October 18th WIFP announced and celebrated four media women

These are the four women honored:

Bisan Owda is a Palestinian journalist in Gaza, an activist and a filmmaker. Bisan won a 2024 Peabody Award in the News category and an Edward R. Murrow Award for News Series for her Al Jazeera Media Network show, It’s Bisan from Gaza and I’m Still Alive. The show also won a 2024 News and Documentary Emmy Award for Outstanding Hard News Feature Story: Short Form.

Pam Bailey is a freelance writer and social-justice activist based in Washington, DC, who lived and worked in the Gaza Strip immediately following the 2008/9 Israeli assault and co-founded We Are Not Numbers: emerging writers from Palestine tell their stories and advocate for their human rights. Pam is co-editor of We Are Not Numbers: The Voices of Gaza’s Youth. She has also co-founded in 2020 a non-profit that advocates for people detained in American prisons – called More Than Our Crimes.

Hazami Barmada has held several high-level positions at the United Nations. In 2017, she founded the Humanity Lab Foundation– and its flagship program, The Global People’s Summit–in partnership with the United Nations Office for Partnerships and with the support of the Office of the President of the United Nations General Assembly. Hazami has a Masters from Harvard University where she was  an Edward S. Mason Fellow in Public Policy and Management. In addition to creative daily actions against the genocide in Gaza, Hazami and activists confronted media corporations for their complicity. 

Dr. Marsha Coleman-Adebayo is former senior policy analyst for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. She is the author of No Fear: A Whistleblower’s Triumph Over Corruption and Retaliation at the EPA (2011). Marsha is the founder of No Fear Institute. She is also the president of the Bethesda African Cemetery Coalition which fights to preserve historic Moses African Cemetery.

by Martha Allen

Activists have brought attention to the complicity of the corporate media in both their lack of coverage and their distorted coverage of the genocide in Gaza. Pro-Zionist coverage of Palestine hides the occupation, settler violence, apartheid, and the targeted assassinations of doctors, healthcare workers, journalists, and civilians.

The killing of journalists and media workers by Israel, most recently of Mohammad Salam (Al Jazeera), Hussam Al-Masri (Reuters), Mariam Abu Daqqa (Associated Press), Moath Abu Taha (NBC) and Ahmed Abu Aziz (freelance) on August 25, as well as Anas Al-Sharif before that, is outrageous. With over two hundred and forty journalists in Gaza murdered by Israel, why aren’t the U.S. media demanding that their journalists have safety? Why aren’t corporate media outspoken about the need to have journalists and media workers from around the world able to enter Gaza to cover what is happening rather than just repeat lies and justifications given out by Israel? Corporate media has served as propaganda machines and stenographers of Israel rather than providing a free press. But due to the existence of independent media and direct communication through social media, the truth gets out. The American people and across the world have lost trust in corporate media.

Activists such as Hazami Barmada, Atefeh Rokhvand, Sumer Mobarak, and many others are creatively bringing attention to the corporate media complicity in the genocide in Gaza. NBC, CBS, CNN, Fox News, Reuters, NYT, Washington Post, and other media have made it possible for the genocide to continue.

We are thankful for independent media such as The Grayzone, Katie Halper, MintPress, BreakThrough News (Rania Khalek), Drop Site News, The Empire Files (Abby Martin), On The Ground Show (Esther Iverem), Democracy Now! and so many more. As a result of direct communications through social media and analysis by independent media, people of the world know more about what is going on and what needs to be done.

Jo-Anne McArthur, awarded the 2023 Women and Media Award from WIFP, delivered a talk in Brussels at the EU Parliament March 25th of this year, invited by the European Institute for Animal Law & Policy and the European Environmental Bureau. She spoke about ending the suffering of animals in factory farms. Her photos and that of several other photojournalists flanked the walls of the three-day exhibit, a powerful counter to the influence and pressure of agricultural lobbying. “Photojournalists go to difficult places to tell important stories. Their photos should then reach the media, shock and inspire regular folks, and be used by campaigners, litigators, and policy-makers. This trajectory of efforts changes culture, law, and history.” (4/3/25 newsletter, We Animals).

Jo-Anne has documented our complex relationship with animals in almost sixty countries. She is the founder of WeAnimalsMedia.org  and cofounder of The Unbound Project (unboundproject.org) which celebrates women animal advocates world-wide. Jo-Anne is the author of three outstanding books: We Animals, Captive, and Hidden. Subscribe to the newsletter via the website and consider becoming a contributor.

Jo-Anne McArthur

The Women’s Institute for Freedom of the Press (WIFP) announced the recipients of the 2024 Women and Media Awards at a ceremony October 27th in Washington, DC.

WIFP honors six media women:

Ann Wright is a writer and a courageous activist for peace and justice. Her writings
have appeared in Common Dreams, LA Progressive, San Francisco Bay View, The
Union, ScheerPost, World BEYOND War, and CODEPINK, Women for Peace. She is
the co-author with Susan Dixon of Dissent: Voices of Conscience: Profiles of
Whistleblowers and Others Who Have Dared to Speak the Truth About the War in
Iraq.

Photo credit: Francois Achan

Ann Wright is a retired U.S. State Department official and retired U.S. Army Colonel who
spoke out against the Iraq War. She served in Nicaragua, Grenada, Somalia,
Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Sierra Leone, Micronesia and Mongolia. She received the
State Department Award for Heroism in 1997. In March 2003 she resigned from the
State Department the day before the onset of the Invasion of Iraq in protest of the war.
She has since dedicated herself to peace and justice issues, writing knowledgeably for
many varied sources to inform the public about vital issues. She works closely with
many women’s organizations including Code Pink: Women for Peace and Women
Cross DMZ.Ph

Mariam Barghouti is a Palestinian-American writer, blogger, researcher, commentator,
and journalist. She lives in Ramallah. Her political commentary and research work has
been notably featured in CNN, Al Jazeera English, The Guardian, BBC, Huffington Post,
New York Times, Middle East Monitor, Newsweek, Mondoweiss, International Business
Times and TRT World.

Maha Nazih Al-Hussaini is an award-winning journalist and human rights activist
based in Gaza. Maha started her journalism career by covering Israel’s military
campaign in the Gaza Strip in July 2014. In 2020 she won the Martin Adler Prize for her
work as a freelance journalist. She is the director of strategies at the
Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Monitor in Geneva, Switzerland. The International
Women’s Media Foundation rescinded their 2024 Courage in Journalism Award to
Maha Hussaini under pressure. This will not happen with the WIFP Award.

Hind Osama Al-Khoudary is a Palestinian journalist based in the Gaza Strip. She has
reported for multiple media outlets including Al Jazeera English, Middle East Eye, +972
Magazine, RT, The Intercept, and Anadolu Agency.

Lara J. Bitar is an independent media worker based in Beirut, Lebanon, and the
founding editor of journalist-run publication, The Public Source. She contributes reports
on social movements and civic unrest to grassroots media projects in the U.S. and
Lebanon and writes for regional and feminist publications.

Ghadi Francis is a Lebanese journalist and war correspondent. She is a field
correspondent, program producer and writer. She reports on Palestine, Gaza, Lebanon,
Syria, Israel and more with thousands of articles on the region and Arab countries. In
2011 she published a book in which she collected her testimony about the Syrian war
entitled My Pen and My Pain – One Hundred Days in Syria.

WIFP announced the recipients of the 2023 Women and Media Award October 29th at a celebration in Washington, DC.

The annual Awards are granted to women who have made outstanding contributions seeking media democracy and toward expending women’s voices.

This year, WIFP honored seven deserving media women.

Briahna Joy Gray is an American political commentator, lawyer, and political consultant who served as the National Press Secretary for the Bernie Sanders 2020 presidential campaign. Formerly a columnist and Senior Politics Editor at the Intercept, she was also contributing editor to Current Affairs Magazine. Joy Gray has written for the Guardian, New York Magazine, and Rollings Stone. She currently co-hosts The Hill’s Rising. Her popular podcast is called Bad Faith.

Mnar Adley is founder, CEO, and editor in chief of MintPress News, an independent watchdog journalism organization that provides issue-based original reporting, in-depth investigations, and thoughtful analysis of the most pressing topics facing our nation. Adley is also a regular speaker on responsible journalism, sexism, and neo-conservativism within the media and journalism start-ups.

Catherine Murphy is a DC-based filmmaker who has spent much of her life living and working in Latin America. She is founder and director of The Literacy Project, a multi-media documentary project on literacy in the Americas. Her films explore the intersection of education and justice movements in the Americas.

Fiorella Isabel is a journalist and geo-political analyst. She is the co-host of the Convo Couch which airs on independent media platforms like Rokfin, Rumble, and YouTube. Fiorella Isabel reports for RT (Russia Today) and currently lives in Moscow.

Kimberlie Kranich is Director of Community Content and Engagement at WILL AM-FM-TV (25 years). She is senior manager and a member of the Leadership Team. Her expertise is in managing a diverse pool of public media talent across multiple platforms with multiple community partners. Kranich has been an Associate of WIFP since she first joined as an intern in 1988.

Jo-Anne McArthur is a photographer and the founder of We Animals media. She is the cofounder of The Unbound Project which celebrates women animal advocates worldwide. Documenting our complex relationship with animals in almost sixty countries for over fifteen years, McArthur is the author of three books, We Animals, Captive, and Hidden.

Alexis Baden-Mayer, Esq. is Political Director of the Organic Consumers Association. The Organic Consumers Association (OCA) is a network of more than 1 million activists committed to creating a healthy, just, democratic, and regenerative food system. Baden-Mayer is a key organizer of some of OCA’s most popular campaigns, including the “Monsanto Makes Us Sick” campaign to ban Roundup.