News media glitterati to recall journalists killed on the job

Thursday, 21 May 2015

A record attendance of 530 is expected to celebrate print journalism at  Canon Media Awards in Auckland on Friday night.

Organiser Rick Neville, editorial director of the Newspaper Publishers' Association, said support for the event – now New Zealand's only national journalism awards – seemed to grow each year, despite the challenges facing the publishing industry.

Some 1600 entries spanning 8000 individual pieces of work had been received for 64 categories, assessed by judges in four countries.

'This is also evident in the support from sponsors which now number 11 including, for the first time, Google.'

The theme for the awards would be Celebrating Storytelling in a Free Media, which Neville said was intended to underline the value to democracy and citizens' rights of a free media. The awards themselves would be dedicated to the more than 60 journalists and media workers killed last year in their line of work.

An opening video with a media freedom message will also commemorate the 40th anniversary of the killing of the so-called Balibo Five, reporters and TV crew shot in East Timor by Indonesian forces. One of them was a New Zealander, Gary Cunningham.