Author: Belinda Clarke

VICE News reporters Isobel Yeung, Zach Caldwell, Mahmud Mousa, Jackie Jesko and Tarek Turkey have been awarded the James Foley Medill Medal for Courage in Journalism for their coverage of the human rights crisis in Idlib, Syria’s last rebel-controlled province, during the

country’s ongoing civil war. Their report, “Battle for Idlib,” a segment from season one of VICE on Showtime, paints a tragic picture of the recent increase in bombings by Syria’s government and its Russian allies.

“There was some truly impressive work submitted for this year’s Foley Award. However, the reporting that Isobel Yeung and her colleagues at Vice News did in Syria rose above the rest,” says judge Brett Pulley (MSJ87), Bloomberg’s Atlanta bureau chief and Medill Board of Advisers member. “Their story of the battle for the last rebel stronghold in Syria is compelling, gruesome and heartbreaking. With Yeung leading the way, they put themselves on the ground in the most dangerous area of the country, amidst chaos, rebel militias and artillery fire, and courageously delivered a report that detailed the government’s bombing of the region and the humanitarian crisis it has created.”

Through a combination of interviews, flight data and cockpit recordings, Yeung and her team proved that government-issued airstrikes were deliberately targeting unarmed civilians, and were doing so with high-tech backing from Russian air support.

“Isobel Yeung and her team braved fighter jet and drone attacks in Idlib to tell the devastating story of Syrian government warfare against its own people, including children,” says judge and Medill faculty member Ceci Rodgers. “Their story was as impactful as it was immersive.”

The bravery demonstrated by Yeung and her colleagues embodies the spirit of Medill alumnus James Foley, the award’s namesake, who was captured while reporting in Syria in 2012 and killed by ISIS extremists in 2014.

“Her interviews with children reminded me strongly of James Foley’s reporting from Libya and Syria,” says judge and Medill Professor Ellen Shearer, Washington bureau chief and co-director of the Medill National Security Journalism initiative. “He felt it was so important for journalists to show the cost of war on the civilian population. Isobel reminded me of Jim in her passion for the truth and compassion for the people.”

Since the segment’s publication, Yeung’s team has been contacted by the United Nations and human rights organizations to provide first-hand testimonies of the war crimes they witnessed so legal action can be taken in international courts.

Honorable Mention

This year’s honorable mention also won high praise from the judges. In “When can we really rest?” published on April 2, 2020 in The California Sunday Magazine, Nadja Drost crossed the Darien Gap with fellow reporters Bruno Federico and Carlos Villalón, who contributed photos to the story.

Named for the 66-mile break in the Pan-American Highway, The Darien Gap is roughly 10,000 square miles of dense rainforest on the border between Colombia and Panama. Drost and her colleagues walked 4 to 6 miles a day alongside groups of migrants from Cameroon, Pakistan, Ghana, Haiti, Sri Lanka, and Bangladesh. The reporting project was supported by the Pulitzer Center, and included a series for the PBS NewsHour by Drost and Federico.

The team put their lives in the hands of smuggler guides in an uninhabited, remote region, facing many of the same risks migrants did, including frequent assault, armed robbery, food shortage, drowning and even murder.

“It was chilling to find out that pretty much every group that was ahead of us or behind us had either been robbed or sexually assaulted,” Drost says. “There was a moment near the end of the trip when I realized this was a really bad situation. People had not eaten for days and days. We have to get out of here by tonight or tomorrow, maximum.”

 

 

About the James Foley Medill Medal for Courage in Journalism

The medal is given for work published during a calendar year to an individual or team of journalists, working for a U.S.-based media outlet, who best displayed moral, physical, ethical, financial or political courage in the pursuit of a story or series of stories.

 

The selection committee included Bloomberg’s Atlanta Bureau Chief and Medill Board of Advisers member Brett Pulley, Medill Professor Emeritus Donna Leff, Medill Director of Global Journalism Learning Ceci Rodgers, and Medill National Security Journalism Initiative Co-Director Ellen Shearer.

The 2019 award was given to Azam Ahmed, New York Times bureau chief for Mexico, Central America and the Caribbean, for his 2019 investigation of gang murder across Latin America. In his series “Kill, or Be Killed: Latin America’s Homicide Crisis,” Ahmed chronicled the rampant and unchecked gang violence in the region.

 

 

Katie Engelhart is the recipient of Medill’s 2021 John Bartlow Martin Award for Public Interest Magazine Journalism. She was honored for “What Happened in Room 10?” an investigation into the Life Care Center of Kirkland, Washington, which was host to the first COVID-19 hot spot in the United States. Her story was published in August 2020 by The California Sunday Magazine.

“In this remarkable work of investigative reporting and storytelling, Katie Engelhart has created the definitive narrative account of the first COVID-19 hot spot in the United States,” says Douglas McGray editor-in-chief of Pop-Up Magazine Productions, which publishes The California Sunday Magazine. “Her work reconstructs the confusion, chaos and fear of the very first days of the pandemic and exposes both how ill-prepared we were and how we take care of our elderly.”

To conduct her research, Engelhart had to collect intimate and detailed information from dozens of sources across the country, filing Freedom of Information requests and seeking out photos, videos and even architectural plans of the Life Care Center because she wasn’t able to enter the facility during lockdown.

“I had to find visual cues where I could,” said Engelhart. “Whether that was at the beginning getting a floorplan of the nursing home and trying to map out who was where and where different nurses were working to getting people to send me pictures and little videos of loved ones. What was chaotic was that I started working on this when we were still in the really early days of the pandemic. So especially at the beginning in May, people weren’t available to talk.”

In addition to the hurdles presented by the pandemic itself, Engelhart faced further challenges because many of the Life Care Center residents had some form of cognitive impairment. She interviewed some of those residents, but needed to supplement the those conversations with lengthy interviews with caregivers. Further complicating the investigation was the fact that Life Care was being sued, meaning very few staff were comfortable giving interviews.

“It’s an incredible honor to win this award,” Engelhart said. “Long before I fell in love with the art of writing, I believed in journalism as a form of public service. So to have a piece recognized specifically for its service to the public is enormously meaningful. I spoke with dozens of people who lived in the Life Care Center of Kirkland, Washington, whose loved ones lived there, who worked there, who are connected with the nursing home somehow, and they placed an enormous amount of trust in me to tell their story so I hope that this award reaches them, too, and they can feel like they helped to contribute. I hope this is a piece that will help to explain an important part of what this pandemic has been for the country.”

Patti Wolter, the contest chair and Medill’s Helen Gurley Brown Magazine Professor, was truly impressed by the caliber of the submissions for this year’s awards given the added obstacles journalists faced due to the pandemic.

“Engelhart’s piece was chosen because this story masterfully integrates narration and exposition to create a fast-paced and riveting read. It not only illuminates the early days of the pandemic but also expertly educates us on an entire history and understanding of nursing homes, profits and regulations in this country,” said Wolter. “The circumstances of COVID-19 and this facility in particular are devastating, but Engelhart’s storytelling is compassionate, thorough and visual. It brings a level of humanity to our understanding of COVID and will serve as a revealing record for decades to come.”