The Amnesty Media Awards, which celebrates the best of human rights journalism from trouble spots across the world, has managed to create some conflict of its own.
This year, the organisers decided to liven up the format by including a “People’s Choice” award, with an online vote by the public. Among the shortlist was the BBC’s Lyse Doucet, who gained access to Sudan to report on the human rights abuses there last December, and who has routinely found eyewitnesses to the destruction in Gaza. Patrick Coburn, a Middle East correspondent since 1990, was shortlisted, as was Jeremy Bowen.
But all were overlooked in the public vote in favour of provocateur Owen Jones, who has spun his high profile as a Guardian columnist into 1million followers on Elon Musk’s X and 760,000 more on YouTube. Jones used his acceptance speech to lambast the mainstream media for not covering Gaza. This may have come as something of a surprise to the journalists present, who included shortlisted entries from Channel 4, Sky News, ITN, the Financial Times, the Guardian, and Bellingcat, all of whom were there for their extensive original reporting or months-long investigations relating to the conflict.
However many feathers Jones may have ruffled, though, it was nothing compared to the disquiet among some attendees when they saw that present at an invitation-only gathering to celebrate those exposing human rights abuses was Asa Winstanley, a commentator on Palestinian affairs who says the well-evidenced claims that Syria’s deposed dictator Bashar al-Assad deployed chemical weapons against his own people have been “credibly debunked” and also believes that “al-Qaida and Islamic State are creations and proxies of US, Israeli and other western intelligence.”
Several journalists present are said to be considering whether or not to enter the awards next year…
