By Lindsey Wray
Iryna Khalip once told someone that her country, Belarus, was in Europe. The individual insisted Khalip must be kidding.
Khalip, the recipient of a 2009 Courage in Journalism Award from the International Women’s Media Foundation, hopes that people like this – and specifically the American news media – will increase their awareness of Belarus, even if only geographically.
“It’s not in Antarctica,” she joked.
Khalip shared this anecdote during An Evening Honoring Courage in Journalism, held Oct. 26 at The National Press Club in Washington, D.C. Another Courage awardee, Agnes Taile of Cameroon, and the 2009 Lifetime Achievement Award winner, Amira Hass, also shared their reporting experiences at the event. Courage winner Jila Baniyaghoob of Iran was unable to attend.
The panel discussion was moderated by Marvin Kalb, a presidential fellow at The George Washington University and Edward R. Murrow professor emeritus at Harvard University. Kalb hosts The Kalb Report, a public affairs series that airs on public television stations throughout the country. The event was presented in association with The George Washington University Global Media Institute and The National Press Club.
Despite the occasional ignorance she encounters, Khalip is committed to telling the truth about what is happening in Belarus, one of the most restrictive countries for press freedom in the world.
Because of her coverage of her country’s authoritarian government, Khalip has been beaten and threatened multiple times. She told Kalb that she keeps reporting with the hope that such attacks eventually won’t be a reality for her and her colleagues.
“They can stop you at any moment if they choose to,” she said of Belarusian authorities. Upon returning home after accepting her Courage Award in the United States, Khalip said, she’s unsure whether she’ll be greeted with a red carpet or handcuffs.
Fellow Courage winner Agnes Taile is all too aware of how it feels to face the unknown. Because of her reports on government corruption, she received threats and was nearly fatally assaulted. Her attackers left her to die in a ravine, but Taile survived and continued reporting.
“You cannot simply cross your arms and wait for things to get better,” she said.
Taile said that many women journalists in her country prefer to stay in the office and “look pretty.” But, she said, there’s a need for them to go out and cover events on the ground and get the real story.
“You have to be a journalist, a true journalist and do the work of a journalist,” she said.
Lifetime Achievement Award winner Amira Hass has been doing this work for nearly two decades. She lives in Gaza and challenges both Israeli and Palestinian authorities in her reporting.
Her hope for American media is that they stop being afraid to cover the Israeli regime. The situation there, she said, is such that there is no “freedom of movement;” Palestinians are “encaged as if in a giant prison.”
But the role of journalists, Hass said, is to monitor power, and she plans to keep doing just that.
“Injustice,” she said, “is very annoying.”
Lindsey Wray is the communications coordinator for the International Women’s Media Foundation.