Event Coverage Highlight

On Sept. 16, 2019, the Overseas Press Club and Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism co-sponsored a panel discussion with two visual journalists on challenges they encountered in covering the humanitarian crisis on the US-Mexico border. Click the video window above to see a playlist of clips from the program.

Carolyn Van Houten is a staff photojournalist at The Washington Post. She won the OPC’s Robert Capa Gold Medal Award in April for her photos on the migrant caravan. “Through a year of making monthly visits to document the stories of people at different stages of their trek north through Central America, Carolyn Van Houten brought a deep level of humanity and empathy to a story that saturated the news media,” the OPC judges said. She also won the Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights Award for Domestic Photography in 2019 and Pictures of the Year International’s Newspaper Photographer of the Year in 2016.

Jika Gonzalez is a photo and video journalist from Mexico City based in New York. She currently is producing and shooting for VICE News. The film she co-produced, “Walking to America,” won a citation from the OPC in April for the The Robert Spiers Benjamin Award for best reporting in any medium on Latin America. The film also received three nominations for this year’s 40th Annual News & Documentary Emmy Awards. Previously she was a grantee of the Brown Institute for Media Innovation at the Columbia Journalism School where she taught as an Adjunct Assistant Professor for photography and video classes

Moderator: Nina Berman is a documentary photographer, filmmaker, author and educator. She is a professor at Columbia and directs the photography program. Her work has been recognized with awards in art and journalism from organizations including the New York Foundation for the Art, the World Press Photo Foundation, and Pictures of the Year International.