Honouring Courageous Reporting
Every year, the CJFE Gala: A Night to Honour Courageous Reporting brings together media, supporters and stakeholders to recognize individuals from Canada and around the world who have risked their jobs, their freedom and sometimes even their lives to exercise the freedom of expression upon which a fair and open society depends. Here you will find the inspiring – and too often tragic – stories of those whose courageous reporting the CJFE has honoured.
Courageous Reporting
Every year, CJFE joins with sponsors, stakeholders and media to recognize reporters, media organizations and individuals who, through their courage and commitment, have made a significant contribution to the mission of protecting, advancing and exercising the right to free expression. Read the stories of past winners here. The awards are presented annually at the CJFE Gala: A Night to Honour Courageous Reporting.
CJFE Arnold Amber Award for Investigative Journalism
The CJFE Arnold Amber Award for Investigative Journalism, named in honour of a Canadian journalist, labour leader and activist Arnold Amber, recognizes contributions to advancing public interest reporting in Canada.
CJFE Integrity Award
The CJFE Integrity Award honours an individual or individuals who have acted courageously in the public interest without thought of personal gain, and in doing so risked reprisals in the form of threats to their personal and professional lives.
CJFE International Press Freedom Award
The CJFE International Press Freedom Award recognizes the extraordinary commitment to human rights of journalists who overcome enormous odds and risk their personal freedom to report the news.
Tara Singh Hayer Memorial Award
The Tara Singh Hayer Memorial Award recognizes a Canadian journalist who, through his or her work, has made an important contribution to reinforcing and promoting the principle of freedom of the press in Canada or elsewhere, and who has taken personal risks or suffered physical reprisals for their work.
Vox Libera Award
The Vox Libera Award recognizes a Canadian individual or organization that has demonstrated an outstanding commitment to the principles of free expression and has made an important and sustained contribution—at home or abroad—to those same principles.
2019 Award Recipients
Wa Lone and Kyaw Soe Oo
CJFE International Press Freedom Award
Reuters journalists Wa Lone and Kyaw Soe Oo were arrested while working on an investigation into the killing of 10 Rohingya Muslim men and boys by security forces and Buddhist civilians in western Myanmar’s Rakhine State. The two journalists had been convicted under the Official Secrets Act and sentenced to seven years in jail, but they were eventually released and continued their reporting with Reuters. Reuters' editor-in-chief described Wa Lone and Kyaw Soe Oo - who won the prestigious Pulitzer Prize for their work - as "symbols" of press freedom.
Wa Lone and Kyaw Soe Oo were honoured with the CJFE International Press Freedom Award for their commitment to human rights, overcoming enormous odds and risking their personal freedom to report the news.
Ben Makuch
CJFE Arnold Amber Award for Investigative Journalism
Ben Makuch is an award-winning national security reporter with Vice Media who published articles interviewing an ISIS recruiter – articles that went on to involve him in a hard-fought four-year legal battle with the RCMP that escalated from the Ontario Court of Appeal to the Supreme Court of Canada in 2018. The federal police force sought access to all communications Makuch had as part of their criminal investigation into the terror suspect. Makuch steadfastly refused to hand the notes over, prompting a further legal battle following the Supreme Court decision. When that last-ditch attempt proved unsuccessful, Makuch was forced to comply with the RCMP’s demands. “The RCMP has treated me as a criminal rather than a journalist,” Makuch wrote on Twitter. “This unfair treatment at their hands has been deeply troubling for me personally, and should be for all journalists in Canada.”
Makuch was the recipient of the CJFE Arnold Amber Award for Investigative Journalism for advancing public interest reporting in Canada and for his courage and perseverance in light of difficult legal challenges. The Arnold Amber Award for Investigative Journalism is sponsored by CWA Canada, The Media Union.
Gordana Knezevic
Tara Singh Hayer Memorial Award
Former deputy editor of Oslobodenje, a daily newspaper in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Gordana Knezevic covered the siege of Sarajevo from 1992–94. Since the beginning of the war in Bosnia-Herzegovina, Knezevic was one of the most active writers/editors/organizers for Oslobodenje and went to great lengths to maintain the survival of a free press. After leaving Bosnia, Knezevic worked as an online editor with Reuters News Agency in Canada and was a regular contributor to the Toronto Star and CBC Radio. She served two terms on the Board of Canadian Journalists for Free Expression, and during this time launched the Journalists in Exile program. Knezevic is the recipient of the Tara Singh Hayer Award for overcoming enormous odds simply to produce the news.
2018 Award Recipients
Javier Valdez
CJFE International Press Freedom Award
One of the leading anti-corruption and anti-gang journalists in Mexico, Javier Valdez reported for years on these issues, winning the Sinaloa Journalism Award, Columbia University’s Maria Moors Cabot Journalism Award and CPJ’s International Press Freedom Award. In May 2017, after tweeting about the murder of his colleague Miroslava Breach, assailants gunned Valdez down outside Riodoce, the newspaper he founded and continued to work at despite many death threats. At the CJFE Gala, Valdez’s wife, Griselda Triana, accepted the CJFE International Press Freedom Award in his honour.
Staff of The Capital Gazette
Tara Singh Hayer Memorial Award
On June 29, 2018, a gunman entered The Capital Gazette offices in Annapolis, Maryland and opened fire, killing four journalists and one sales assistant. The victims were Robert Hiaasen, 59, assistant editor and Sunday columnist; Gerald Fischman, 61, editorial page editor and a 25-year veteran of the paper; reporter John McNamara, 56; editor and community reporter Wendi Winters, 65, and sales assistant Rebecca Smith, 34, who had worked at the newspaper for only one year.
The Capital Gazette, one of America’s oldest newspapers, resumed publication within a week of the shooting. While known as a small, collegial paper that focuses on community news, the Gazette also acts as a watchdog over the state capital. The shooter, Jarrod W. Ramos, had been fighting with the newspaper for years. He issued a defamation lawsuit against it in 2011 for a story about harassment charges against him, and he had been threatening newspaper staff since the case was dismissed in 2015.
Normally, the CJFE Tara Singh Hayer Memorial Award recognizes a Canadian journalist who, through his or her work, has made an important contribution to reinforcing and promoting the principle of freedom of the press in Canada or elsewhere, and who has taken personal risks or suffered physical reprisals for their work. Because of their courage and determination in the face of horrific circumstances, however, the CJFE adjudication panel selected the staff of The Capital Gazette to receive the 2018 award.
Michael Geist
Vox Libera Award
Michael Geist is a Canadian academic, Research Chair in E-Commerce Law at the University of Ottawa, and a digital rights activist. He writes columns in the Vancouver Sun, Toronto Star and Ottawa Citizen, and he founded the Canadian Internet Policy and Public Interest Clinic.
Geist successfully led the fight against 2007 legislation that would incorporate the worst aspects of the United States Digital Millennium Copyright Act into Canadian law, was a leader in the fight against Bill C-51 and C-31, fought the dangerous Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement, and is also leading the charge to maintain net neutrality against lobbying from Canada’s largest telecoms.
The CJFE recognized Geist’s tireless and invaluable work with the Vox Libera Award, given to a Canadian individual or organization that has demonstrated an outstanding commitment to the principles of free expression and has had made an important and sustained contribution—at home or abroad—to those same principles.
2017 Award Recipients
Elena Milashina
CJFE International Press Freedom Award
Elena Milashina, a Russian investigative reporter at Novaya Gazeta, writes about human rights issues and government corruption, and exposed the detention, torture and murder of gay men in Chechnya. In April 2017, she reported that at least 100 men had been jailed in secret prisons and at least three were thought to be dead on suspicion of being gay. Milashina was forced to flee her home in Moscow and live in hiding shortly after the story was published due to threats against the staff of Novaya Gazeta that the paper reported as being "an incitement to massacre journalists."
Milashina was the winner of the CJFE International Press Freedom Award, which recognizes the outstanding courage of journalists who work at great personal risk and against enormous odds so that the news media remain free.
Robyn Doolittle
CJFE Arnold Amber Award for Investigative Journalism
The Globe and Mail journalist Robyn Doolittle led a 20-month long investigation that revealed approximately one in five sexual assault cases are deemed “unfounded” by police. In other words, police officers decided that no crime occurred. When a case is listed as “unfounded,” it is not reported to Statistics Canada, giving the impression that fewer sexual assaults complaints are shared with the police. Doolittle’s research found a 19% national unfounded rate. Since her story, more than 30 police forces working in more than 1,000 communities across Canada committed to further investigations into the issue.
Doolittle was honoured with the CJFE/CWA Canada Arnold Amber Award for Investigative Journalism, which celebrates a journalist, investigative researcher or media worker who has made a significant contribution to advancing investigative public interest reporting in Canada.
Inaugurated in 2015, the award was renamed in 2017 in honour of Arnold Amber, a Canadian journalist, labour leader and activist. Amber’s work and long-standing service as president of CJFE was also recognized at the Gala.
Kim Bolan
Tara Singh Hayer Memorial Award
In May 2017, when Vancouver Sun journalist Kim Bolan was covering the murder trial of a former leader of the so-called United Nations Gang, she learned of and reported on an alleged murder plot against herself. During the trial, witnesses testified the gang discussed killing Bolan and went so far as sourcing her address. Bolan regularly reported on the UN Gang, which was founded in Abbotsford, B.C. and has now expanded to other areas of Canada. In her more than 30-year career, she has reported on education, social services, minority and women’s issues, numerous wars, the Air India Flight 182 and more. This was not the first death threat Bolan received.
Bolan was the recipient of the 2017 CJFE Tara Singh Hayer Memorial Award, which recognizes a Canadian journalist who, through his or her work, has made an important contribution to reinforcing the principle of freedom of the press in this country or elsewhere, and who has taken personal risks or suffered physical reprisals for their work.
2016 Award Recipients
Chang Ping
CJFE International Press Freedom Award
Chang Ping is one of China’s best-known journalists reporting on political issues. He writes about sensitive topics including democracy, media censorship, the failures of government policy and Tibet. Establishing himself in the 1990s in Guangzhou, Chang’s pleas for transparency and accountability put him under a political spotlight as censorship in China tightened. In 2011, while working as the editor-in-chief at the now-suspended weekly magazine iSun Affairs in Hong Kong, he was denied a work permit and forced to live in exile in Germany with his family. His columns and books are banned in China. Chang Ping was the recipient of the CJFE International Press Freedom Award, which recognizes the outstanding courage of journalists who work at great personal risk and against enormous odds so that the news media remain free.
Asad Aryubwal
CJFE Integrity Award
From Afghanistan, Asad Aryubwal risked his and his family’s life to tell the truth. In a series of interviews with international media, he spoke out against powerful warlords, including Rashid Dostum, who was the vice-president of Afghanistan from 2014 to 2020. For warning the Canadian government and others that they were conspiring with a war criminal, Aryubwal was forced into exile with his family and never able to return to his country. Aryubwal spent many years as a refugee in Pakistan, facing constant death threats from the warlord he had exposed.
Aryubwal was presented with the CJFE Integrity Award, awarded to an individual or individuals who acted courageously in the public interest without thought of personal gain, and in doing so risked reprisals in the form of threats to their personal and professional lives.
Connie Walker
CJFE Investigative Award
CBC journalist Connie Walker, along with the CBC Aboriginal team, reported on the unsolved cases of Canada’s missing and murdered Indigenous women. By developing a database of hundreds of cold cases, the team put the issue of missing and murdered Indigenous women on the national agenda. Their work led to a commitment from Canada’s federal government to launch the National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls.
The CBC Aboriginal team was honoured with the CJFE Investigative Award. Inaugurated in 2015, the Investigative Award celebrates a journalist, investigative researcher or media worker who has made a significant contribution to advancing investigative public interest reporting in Canada.
Ali Mustafa
Tara Singh Hayer Memorial Award
Ali Mustafa was a freelance photojournalist, activist and writer from Toronto. His work and politics spanned writing about the Landless Workers Movement in Brazil to working as a photojournalist in Palestine, Egypt and Syria. In 2014, Ali was killed in Aleppo, Syria, during an aerial bombing initiated by the Assad government. A military helicopter dropped one bomb and then another after people had gathered to survey the scene; Ali was killed in the second bombing. He was in Syria to continue his work exposing a tragedy that he believed the rest of the world should no longer ignore.
Mustafa received the CJFE Tara Singh Hayer Memorial Award, which recognizes a Canadian journalist who, through his or her work, has made an important contribution to reinforcing the principle of freedom of the press in this country or elsewhere, and who has taken personal risks or suffered physical reprisals for their work. Mustafa’s photographs were also on display at the Gala’s photo exhibit.