70 Pakistani journalists get AGAHI Awards

ISLAMABAD: The 9th AGAHI Awards Celebrated the Excellence in Journalism for Media Ethics and professionalism. 70 journalists from across Pakistan reporting in print, television, radio, and online mediums received awards for journalist of the year in their respective fields, says a Press release.
The AGAHI Awards in its ninth year organized jointly by AGAHI and Mishal Pakistan in collaboration with journalists’ associations, academic institutions think tanks and private sector organizations. The AGAHI Awards are the annual event in Pakistan to benchmark journalism excellence in Pakistan, recognizing courage and commitment showcasing outstanding contributions of journalists from across the country. Over the years, the winners have produced work, often in the face of political and economic pressures sustaining public trust in the media impacting the lives of people all over the country.
Amir Jahangir, Co-founder AGAHI Awards and CEO Mishal said, “the AGAHI Awards aim to encourage fact-based, data-driven news reporting and investigative journalism in Pakistan. The AGAHI Awards celebrates content-centric to human interest and impact-driven journalism in the country”.
“This year as we launch our Trust Fellowship platform to encourage information hygiene; ‘Kal?m’ Centre of Trusting Societies has designed the programme for some of the selected winners of the AGAHI Awards 2021 to cultivate trust in the society with our network of academics and mentors, said Puruesh Chaudhary co-Founder AGAHI Awards.
The Trust Fellowship Programme is initiating a professional development course on ‘The Hazards of Information Disorder’ to improve the state of factual reporting practices in the country. The Fellows will go through training sessions aimed at building their individual capacities to better comprehend the known and the unknown threats that emanate from information disorders including an advance understanding of the types of misinformation, disinformation and malinformation practices.”
More than 3,000 journalists submitted their work in more than 70 categories. The call for submissions was open from August till November this year and a jury consisting of national and international experts evaluated the stories on pre-definite criteria. The criteria for evaluation have been developed by AGAHI in line with the Media Development Indicators of UNESCO and in collaboration with the Center for Internet and Media Ethics.
The Awards are divided into three distinct sections, i) People’s Choice, a series of awards selected through public voting on the AGAHI Awards website and through direct short messaging services. ii) Founders’ Choice, a collection of awards selected by the Founders of AGAHI Awards, identifying the new trends and developments in the media industry, and iii) Jury Selection, submissions made by journalists and evaluated by a panel of national and international jury consisting of academicians, researchers, industry experts, development professionals and etc. on a predefined evaluation criteria.
This year AGAHI Awards created a new set of awards for recognizing people, shaping the future of public policy. This Awards was supported by Extreme Commerce, where six Champions of Ecommerce were recognized. The professionals recognized for Ecommerce Policy as the Champions of Ecommerce are Ayesha Moriani from Ministry of Commerce, Arzish Azam CEO, Ejad Labs, Badar Khusnood, Chairman, Pakistan Software Houses Association (PASHA), Junaid Imaam, Ministry of Information Technology and Telecom, Osman Nasir, Pakistan  Software Export Board (PSEB) and Asfandyar Farrukh of Urban Brands. The professionals were recognized for their contributions in shaping the future of public policy.
The guest of honors for the 9th AGAHI Awards included ambassadors and diplomats along with academicians, researchers, corporate leaders, leading opinion-makers, public policy experts, leading professionals from the media development sectors. Senior journalists and field reporters also attended the award ceremony.
The objective of AGAHI Awards is to recognize and appreciate the best journalistic practices in the country, creating a healthy competition within the media industry, encouraging ethical and professional reporting practices that can create a pluralistic information space for citizens to access to impartial information, that can be trusted. The stories nominated for the AGAHI Awards are evaluated on a criterion developed by AGAHI on the basis.