As the editorial page editor for The Washington Post, Meg Greenfield was one of the most powerful women in newspaper journalism in the United States. She was responsible for the tone, direction and policy of one of the nation's most politically influential publications. Greenfield was able to strengthen or discourage careers, both in journalism and politics, and to shape national policy.  

A widow and mother of four, Lucy Sichone wrote for The Post, Zambia's leading daily newspaper. In February 1996, Sichone went into hiding, along with her 3-month-old baby, to avoid imprisonment for writing articles critical of the Zambian parliament. She was charged with contempt of Parliament, which would have dealt her a sentence of indefinite detention. The government issued a reward for information on her whereabouts, but Sichone remained in hiding, continuing to write articles demanding a return to press freedom for Zambia and her right to a fair trial.

For more than a decade Ayse Önal has reported on Turkish politics, organized crime and conflicts in the Middle East. She was arrested and detained in Iraq while reporting on the Gulf War, threatened by Islamic fundamentalists and put on the revolutionary left's death list. In 1994 Önal was shot and wounded by the Turkish mob because of her stories linking the government and organized crime; she subsequently went into hiding for three months.

Saida Ramadan, a Sudanese journalist, began writing in exile from Egypt after the Muslim fundamentalist-backed regime of Lt. General Omar Hassan al-Bashir took power in Sudan in 1989 and began a systematic campaign against the media. At the time, Ramadan was a correspondent for the Sudanese paper Al-Alam in Cairo. The paper was shut down, her passport revoked and she was not allowed back in her homeland.

Helen Thomas, after 57 years at United Press International, was known as a Washington institution and the "Dean of the White House Press Corps." Since she began her career, she has been fighting battles and opening doors for women.

Algerian journalists, embattled from both sides in the ongoing civil war, continue their daily struggle to work as well as to stay alive. As a television producer, director and reporter, Horria Saihi has fought government censorship and the threat of fundamentalism since the mid-1980s. She has been condemned to death by Muslim fundamentalists, and went into hiding in late 1994 after discovering that she was on a hit list.

One of the most respected journalists in China, Gao Yu was in prison when her award was announced. An economic and political reporter, she was sentenced in 1993 to six years in prison for "leaking state secrets," through - ironically - a pro-Chinese newspaper in Hong Kong. The charges brought against Gao led some observers to believe that the underlying goal was to send a message about acceptable boundaries of press freedom and limit media criticism of China's government.

While editor-in-chief of the independent weekly, The Sunday Magazine, Chris Anyanwu declined to publicly endorse the military regime of General Sani Abacha. Weeks later, she was arrested and sentenced to life in prison, charged with publishing stories about an alleged coup plot against Abacha and refusing to reveal the sources.

Katharine Graham, former Chairman of the Executive Committee of The Washington Post Company's Board of Directors, was recognized for the bold choices she made throughout her more than 30-year career at the newspaper.

For 20 years Razia Bhatti was a leader in Pakistani journalism. After leaving a major magazine in 1988 because of limitations imposed on her writing, she founded and served as editor-in-chief of Newsline magazine.

As an international correspondent for CNN, Christiane Amanpour has consistently delivered insightful and extensive reporting from some of the most dangerous hot spots in recent memory. For two years she covered civil strife in Bosnia, then the aftermath of the genocide in Rwanda, and the overthrow of the Haitian government.

As a photographer and founder of "Agence Haitienne d'Images," Marie-Yolande Saint-Fleur captured the repression of Haiti's citizens and the violence of its military rulers.

Nan Robertson was a reporter and feature writer for The New York Times for more than 30 years in New York, Washington and Paris. "Toxic Shock," based on her own nearly fatal struggle with the disease, was a cover story in the New York Times Sunday Magazine and won Robertson the Pulitzer Prize in 1983 for feature writing - making her the third woman at the paper to win journalism's highest award since the Pulitzers were established in 1917. 

Cecilia Valenzuela received international attention for her courageous reporting of the military, the Shining Path and national security issues in her native Peru. After producing a television report on human rights violations in 1991, she was fined and sentenced by the Superior Court in Lima to one year in prison, which was conditionally suspended.

When the siege of Sarajevo continued into a second year of bloody civil war, Radio and Television Bosnia-Herzegovina's broadcasts to the outside world also continued because of dedicated journalists like Mirsada Sakic-Hatibovic and Arijana Saracevic. The two women put their lives in constant jeopardy, providing battlefront reports and up-to-the-minute accounts of hostilities that impacted the city's multi-ethnic population.