MOSCOW, JUNE 10 — RT extends the deadline for entries for the 2020 Khaled Alkhateb Memorial Awards, an annual international competition that recognizes the best journalism from conflict zones, until June 30. The competition, now in its third year, was established in honor of RT Arabic freelancer, Khaled Alkhateb, who died reporting from the frontlines in Syria.
“Even the pandemic couldn’t stop war correspondents from doing their job across the world. Just last week, a freelancer working with RT’s RUPTLY multimedia agency was viciously killed in Yemen. We established the Khaled Alkhateb Memorial Awards to honour those who put their lives on the line to report the truth,” said RT’s deputy editor-in-chief Anna Belkina.
The Khaled Alkhateb Memorial Awards is presented in three categories: Best Video Journalism from a Conflict Zone: Long Form; Best Video Journalism from a Conflict Zone: Short Form; and Best Written Journalism from a Conflict Zone.
In 2019, the jury selected the best entries from 25 countries. Journalists from Russia, the US, Italy, and India took top honors for their reports about conflicts in Syria, Iraq, and Libya. Judging was conducted by an international jury of news media professionals and experts on the subject of war and armed conflicts. Among them is industry veteran Tom Wragg, who currently serves as the Business Development Director of the Association for International Broadcasters. Other high-profile jurors included Eva Golinger, a lawyer, journalist and writer specializing in the field of international law and foreign policy between Latin America and the US, RT International correspondent Maria Finoshina, and RT Arabic host Salam Musafir.
The 2019 awards ceremony took place as part of the RT Media Talk – ‘Covering Conflict: Dimensions, Risks And Responsibilities Of Journalism In The Hot Zone’. Acclaimed journalists from all over the world discussed impartiality when covering international conflicts, debunking fake news from the frontlines, and other important issues facing today’s media.
The winners of the third annual Khaled Alkhateb Memorial Awards will be announced on July 30, which marks the day on which 25-year-old RT Arabic stringer Khaled Alkhateb was killed by ISIS shelling in Homs, Syria, in 2017. Khaled had been covering the fighting between Syrian government forces and terrorists. In 2018, Russian President Vladimir Putin posthumously honored Khaled with the Medal for Courage.
In early June 2020, Yemeni journalist Nabil Hasan al-Quaety, who was collaborating with RT’s multimedia agency RUPTLY and other media outlets, fell victim of a violent attack that ended his life. Al-Quaety helped cover the ongoing armed conflict in Yemen and the situation in the Middle East. January 2020 saw the tragic death of yet another RUPTLY stringer, Safaa Ghali, in Iraq.
Find out more and submit your entry at https://award.rt.com/.
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