Entries for July 2003

Magdalena Ruiz Guinazu’s career in the media has spanned close to 50 years. She is one of Argentina’s most distinguished journalists. As host of Magdalena Tempranisimo on Radio Mitre in Buenos Aires, she broadcasts to one of Argentina’s largest audiences. She also writes for the daily newspapers La Nacion and Pagina 12, and since 2002 has been host of a daily evening show, La vuelta con Magdalena (Back with Magadalena). She is the founder and current president of Asociacion Periodistas, an Argentine press freedom organization. In addition, she has produced documentary television films on various subjects, including the trial of the Argentine military junta and censorship during the years of military rule in Argentina.

Anne Garrels, a foreign correspondent with National Public Radio in the United States, was one of only two American women journalists in Baghdad during the recent war. Her vivid reporting brought the reality of a country under bombardment to her listeners. At one point she was blown back into the elevator of the Palestine Hotel, where she was staying, when a nearby building was bombed from the air. At another, she watched as a cruise missile passed right in front of her window. When U.S. bombs fell on the hotel killing two journalists, she was only a few floors away.

Tatyana Goryachova is the editor in chief of Berdyansk Delovoy, the only independent newspaper in Berdyansk, Ukraine, a small town on the Azov Sea. Her husband, Sergey Belousov, is the paper’s publisher. Goryacheva often covers city government, healthcare and local issues, and when she uncovers corruption in these institutions, she writes about it. In Ukraine, a country with one of the worst press freedom records in the world, this is perilous.

Marielos Monzon, a columnist for the daily Prensa Libre in Guatemala City, Guatemala, is known for her commitment to reporting on human rights violations in her country. Guatemala is a country still coping with the brutal aftermath of a 36-year (1960-1996) civil war in which an estimated 200,000 Guatemalans were killed. By reporting on the bloody aftermath both in her newspaper column and until recently as co-host of a radio program, Punto de Encuentro (Meeting Point), Marielos Monzon has incurred the rath of those who would bury the past.