Indian Journalist Ravish Kumar Wins 2019 Ramon Magsaysay Award
Mumbai: Senior Indian journalist Ravish Kumar on Friday was awarded this year’s Ramon Magsaysay Award, regarded as the Asian version of the Nobel Prize.
Kumar, 44, who is the senior executive editor of NDTV India, is one of the most influential TV journalists in India, the Ramon Magsaysay Award Foundation has given awards.
NDTV journalist Ravish Kumar is among five people who have been honoured with the 2019 Ramon Magsaysay Award, which is considered the highest honour is given to Asian individuals and organisations.
Kumar won the award for “harnessing journalism to give voice to the voiceless”. Thai human rights activist Angkhana Neelaphaijit and Myanmar-based journalist Ko Swe Win also won the award.
“In electing Ravish Kumar to receive the 2019 Ramon Magsaysay Award, the board of trustees recognizes his unfaltering commitment to a professional, ethical journalism of the highest standards; his moral courage in standing up for truth, integrity, and independence; and his principled belief that it is in giving full and respectful voice to the voiceless, in speaking truth bravely yet soberly to power, that journalism fulfils its noblest aims to advance democracy,” says the citation by the Ramon Magsaysay Award Foundation.
“In a media environment threatened by an interventionist state, toxic with jingoist partisans, trolls and purveyors of fake news, and where the competition for market ratings has put the premium on ‘media personalities’, ‘tabloidization’ and audience-pandering sensationalism, Ravish has been most vocal in insisting that the professional values of sober, balanced, fact-based reporting be upheld in practice.”
https://twitter.com/MagsaysayAward/status/1157122862110502912
Kumar, born in Jitwarpur village in Bihar, joined New Delhi Television Network (NDTV) in 1996 and worked his way up from being a field reporter.
The four other winners of the 2019 Ramon Magsaysay Award are Ko Swe Win from Myanmar, Angkhana Neelapaijit from Thailand, Raymundo Pujante Cayabyab from Philippines and Kim Jong-Ki from South Korea.
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