Chris McLaughlin announces Tribune’s sponsorship of a prestigious prize for campaigning journalists
Tribune is proud to announce that it is to sponsor a prestigious international award for journalism. In a development which marks the magazine’s resurgent strength and profile and which reflects its historical and sustained ethic and values, Tribune is to ensure the revival of the annual Parliamentary Press Gallery Speaker Abbot Award, which goes to a journalist who is considered to have made the greatest contribution internationally to the protection, promotion and perpetuation of parliamentary democracy.
The object is to honour a journalist who is considered, in the opinion of the judges, to have suffered for the cause of democracy and to secure maximum public and political exposure for their work and actions. This can be a publisher, editor or reporter in any media.
Previous winners have included murdered Russian journalist Anna Politkovskaya, Michel Kilo, imprisoned after becoming an emblematic figure in the struggle for democracy in Syria, Dumisani Muleya, chief reporter of the Zimbabwe Independent newspaper, Alfred Taban of the Khartoum Monitor and Associated Press reporter Jonathan Paye-Layleh for his work in Monrovia.
The Speaker Abbot Award – which is presented by the sitting Speaker of the House of Commons and has the strongest support from current Speaker John Bercow – was launched by the Parliamentary Press Gallery in 2003 to commemorate the 200th anniversary of the press being allowed into the back row of the public gallery as of right, to report the proceedings of Parliament. Before that, there were no seats reserved for the press, who were often barred from entry because the gallery was already full, sometimes because MPs’ cronies – today we would call them special advisors or aides – had paid for the seats in advance. One momentous occasion, and an apoplectic Prime Minister, changed all that.
On Monday May 23 1803, with Britain at war with France, William Pitt was due to make a statement to the House on the failure of talks with Bonaparte. Queues formed at seven in the morning for the 4pm statement. When the doors opened, the crowd literally fought their way in to the few places not taken by MPs’ friends.
Not a single reporter was allowed in and not a word of Pitt’s great oration made it to a single newspaper.
From then on, as ordered by Speaker Abbot, places have been reserved for the press – although these days they often outnumber MPs in the chamber.
Tribune and its new board, chaired by Kevin McGrath, decided early into the new proprietorship that the magazine should support an event which recognised the determination and courage of journalists in the frontline defence of press and democratic freedom. The Speaker Abbot Award seemed the perfect cause for Tribune to support.
Run entirely under the auspices of the Press Gallery and its elected officers, the Award is judged by a panel of parliamentarians, human rights experts and me, the editor of Tribune. Nominations will be sought from a dozen relevant organisations, including Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, Liberty, the International Federation of Journalists, Reporters Without Borders and the Index on Censorship, with an award ceremony in Westminster provisionally scheduled for June next year.
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