The Express Tribune bags six Agahi Awards

70 journalists from across Pakistan received 'journalist of the year' awards in their respective fields

The Express Tribune won big at the 2021 Agahi Awards, bagging accolades in six different categories for outstanding reporting.

ET reporter Yusra Salim received the award for the category of ‘Epidemics & Pandemics’ for her in-depth report ‘Race to vaccinate’ detailing the challenges the citizens of Karachi were facing during the rush for Covid-19 inoculation in August.

ET reporter Nabil Tahir secured the award in the ‘Innovation’ category for the feature ‘Lending a bionic hand’ covering work Pakistani students, engineers and entrepreneurs are carrying out to develop robotic prosthetics.

ET senior editorial consultant Hammad Sarfraz won the award for the ‘Foreign Policy’ category with his report ‘What’s next for Pakistan and the US’ discussing the trajectory ties between Islamabad and Washington may follow in the coming years.

From the ET Business Desk, editorial staff member Omar Qureshi received the award for his story ‘Pak-China currency swap – a cure for dollar dependency’ in the category ‘China-Pakistan Relations’.

ET Peshawar correspondent Ehtesham Khan received an award for his report ‘Inactive women police desks hinder justice’ as well.

Freelance contributor Shazia Mehboob also received an award for the ‘Education’ category for a story published in The Express Tribune titled ‘More degrees, more problems’.

The Agahi Awards celebrated 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.

The Agahi Awards in its ninth year organised jointly by Aghai and Mishal Pakistan in collaboration with journalists' associations, academic institutions think tanks and private sector organisations.

The Aghai Awards are the annual event in Pakistan to benchmark journalism excellence in Pakistan, recognising 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 Agahai 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".

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 Centre for Internet and Media Ethics.