COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY AWARDS AL-JAZEERA HIGHEST JOURNALISM AWARD(!!!)
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Columbia University Awards Al Jazeera Highest Journalism Award
Columbia University Awards Al Jazeera Highest Journalism Award
“Al Jazeera English has performed a great service in bringing the English-speaking world in-depth coverage of the turmoil in the Middle East,” said Dean Nicholas Lemann. “We salute its determination to get to the heart of a complicated story unfolding in countries where news has historically been difficult to cover.”
Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism will bestow its highest honor to Al Jazeera English, the university announced Wednesday.
The Columbia Journalism Award is given annually during the school’s commencement to recognize an individual or organization for “singular journalism in the public interest,” according to a press release. It will mark only the second time that the award is being given to an organization.
“Al Jazeera English has performed a great service in bringing the English-speaking world in-depth coverage of the turmoil in the Middle East,” said Dean Nicholas Lemann. “We salute its determination to get to the heart of a complicated story unfolding in countries where news has historically been difficult to cover.”
The school’s faculty, which selects the awardees, voted for Al Jazeera English for the “overall depth and quality of its peerless coverage of the ongoing protests in the Middle East,” the release continued. Al Antsey, managing editor of Al Jazeera English, will accept the award and address the school’s graduating class of 2011 on May 18.
Elizabeth Fishman, the school’s associate dean of communications, told FoxNews.com the selection was made during a private faculty meeting. Past winners of the Columbia Journalism Award, which was established in 1958, include Walter Cronkite and Washington Post publisher Katharine Graham. The MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour was the first outlet to win the award in 1993.
Dan Gainor, vice president of business and culture at the Media Research Center, a conservative watchdog group, told FoxNews.com he wasn’t surprised by the selection.
“It isn’t surprising that the liberal and Soros-funded Columbia Journalism School is also fond of the anti-American Al Jazeera,” Gainor said in a statement. “Promoting Al Jazeera has become a new media cause célèbre, especially at The New York Times where criticism of America is a badge of honor. But awarding a state-funded propaganda network that supports radicals in the Arab Street cheapens what is left of the Columbia Journalism School name.”
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