NEW YORK, NY(SMIWIRE,10.25.18)-The International Women's  Media Foundation (IWMF), hosted it's 29th Annual Courage in Journalism Awards Luncheon at noon today, honoring renowned American broadcast journalist " Lesley Stahl", Rosario Mosso Castro (Mexican's ZETA Magazine Editor-In-Chief ), Meridith Kohut(American's International PhotoJournalist), Zehra Dogan(Turky's JINHA News agency Founder), & Nima Elbagir (Sudan's International Journalist/TV Correspondent), with full house of journalists and executives of major news media networks in attendance and sponsored by Bank of America at Cipriani's-42nd Street in the heart of New York City.

 

The International Women's Media Foundation (IWMF) has worked to unleash the potential of women journalists as champions of press freedom to transform the global news media for almost three decades.

It also has ensured that women journalists worldwide are fully supported, protected, recognized and rewarded for their vital contributions at all levels of the news media. IWMF main goal it's to increase demand for news with a diversity of voices, stories and perspectives as a cornerstone of democracy and free expression.

Since its inception in 1990, the IWMF has honored more than 100 female journalists from 54 countries.

​

" The Courage in Journalism Awards", is given to selected women journalists annually, who have exhibited extraordinary courage in reporting from areas of instability, oppression and conflict, during an award luncheon ceremony.

This year honoree:

Meredith Kohut: Recipient of 2018 Courage in Journalism Award

(Independent International PhotoJournalist-USA)

​

Meridith Kohut is an American photojournalist based in Caracas, Venezuela, where she has worked covering Latin America for the foreign press since 2007. For the past three years, she has spent nearly every day documenting the economic and humanitarian crisis in Venezuela - photographing hundreds waiting in breadlines, patients dying from medicine shortages in collapsed public hospitals, people clashing with security forces in violent, anti-government street protests, laboring in illegal gold mines, and getting smuggled alongside cocaine out of the country in small boats. Her work has resulted in dozens of front-page stories published in The New York Times, and is widely recognized as the largest and most comprehensive photographic archive of the crisis made by a single photographer. Her Venezuela crisis work has been recognized by The Overseas Press Club, The George Polk Journalism Awards and Pictures of The Year International. Her 5-month investigation and photo essay that exposed that hundreds of children had died from severe child malnutrition in public hospitals was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in Feature Photography in 2018.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

​

​

​

Kohut has also produced in-depth photo essays about the rise of Hugo Chávez's socialist revolution in Venezuela, the drug trade in Bolivia, Cuba's transition, gang violence in El Salvador, refugee and migration issues in Central America, labor rights and cholera outbreaks in Haiti, prostitution in Colombia, illegal gold mines and human rights abuses in Venezuela, and prison overcrowding in El Salvador, among others. She is a regular contributor to The New York Times. Her photographs have also been published by National Geographic, Leica, Bloomberg News, NPR, The Washington Post Magazine and Der Spiegel. They have been exhibited at Visa pour L'Image, Sotheby's London, The Annenberg Space for Photography, Columbia University, The Leica Gallery Salzburg & Photoville in Brooklyn, New York.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

 

 

​

​

​

​

​

​

​