May 21, 2019
At the first panel of the Overseas Press Club event commemorating the Tiananmen Square protests, five respected correspondents that were all there in 1989 agreed that what happened there was groundbreaking. Something everyone was struck by at the time was the way the protests brought about a new openness for reporters in China...
The Overseas Press Club invited three survivors from the Tiananmen Square protests to speak about their experiences during and after the protests. The panel started with a showcase of archival footage featuring all three protestors present: Wu’er Kaixi during a hunger strike, Rose Tang at the front lines of the protests, and Zhou Fengsou at a hearing...
The third panel discussion of the day was moderated by author Sheryl WuDunn, who won a Pulitzer prize and OPC Award for her coverage of China. The spotlight focused on Chinese president Xi Jinping and on the vast, perhaps outsized, effect that one man can have on the billion-member society that he governs...
In the final panel of the day, the topic was how both nascent and long-established technologies have become tools of control. Though panelists and audience alike were interested in emerging technologies like artificial intelligence (AI) and smart cities, the conversation seemed to veer back to telecom giant Huawei and its major developments towards establishing 5G mobile networks both within and beyond China’s borders...
See photos and video from the OPC Annual Awards Dinner on April 18, 2019, with links to award pages and more...
Around the world, journalists work in a constant climate of fear and intimidation and their safety seems to be declining. Authoritarian governments are making more overt threats against journalists, demeaning the profession as “fake news” and exerting greater control over the media through physical and electronic surveillance. Those hostile moves have led to unprecedented levels of violence against reporters throughout the world. A majority of the world’s population do not even have access to an unfettered free press...
Watch video clips from the April 24 book night with Jason Rezaian, a Washington Post reporter who spent almost two years in Tehran’s Evin prison. He discussed his experiences as well as foreign policy concerns, and the contents of his book "Prisoner: My 544 Days in an Iranian Prison–Solitary Confinement, a Sham Trial, High-Stakes Diplomacy, and the Extraordinary Efforts It Took to Get Me Out"...
On April 18, correspondents and members of the Overseas Press Club gathered at Cipriani 25 Broadway in Manhattan, for the annual gala to celebrate their award-winning colleagues, and honor journalists who faced great personal peril in the field over the last year...
Read a transcript of keynote remarks from Martin Baron, executive editor of The Washington Post, who addressed attendees at the OPC's Annual Awards Dinner on April 18...
Robyn Dixon writes for the 2019 Dateline magazine: "The light was always on, with no sense of day or night. Two guards were always in the cell but they rarely spoke to the prisoner. The cell’s two security cameras watched constantly. To sleep, the prisoner had to lie on a narrow bed between the guards. He had to squat on the open latrine in front of them to relieve himself..."
The Overseas Press Club of America condemns the Feb. 13 arrest of journalist Maria Ressa by Filipino authorities on cyber libel charges. The OPC demands that the government release her immediately and end its longstanding campaign of intimidation and harassment against Ressa and Rappler, the online news site that she founded...
The ongoing civil wars in Syria and Yemen as well as the desperate plight of refugees are the leading storylines among the winners of the 80th Annual Overseas Press Club Awards. America’s oldest association dedicated to international news announced its 21 winners who will be honored April 18 at a dinner in New York...
Open this page to access windows to watch live panels from the May 9 event: "Tiananmen Square Thirty Years Later - Is The Past A Portent Of An Even More Authoritarian Future?"
Thirty years ago, as of June 4, the Chinese leadership made a crucial decision—it sent in the tanks to crush students demonstrating for greater democratic rights, killing thousands. Come listen to the stories of those students who survived and how they have fought a 30-year shadow war against the Chinese government even though they sought refuge in Western democracies. We also will be joined by American correspondents who covered the event and have watched as the Chinese government under President Xi Jinping has gradually closed off the Chinese people’s access to the Western news media, fearing that it might infect the people with foreign ideals and set the stage for future political stirrings...
Dateline dispatch from photographer Adriana Zehbrauskas: "Adán Abraján de la Cruz was 24 years old the night he disappeared. A first-year student at the Ayotzinapa Teacher’s Rural School in the impoverished Mexican state of Guerrero, he went missing along with 42 other students when the buses they were traveling in were attacked by a drug cartel in Iguala which handed them over to local police, who, working in complicity with city officials, later disappeared them..."
On a sunny morning in July 2009, I got a phone call from a friend in Grozny, the capital of Chechnya: “They abducted Natasha right from the courtyard of her house.” Shortly after that, we learned that our friend and colleague, Natalya Estemirova, or Natasha as we all called her, had been murdered. I jumped on a plane and flew to Grozny.
Amy Yee, in this year's Dateline: "At a prison in Thiès, Senegal, a group of women in fine dresses cut from the same colorful fabric enact a scene before an audience. One of them breaks down sobbing and wailing; another woman comforts her. These women are not actors, but female inmates of the prison depicting why many of them are in jail: infanticide and abortion, which is effectively illegal in Senegal..."
Dateline report by Jacob Kushner: "For many news consumers the name Somalia has become synonymous with statelessness, violence, intractability. Each year Al-Shabab kills hundreds of civilians and terrorizes many more in Mogadishu and beyond. Yet for all the attention on Somalia’s many problems, news audiences might be surprised to learn that when it comes to ending impunity for sexual violence, some regions of Somalia have achieved remarkable progress..."
Elisabet Cantenys writes about ACOS for the Dateline magazine: "Back in September 2014, a group of editors met in New York and Chicago to grapple with the horrifying murders of James Foley and Steven Sotloff in Syria and to devise ways of promoting freelance journalists’ safety. No one could have ever imagined their talks would catch fire. During the following months, they drafted together with the Overseas Press Club and other journalism organizations the Freelance Journalist Safety Principles, a document that outlines a set of safety standards for news organizations and freelancers alike. Soon this informal movement crystallized into the ACOS Alliance..."
Martin Baron, executive editor of The Washington Post, will be the keynote speaker at the OPC’s 80th Annual Awards Dinner on April 18, 2019 honoring the best in international journalism...
As the OPC marks the 80th anniversary of its founding at the Annual Awards Dinner on April 18, the club will honor all the journalists who dedicate, risk, and even lose their lives covering the world – now, and over the past eight decades. Martin Baron, the executive editor of The Washington Post, will be the keynote speaker, and Lester Holt, anchor of NBC Nightly News and Dateline NBC, will present the awards.
The Overseas Press Club Foundation presented 16 scholarship awards at the organization’s annual Scholar Awards Luncheon on Friday, Feb. 22, 2019, at the Yale Club. OPC Foundation President Bill Holstein said during his opening remarks that the organization is joining a global battle by launching the careers of journalists’ who share key values of integrity and hard work...
The ACOS Alliance has reshaped its board of directors to expand the organization’s geographic reach and to draw in an excellent cross-selection of media organizations, non-profit organizations and experienced freelancers...
James P. Colligan, a Roman Catholic priest and a longtime member of the Overseas Press Club (OPC) and Foreign Correspondents' Club of Japan (FCCJ) who died at 90 on Jan. 31 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, had something in common with Cold War-era journalistic contemporaries who represented government-funded news organizations ranging from VOA and Stars and Stripes to Komsomolskaya Pravda and Novoye Vremya, and who did not wish to be – or to be seen as – anything less than first class correspondents...
On January 9, the OPC hosted its annual holiday party at the dining room of Club Quarters. OPC members and guests chatted over cocktails and a buffet dinner to help launch this year's calendar of club events...
The Overseas Press Club of America has named its award for best commentary on international news for Flora Lewis, a correspondent and columnist who won four OPC awards during her decades-long career...
After 18 years in business, The Half King bar and restaurant in Chelsea closed its doors at the end of January 2019. Earlier that month, the owners held a farewell party, packed with longtime patrons. Among them were members of the Overseas Press Club...
The exhibit opened on Jan. 19 in a museum in Intramuros, an old district of Manila. It was attended by over 200 invited guests and featured a Q&A on stage between Jaime FlorCruz as interviewee and two local journalists.
OPC member and former Governor Robert Nickelsberg has been awarded a fellowship at the Logan Nonfiction Program, which is part of the Carey Institute in Rensselaerville, New York. He plans to write about his return to Guatemala’s Ixil region, where from 1981 to 1984 he worked on stories for TIME magazine on the massacres committed by the Guatemalan Army during its civil war. He returned this January to find survivors more than three decades later...
Sudanese security authorities have released journalist Faisal Mohamed Salih, who was arrested Jan. 3 for supporting anti-government protests...
Dear President Lopez Obrador, On behalf of the Overseas Press Club of America, the oldest U.S.-based journalist organization covering global news, I wish to congratulate you on your inauguration as President of Mexico. You assume leadership of the country with many serious challenges, but the one that concerns us most is a scandal where the Mexican government is using illegal surveillance technology to spy on journalists...
As this fine piece in The Washington Post makes abundantly clear, the New Media mavens who once appeared to be the future of journalism are running out of gas. Vice, Quartz, Buzzfeed, Mic and other Internet-based news organizations are not meeting their financial targets and there is a hint of consolidation in the air...
Bill Gentile, a veteran journalist and documentary filmmaker who teaches journalism at American University in Washington, DC, has launched a new documentary TV series to explore the lives and challenges of freelance journalists on the front lines around the world.,,
I had no idea my new OPC press badges would give me unlimited access to covering one of the most horrific mass shootings of Jewish people in U.S. history. On a rainy October day in Pittsburgh, Pa., I walked quickly to the first of several press conferences that would unveil the somber and tragic acts of Robert Bowers...
The Committee to Protect Journalists has announced that two staff members, Angela Quintal, CPJ's Africa program coordinator, and Muthoki Mumo, CPJ's sub-Saharan Africa representative, have been released from detention...
Washington Post Publisher and CEO Fred Ryan made the following statement concerning President Donald Trump’s reaction to the murder of Jamal Khashoggi...
The Overseas Press Club of America applauds the federal district court ruling temporarily requiring the White House to reinstate the media credential for Jim Acosta, chief White House correspondent, CNN, whose access was previously revoked...
Amid trade disputes, security scuffles and cyberattacks on intellectual property, China analysts and watchers are warning that the U.S. and China may be settling in for a long Cold War. That puts a country like Taiwan, with China still disputing its sovereignty and the U.S. offering some arm’s-length support, on a knife’s edge...
After a few years of discussion and arrangements, the Foreign Correspondents’ Club of Japan (FCCJ) moved from its longtime home in the Yurakucho Denki Building to Tokyo’s Marunouchi business district. On the eve of the club's relocation on Oct. 29, Robert Whiting, the club's Second Vice President, made a statement looking back fondly at the FCCJ's history in Yurakucho.
Approximately 90 percent of crimes against journalists/media workers go unpunished. To date, 82 journalists have been killed in the line of duty through Nov. 2, 2018, according to UNESCO. The Overseas Press Club of America supports international free speech organization ARTICLE 19 in its call for governments to act on crimes against journalists..
We have signed up a new printer to make the large, government-style OPC press ID badges. We can now print badges as often as once a month, and have cut the price to $40 from $50...
NEW YORK, October 25, 2018—The Overseas Press Club of America and the Society of Silurians have invited Abdallah Y. Al-Mouallimi, the ambassador of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia to the United Nations, to a public meeting to explain the Saudi government's treatment of the press, and the abduction and murder of Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi.
Over the last two decades, newspapers and other traditional print media have been under increasing pressure to provide video and multimedia content. But in today’s era of ubiquitous cell phone cameras, viral distribution, and manipulated content, video storytelling comes with many pitfalls. On Oct. 18, a panel of experts gathered for a panel to present a “Video 101” seminar on perils and best practices of using video footage...
For all the talk out of Washington about fake news and the press being the enemy of the people, there is always one small corner where foreign correspondents are revered every October: France’s medieval jewel of Bayeux. This year, the Prix Bayeux-Calvados, the weeklong festival for war correspondents, felt more urgent than ever in its 25th edition, a haven of people discussing the best frontline reporting of the past year, and showering praise on journalists working in the world’s toughest hotspots...
The following is a statement about the brutal crackdown on free expression in Bangladesh from Atish Saha, a Bangladeshi photojournalist and performer based in New York who won the OPC’s 2014 Madeline Dane Ross Award along with Jason Motlagh for coverage of the Rana Plaza building collapse. Saha has been closely watching developments in Dhaka...
On sept. 20, several OPC members attended a performance of the play “Intractable Woman, A Theatrical Memo on Anna Politkovskaya,” which covered the interrogation, trial and assassination of the Russian journalist and human rights activist. Politkovskaya reported extensively on the Second Chechen War for the independent daily Novaya Gazeta and was killed in her Moscow apartment building in 2006...
The Overseas Press Club of America supports Congressional efforts to use the Global Magnitsky Act to investigate the death of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi and bring sanctions against those responsible...
On Oct. 17, OPC member Beth Knobel moderated a discussion at the Book Culture bookstore near Columbia University to discuss the state of watchdog reporting, and celebrate the launch of her book, The Watchdog Still Barks: How Accountability Reporting Evolved for the Digital Era...
Fred Ryan, Publisher and CEO of The Washington Post, made a statement regarding Jamal Khashoggi...
The Overseas Press Club of America formally requests that the Saudi Arabia government explain the whereabouts of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi...
NEW YORK October 5, 2018—The Hong Kong government has triggered a press freedom controversy by refusing to renew the work visa of a veteran Financial Times journalist after he moderated a discussion in August with pro-independence activist Andy Chan Ho-tin at the Foreign Correspondents Club (FCC)...
On Sept. 28, the Committee to Protect Journalists hosted a panel discussion at the United Nations to highlight global press freedom challenges...
Martin Baron, executive editor of The Washington Post, will be the keynote speaker at the OPC’s 80th Anniversary Awards Dinner on April 19, 2019...
Martin Baron, executive editor of The Washington Post, will be the keynote speaker at the OPC’s 80th Annual Awards Dinner on April 18, 2019 honoring the best in international journalism...
During the OPC’s Annual Meeting on Sept. 4, members elected Pancho Bernasconi, vice president of Global News at Getty Images, as the club’s next president.
Life as an international journalist comes with big rewards, but can also come at a cost. A high-octane lifestyle, marked by frequent uprooting between posts and the trauma of witnessing tragedy and loss, takes a toll on mental health. But getting help can feel like a nearly impossible task for such moving targets. A new service launched this summer is aimed at making access to therapy easier via remote video chat...
NEW YORK Sept. 4, 2018—The Overseas Press Club of America denounces a court ruling in Myanmar that found two Reuters journalists guilty of breaching a law on state secrets and jailed them for seven years...
The Overseas Press Club of America called on police in the United Kingdom to release two British journalists who were arrested Friday on suspicion of stealing confidential documents...
Friends and family members of legendary war correspondent and Army veteran Richard Pyle gathered at the Arlington National Cemetery on Aug. 20 to celebrate his life and a career with The Associated Press that spanned nearly five decades. Pyle died on Sept. 28 last year at the age of 83 after battle with respiratory disease...
NEW YORK—August 15, 2018--The Overseas Press Club of America spoke out in support Wednesday for the Foreign Correspondents' Club of Hong Kong, which has come under pressure from both the Chinese and Hong Kong governments for hosting a pro-independence speaker...
Please consider supporting the work of international freelance journalists by donating to the Membership Fund of the Overseas Press Club of America. Accurate, unbiased reporting is more important now than ever. But much of the work is being done by freelancers who have little institutional support from news organization...
As part of World Press Freedom Day on May 3, the OPC is collecting and sharing the names of press freedom heroes and celebrating their work...
In the winter of 2013, I heard a story about U.S.-backed forces burying a child alive in a remote village in Kandahar, Afghanistan. While investigating, I was arrested by forces loyal to the brutal police chief Abdul Raziq, America’s man in Kandahar. I was expelled from Kandahar and barred from ever returning...
