Award name: 17 The Joe and Laurie Dine Award

A stunning example of what good journalism can do to expose labor abuses, “America’s War Workers” is beautifully filmed with unforgettable images and interviews. The team traveled to India and the Middle East and interviewed dozens of workers, providing irrefutable evidence about the exploitation of contract workers on U.S. military bases in Afghanistan. They exposed the intermediaries who charge the poor for menial jobs on U.S. military bases and described how the checks put in place by the U.S. government do little to halt the systemic violation of its own laws as well as international conventions on human and labor rights.

Bloomberg’s series showed the grim reality of the life of workers who make the shiny Apple phones so coveted by the world’s consumers. The stories by Cam Simpson were impressively detailed. He went down the supply chain to write about migration, the tactics of recruiters and life in the Himalayan villages that supplied the bonded labor to Apple’s subcontractors. Simpson also questioned the contractors and Apple about their practices. His eye for detail made the story compelling. Weeks after reading it we still remember the images of the stranded workers in Malaysia forced to eat rice flakes after their contracts were abruptly terminated, then returning home still in debt to the brokers who had sold them the right to jobs at the factories of Apple’s supplier.

“Finding Oscar” is a magnificent journalistic collaboration documenting how prosecutors, forensic anthropologists and human rights activists persevered for 30 years in their quest for justice against the perpetrators of a 1982 massacre in Guatemala. The story begins with the compelling account of a 2011 phone call to Oscar Ramirez, an undocumented Guatemalan immigrant living in Massachusetts, from a prosecutor back home, informing him that he isn’t who he thinks he is. What follows, in both written and radio formats, takes us back in time to Dos Erres, a Guatemalan town whose 250 residents were killed by soldiers three decades ago. Oscar, it turns out, was one of two survivors, abducted at the age of three by the commander of the army squad that murdered his family, and he is now evidence of government complicity in the massacre. Recently several soldiers involved in the raid were convicted and the former Guatemalan President Efrain Rios Montt was indicted on charges of genocide.

Stillman wins for her investigation of serious labor abuses on American military bases in war zones. She combines deep reporting with powerful writing to expose the conditions that foreign workers endure while working for subcontractors in Iraq and Afghanistan. Stillman’s outstanding piece of investigative journalism uncovers serious abuses, including sexual assault and indentured servitude, that were ultimately carried out on behalf of the U.S. government and funded by American taxpayers.

For more than 550 illegal immigrants seeking work in America, crossing the border ended in death in the “The All-American Canal,” a moat on the U.S. border with Mexico. “60 Minutes” exposes this silent carnage, unknown to most Americans and even to the families of the dead, who often never learn their loved one died in the canal’s chilly, fast-moving currents. Correspondent Scott Pelley and producer Shawn Efran deftly show how the canal provides agricultural water for U.S. winter produce, but claims the lives of many trying to cross it in pursuit of a farming job. Because of the publicity caused by the report, officials are installing safety escape lines, potentially saving hundreds of migrants who might otherwise perish in their search for the American dream.

Reporting for Newsweek on Iran’s contested 2009 presidential election, Maziar Bahari was arrested by the country’s notorious security forces and ended up as part of the story.

This series exposes a system of neglect as tighter immigration policies in the United States make detainees pay the hard way. In a critical and thorough examination of detention centers in America, the authors show the reader the horrors and torture imposed on these victims in the world’s premier democracy.

The New York Times produced groundbreaking, courageous reporting of atrocities being committed by the Ethiopian military in its campaign to suppress a separatist movement. The reporters’ insightful, powerful dispatches, produced at great personal risk, inspired readers in the developed world to care about distant places and people otherwise remote and invisible.

Stephen Grey’s “Ghost Plane” is the consummation of years of investigation, not only by the author, but, as he acknowledges, the informal global network of journalists with whom he collaborated to reveal the murky world of rendition, extraordinary rendition and proxy torture.

Best international reporting in any medium dealing with human rights AWARD YEAR: 2005 AWARD NAME: The Joe and Laurie Dine Award 2005 RECIPIENT: Barbara Demick AFFILIATION: The Los Angeles Times HONORED WORK: “Glimpses of a Hermit Nation” Through exhaustive interviews with defectors, North Korean residents at the Chinese border, and foreign aid workers, Barbara Demick…