October 16, 2019
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Since the passage of Hong Kong’s controversial extradition bill in June, the country has seen massive protests against the government. The bill was withdrawn, but demonstrations aren’t stopping anytime soon, and their methods are only growing more sophisticated. On Sept. 19, author and journalist Philip Bowring joined New York-based activist Anna Yeung-Cheung to discuss the future of Hong Kong in a panel moderated by OPC governor Pete Engardio, called “Can Hong Kong Survive?”
In late 2018, a caravan of migrants embarked on a journey that would span more than 2,500 miles from Central America to the U.S.-Mexico border. On Sept. 16, the OPC and Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism co-sponsored a program with two journalists who were in the ground and followed the story closely...
The opc announced results of this year’s election for the Board of Governors at the club’s Annual Meeting on Sept. 3. The slate this year included 10 newly elected or reelected Active board members and two Associate board members, each elected for two-year terms...
The mastheads of Cambodia’s two storied English news outlets look the same as they did when I arrived in the country, but for those of us working covering the swiftly developing Southeast Asian country, the last two years have been a sea change...
Jacob Kushner is an independent journalist who writes about migration, conflict, extremism, foreign aid, corruption and human rights abuses in East and Central Africa, the Caribbean and Germany. His work has appeared in a range of media, including The New York Times Magazine, National Geographic, Harper’s, The Atlantic, VQR, Outside Magazine, Newsweek, The Associated Press and the L.A. Times, among many others. Kushner won the OPC Foundation’s Nathan S. Bienstock Memorial Scholarship in 2013. He is a 2019 Logan Nonfiction Fellow at the Carey Institute for Global Good. Kushner wrote about “solutions journalism” for the OPC’s Dateline magazine this year...
New York Times publisher A.G. Sulzberger wrote an op-ed about a relentless global campaign targeting journalists because of the "fundamental role they play in ensuring a free and informed society.”
August 14 will mark the seventh anniversary of freelance journalist Austin Tice’s disappearance while reporting on the civil war in Syria. In an open letter published in the Washington Post, Marc and Debra Tice (Austin’s parents) call on journalists, political leaders and readers to take action...
This article is reprinted with permission from the online magazine Witness, where it first appeared. Co-authors are Jason Reich, ACOS Alliance Board Member, and Elisabet Cantenys, Executive Director, ACOS Alliance...
The OPC is pleased to announce it is donating $5,500 to pay the cost of one of three trainers at a hostile environment and first aid training course (HEFAT) in Beirut for freelance and local journalists during the last week of November. The program is run by the ACOS Alliance in partnership with International Women’s Media Foundation, Samir Kassir Eyes Center, Golf Center for Human Rights, Frontline Freelance Register, Rory Peck Trust and the Maries Colvin Journalists’ Network.
Chateau Vouilly has loomed large in my mind ever since OPC member John Morris and I worked together to present several events, most notably introducing his book Quelque Part en France in Bayeux, Normandy...
Just days ago, it appeared that press freedom was hurtling toward one of its most crushing blows yet. Despite a massive peaceful protest march by some one million Hong Kong residents—roughly one-seventh of the territory’s population—all signs suggested that the government of the Special Administrative Region was poised to ram a bill through the Legislative Council that would have allowed fugitives wanted by Chinese authorities to be extradited to the mainland...
It was an historic eight days in Hong Kong, culminating in the biggest demonstration the territory had ever seen. It showed that peaceful mass action can still work...
Scott Kraft, managing editor of the Los Angeles Times and third vice president of the OPC, urged journalists to stay focused on telling the truth and “resist the temptation to counter name-calling with our own name-calling” in his keynote speech on June 8 at the Jerusalem Press Club’s third international conference on press freedom. The theme of the conference was “Journalism under Siege.”
The Overseas Press Club of America condemns the action taken by Turkey’s judicial system to indict two Bloomberg journalists for routine reporting on the challenges facing the Turkish economy...
Thirty years have passed since the world witnessed China’s brutal attacks against pro-democracy demonstrators in Tiananmen Square, but the country’s campaign against critics and dissidents has returned with renewed intensity, using more subtle tactics and new technology to carry out oppression. On May 9, the OPC gathered a small army of activists, survivors, experts and foreign correspondents to explore the legacy of Tiananmen, discuss the state of China’s escalating crackdown, and illuminate the road ahead for democracy advocates...
See photos and video from the OPC Annual Awards Dinner on April 18, 2019, with links to award pages and more...
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 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...
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.
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...
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...
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...
