Times’ Dahlburg Among Reporting Award Winners

Stories and images on topics from civil war in Africa to insider trading in Japan garnered the Overseas Press Club’s 1996 international journalism awards.

ABC-TV anchor Barbara Walters presented the 17 awards at a dinner Thursday night. Washington Post Publisher Katharine Graham received the President’s Award for lifetime achievement in journalism.

In accepting it, Graham said coverage of “foreign policy, diplomacy and other traditional foreign affairs issues is on a steep decline.” Hence, she said, “many Americans are not well informed about these and other critical issues. Worse, the lack of knowledge breeds a lack of interest.”

She warned that “the absence of public engagement is having profound implications both for how U.S. foreign policy is made and what the policies are.” She urged news organizations to commit themselves “to covering foreign news with zeal, courage and high journalistic standards.”

Los Angeles Times reporter John-Thor Dahlburg received the Hal Boyle Award for best newspaper or wire service reporting from abroad for his series “Afghanistan: Legacy of Fear.”

The Chicago Tribune won two awards: for best business reporting from abroad in newspapers and for best foreign reporting showing a concern for the human condition.

Reuters’ chief photographer for Africa, Corrine Dufka, won the Robert Capa Gold Medal for best photographic reporting from abroad requiring exceptional courage and enterprise for her series of harrowing photos: “Liberia: From a Dead Man’s Wallet.”

Dufka photographed the Liberian civil war in April and May 1996. Well over 150,000 people have been killed in the conflict, and as many as half of the country’s prewar population of 2.5 million people have been displaced or have fled.

Dufka said that through her images she hoped to reveal the truth about the Liberian war and influence public opinion and policy. Some of the photos for which she won are blood-chilling: images of men in hand-to-hand combat, summary executions, photos of civilians in battle. “The conflicts . . . proliferating are not standard combat but conflicts that revolve around tribalism and nationalism,” she said in an interview.