-Martin Tillack, Thaer Aabed
European missile group MBDA selling parts for bombs that have killed children in Gaza
The Guardian, Disclose, Follow the Money
ARTS & CULTURE Story of the Year
Miles Johnson
The Fugitive Prince
FT Weekend Magazine
Sam Knight
Under the hammer
New Yorker
Gesbeen Mohammad, Guy Creasey, Sofia Fernandez Vyas, and Esella Hawkey
Inside China: The Battle for Tibet
ITV / Frontline PBS / Hardcash Productions
Thomson Foundation young journalist
Tracy Bonareri Onchoke, Kenya
Video/Multimedia Journalist, Africa Uncensored
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Blocked at the Bar
-
The Karatu Stadium Story.
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Conversion therapy in Mombasa
Godwin Asediba, Ghana
Video Journalist, TV3
-
The Troubled Morgue
-
Trapped in War
-
Hooked on Red: The Red Opioid Crisis
Wangu Kanuri, Kenya
Print, The Daily Nation
-
Classrooms or Ovens? The price of schooling under a scorching sun.
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Weight loss at what cost? Nairobi pharmacies now selling Ozempic illegally.
-
Shocking confessions of notorious practitioner who abandoned FGM
CITY UNIVERSITY MA STUDENT FOREIGN CORRESPONDENT
Georgia de Gidlow
Copper Mountain Mine Project
Video
Pauline Nasri
Syrians returning from Turkey
Video
Jenna Legge
Swimming
Audio
Joseph Watt
To catch a virtual predator
WINNERS
FPA AWARDS 2024
TV&RADIO Story of the Year by a Full Member of the FPA
Gabi Biesinger
85 years of “Kindertransport” to Great Britain
ARD, German Radio
Daniele Hamamdjian, Kieron O’Dea, Marc D’Amours 🥇
Inside the ‘Little Gaza’ of the West Bank, & Living under Israeli Lockdown in Hebron
Global News, Canada
Tiziana Prezzo
Child Slavery in the UK
PRINT&WEB Story of the Year by a Full Member of the FPA
Mark MacKinnon 🥇
The Globe & Mail, Canada
Michael Neudecker
Die Wut der Abgehängten (The anger of those left behind)
Süddeutsche Zeitung, Germany
Niels Posthumus, Merlin Daleman
'De brexit heeft een aanzuigende werking op bootmigranten' ('Brexit has a pull effect on boat migrants')
Trouw, Netherlands
ENVIRONMENT&SCIENCE Story of the Year
Jenny Kleeman
Why are so many young people getting cancer?
The Sunday Times Magazine
Callum Macrae, Mark Williams 🥇
People & Power – A Crude Mistake?
Al Jazeera English
Grace Malie
Tuvalu: Losing Paradise
TV NEWS Story of the Year
Yousef Hammash 🥇
Channel 4 News
Stuart Ramsay, Toby Nash, Dominique Van Heerden
The struggle to reach America
Sky News
Darshna Soni
Undercover inside Reform UK's campaign
Channel 4 News
PRINT&WEB News Story of the Year
Will Coldwell
A teenaged migrant piloted a dinghy that sank in the Channel. Then he was charged with manslaughter
Prospect
Stephen Grey, Maayan Lubell, Ryan McNeill
Hunted by Hamas
Reuters
Neggeen Sadid 🥇
Why I opened a secret school for Afghan girls
1843 Magazine
RADIO/PODCAST of the Year
Chloe Hadjimatheou, Claudia Williams, Hannah Varrall, Gary Marshall, Jasper Corbett 🥇
Tortoise Media
Fiona Hamilton, David Collins, Stephen Drill
Cocaine Inc.
The Times, The Sunday Times & News Corp Australia
Poonam Taneja
Bloodlines
BBC Asian Network, BBC Sounds, CBC Podcasts
TRAVEL/TOURISM Story of the Year
Miles Johnson
What happened to Russia's seized superyachts?
Financial Times
David Rose
11,000 metres from daylight -- the inside story of the remotest ever cave dive
The Sunday Times Magazine
Sue-Lin Wong 🥇
The cruise that will get you chased by the Chinese coastguard
1843 Magazine
FINANCIAL/ECONOMIC Story of the Year
Alaric Nightingale, Julian Lee, Alex Longley, Angus Bennett, Leila Hussain🥇
Bloomberg
David Collins, Will Roe
Cocaine Inc: how British drugs cash is turned into solid gold in Dubai
The Sunday Times Magazine
Amanda Chicago Lewis
Secrets of a ransomware negotiator
1843 Magazine
Fatima Lianes, Fanon Kabwe, Diego Barrero, Fran Pigni
Dying Earth – Beyond the Oil Age
Al Jazeera English
ARTS&CULTURE Story of the Year
Esella Hawkey, Alice McShane, Florence Kennard, Alistair Jackson and Imogen
Wynell-Mayow 🥇
Dispatches: Russell Brand: In Plain Sight
Hardcash Productions / Channel 4
John Hooper
Why right-wing Italians love hobbits, pirates and talking seagulls
1843 Magazine
Ali Rae, Pierangelo Pirak, Ben Walker, Meenakshi Ravi
All Hail the Planet – Psychology: Why our brains block climate crisis
Al Jazeera English
Rosamund Urwin, Charlotte Wace, Paul Morgan-Bentley 🥇
Russell Brand accused of rape, sexual assaults and abuse
The Sunday Times/The Times
THOMSON FOUNDATION YOUNG JOURNALIST
Reporter, Afghanistan 🥇
Online Mulitmedia Journalist, The Afghan Times
-
Afghan women face serious challenges amid flooding
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The child labour crisis in Afghanistan.
-
Taliban forces closure of women-only restaurants: the last haven for Afghan women workers under threat.
Aisha Farrukh, Pakistan
Multimedia Journalist and Head of Content, Centrum Media (Digital news network)
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Pakistan’s Plastic Problem
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Bonded by brick
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Two nations under a flag
Somaiyah Hafeez, Pakistan
Print, Online/multimedia, Freelance, Kontinentalist, New Line Magazine
-
No justice for Balochistan’s disappeared
-
Afghan refugees born in Pakistan are leaving their lives for the unknown
-
After successive floods, Pakistan is forced to consider resilient housing
CITY UNIVERSITY MA STUDENT FOREIGN CORRESPONDENT
Mauricio Alencar
Argentina’s economic crisis
Eliana Nunes
Illegal pushbacks: the heavy toll of seeking asylum in Europe.
Midori Tanioka 🥇
Border Resisters: Myanmar
The FPA's External Judges for our 2023 edition #FPAawards23:
L-R:
Joseph Harker - Senior Editor (Diversity and Development), Co-lead, Scott Trust Legacies of Enslavement project, The Guardian
Joseph Harker is Senior Editor, Diversity, and Development at The Guardian. He has also been co-lead of the Guardian's Legacies of Enslavement project – which examined the links between the Guardian's founder and transatlantic slavery, issued an apology, and drew up a £10m+ restorative justice action plan. Joseph also sits on the board of the Society of Editors.
Joseph is a former Guardian Deputy Opinion Editor. And for over 20 years he has run the Guardian's Positive Action Scheme, which offers enhanced work experience to aspiring journalists who are ethnic-minority or have a disability: many have gone on to have successful media careers.
Before joining the Guardian, Joseph was Editor and Publisher of the weekly newspaper Black Briton, and prior to that he was Assistant Editor at The Voice newspaper.
He tweets at @josephharker
Zeinab Badawi
TV & Radio Journalist, President of SOAS University of London
Zeinab Badawi was born in Sudan. She has a BA Hons degree from Oxford University, where she is an honorary fellow, and an MA from SOAS, London University.
In addition to a long broadcast career that includes programmes such as Hardtalk and a 20 part BBC tv series on the history of Africa , Zeinab is President of SOAS, she sits on several boards such as the Royal Foundation of the Prince and Princess of Wales, MINDS - the Mandela Institute for Development Studies, the International Crisis Group The Royal Opera House and the Arts Humanities and Research Council Zeinab has received
he Guardian Research Fellow at Nuffield College, Oxford.
Professor Matt Walsh
Head of School of Journalism, Media & Culture, Cardiff University
Matt Walsh is the head of the School of Journalism, Media and Culture at Cardiff University. He moved into academia after more than 20 years as a working journalist in broadcast and digital media. In 1999, He joined ITN as a radio reporter from the BBC and rose to become Deputy Editor of the ITV News Channel, where he worked on stories such as 9/11 and the Iraq War. In 2006, he moved to The Times to set up its multimedia journalism department. Matt has also worked internationally with the Thomson Reuters Foundation and Al Jazeera. He continues to work closely at the nexus of academia and industry as a trustee of journalism training charities and on the Standards Code committee for IMPRESS.
Chair of the Judges:
Birgit Maass, Deutsche Welle, Germany
(previous winner of the FPA Awards in 2023)
WINNERS
OF THE FPA AWARDS 2023
Story of the Year by a Full Member of the FPA
Daniele Hamamdjian, Marc D’Amours
Life under the Taliban for Afghan Women
CTV News, Canada
Birgit Maass 🥇
Public Order versus Civil Rights: Is Liberal Britain under threat?
Deutsche Welle, Germany
Joerg Schindler
Der Spiegel, Germany
Environment Story of the Year
Jess Kelly, Owen Pinnell, BBC Arabic Investigations 🥇
BBC News and BBC Arabic
Rebecca Henschke, Astudestra Ajeng, Kelvin Brown, Joel Gunter, Sam Piranty
BBC Eye/BBC World Service
Elisângela Mendonça, Andrew Wasley and Fábio Zuker
Collagen craze drives deforestation and rights abuses
The Bureau of Investigative Journalism
TV News Story of the Year
Orla Guerin
The children of Yemen’s forgotten war
BBC News
Nima Elbagir
Hidden from view – Sexual abuse and torture in Iranian black sites
CNN Worldwide
Quentin Sommerville, Darren Conway 🥇
BBC News
Print & Web News Story of the Year
Paul Carsten, David Lewis, Reade Levinson, Libby George
Reuters
Stephanie Clifford, Jonathan Beckman, Abigail Fielding Smith
An autistic man was surfing the internet on his dad's sofa. Then the FBI turned up
Economist
Zachary Mider, Swati Gupta, Modou Joof 🥇
Poisoned cough syrup killed kids
Bloomberg News
Radio/Podcast of the Year
Josh Baker, Sara Obeidat, Joe Kent, Jonathan Aspinwall, Emma Rippon 🥇
The Shamima Begum Story (Series 2 of I’m Not A Monster)
BBC News Long Form Audio for BBC Sounds/5 Live
Nicky Woolf, Max Johnston
The Sound: Mystery of Havana Syndrome
Project Brazen / Goat Rodeo
Sahar Zand, Heidi Pett, Sarah Burke
Dirty Work: The Misuse of Interpol Red Notices
Sky News
TV Documentary/Feature Story of the Year
Robin Barnwell, Dareen Kemp, Hilary Andersson, Serhiy Solodko, Taras Shumeyko, Guy Creasey,Toby Fitzpatrick 🥇
BBC /Top Hat Productions /Hayloft Productions
Majed Neisi, Sasha Joelle Achilli, Dan Edge
BBC Current Affairs/ Frontline PBS, / Passion Documentaries
Fault Lines Team
The Killing of Shireen Abu Akleh
Al Jazeera English - Fault Lines
ITV Team
Inside Russia: Putin's War at Home
ITV and Hardcash Productions
Travel/Tourism Story of the Year
Stephen Bleach
Trail blazers: The holiday that changed the world
The Sunday Times Magazine
Matt Rudd 🥇
The Sunday Times Magazine
Sally Williams
Dark waters: how the adventure of a lifetime turned to tragedy
The Guardian Long Read
Financial/Economic Story of the Year
Miles Johnson
Wagner Inc: a Russian warlord and his lawyers
Financial Times
Harry Wallop 🥇
The Sunday Times Magazine
Yifan Yu
The U.S.-China rare earths battle
Nikkei Asia
Arts & Culture Story of the Year
Mobeen Azhar, Megumi Inman
Predator: The secret Scandal of J-Pop
BBC Current Affairs
Sam Knight
The New Yorker
Jonathan Miller, Nick Blakemore, Yousef Hammash, Claire Pringle, Andy Lee, Ed Fraser 🥇
Unreported World, Channel 4
Jen Stout
New Humanist
Thomson Foundation Young Journalist of the Year
Jamaima Afridi, Pakistan
Freelance Reporter / Filmmaker, Nikkei Asia/Asia Democracy Chronicles
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Afghan women fleeing to Pakistan
-
Tribal women pursuing inheritance rights
-
Land of the missing
Yara El Murr, Lebanon 🥇
Journalist, The Public Source
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Tripoli missing migrants
-
Climate change agriculture.
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Lebanon disaster risk preparedness
Zuha Siddiqui, Pakistan
Labour x Tech reporting fellow, Vice/Rest of World/Unbias the News
-
16 children died in Karachi toxic air factory.
-
Pakistan internet outage
-
Karachi fighting an unfolding climate apocalypse
Science Story of the Year
Ben Spencer
The Sunday Times Magazine
Samanth Subramanian 🥇
Dismantling Sellafield: the epic task of shutting down a nuclear site
Guardian Long Read
John Sudworth, Simon Maybin, Richard Vadon
Fever: The Hunt for Covid's Origin
BBC Radio 4
City University MA Future Foreign Correspondent
Neha Dhillon
Riots in Martinique
Polly Thomson
Louisiana Death Row
Maya Saad 🥇
Lebanon Tragedy at Sea
JOURNALIST OF THE YEAR
Robin Barnwell 🏆
The FPA's External Judges for our 2023 edition #FPAawards23:
L-R:
ALAN RUSBRIDGER is the editor of Prospect and the former head of Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford. He was Editor in Chief of the Guardian from 1995 to 2015, during which period he oversaw the digital transformation of the paper to a world-leading digital news organisation. Investigations into WikiLeaks, tax avoidance, phone hacking and the Snowden revelations won numerous awards, including the 2014 Pulitzer Prize for public service. He is the co-author of the BBC drama, Fields of Gold and wrote the books: Breaking News and News and How to Use it . He is a member of the Facebook Oversight Board. Together with Lionel Barber, he hosts the podcast Media Confidential on Prospect.
GLENDA COOPER is the deputy head of the journalism department and BA programme director at City St. George's University. She is the author of Reporting Humanitarian Disasters in a Social Media Age (Routledge, 2018) and co-editor of Humanitarianism, Communications and Change (Peter Lang, 2015). Prior to City she worked as a staff editor and reporter at The Independent, Daily Mail, Sunday Times, Daily Telegraph and as a correspondent for the BBC News Channel and Radio 4. She was the Laurence Stern Fellow at the Washington Post where she covered 9/11 and was the Guardian Research Fellow at Nuffield College, Oxford.
PAUL DAVIES recently retired after a career spanning more than half a century in print,radio and television journalism. He is best known for 39 years as a senior correspondent with ITN, many of them spent reporting from the frontlines of the world's conflicts. His trademark was reporting from the heart of the story including from inside sieges in Bucharest and Dubrovnik. His work in places like Afghanistan, Iraq, Romania and in the break up of former Yugoslavia was recognised with all of the industry's major awards. In 1993 he was awarded an OBE by Queen Elizabeth II for services to broadcast journalism.
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Chair of the Judges:
Elodie Goulesquea - Freelance (France)
(previous winner of the FPA Awards in 2019)
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Previous Winners of the Journalist of the Year Award:
2022 Isobel Yeung, VICE News
2021 Robert Moore, ITV News
2020 Maria Ressa, Rappler
2019 Namak Koshnaw, BBC Arabic
2018 Wa Lone and Kyaw Soe Oo, Reuters
2017 Daniel Taylor, The Guardian
2016 Marcel Mettelsiefen, Channel 4
2015 Martin Chulov, The Guardian
2014 Ed Caesar, New Yorker
2013 Anthony Loyd, The Times
2012 Paul Wood, BBC
Special posthumous award to Marie Colvin, Sunday Times
2011 Nick Davies, The Guardian
2010 Anthony Thomas, Mentorn & HBO and Saeed Kamali Dehghan, The Guardian
2009 Martin Hickman, The Independent
KEYNOTE SPEAKERS:
The keynote speech at FPA Media Awards 2023 was delivered by H.M. Queen Camilla
In previous years, our Guests of Honour and Keynote Speakers have included:
- Hon Fabien Picardo, Chief Minister of Gibraltar
- Senator Mario Monti, Former Prime Minister of Italy
- HM Queen Rania Al-Abdullah of Jordan
- HRH the Prince of Wales
- HM King Felipe VI of Spain
- Prime Minister Boris Johnson (when Mayor of London)
- Rt Hon Carwyn Jones, former First Minister of Wales
- Christophe Deloire, Secretary General of RSF
(Reporters Without Borders)
- three former British Foreign Secretaries
- the former US Ambassador Matthew Barzun
- Sir Venki Ramakrishnan, Nobel Prize Winner and first ever Indian President of the Royal Society.
HM Queen Rania of Jordan is, to date, the only-ever recipient of the FPA Humanitarian of the Year Award, which she received in 2016 (see here).
Every year, the guest list for the Awards is made up of around 350-400 influential members of the British and International media, UK politicians, business leaders, foreign government representatives and other leading opinion makers.
@FPALondon