Dispatches reporter scoops One World broadcast journalism award
June 25, 2007
Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy has become the youngest-ever winner of broadcast journalist of the year at the One World Media Awards, celebrating coverage of the developing world.
At 27, Obaid is best known in the UK for work on Channel 4’s Unreported World and Dispatches.
Born and raised in Pakistan, her work has tackled the rise of Islamic fundamentalism in her home country, the women’s movement in Saudi Arabia and the Catholic Church’s pro-life movement in the Philippines.
The awards, presented by Channel 4’s Jon Snow at a ceremony in London on 14 June, are the work of the One World Broadcasting trust, which promotes coverage of the developing world.
Obaid’s broadcasting career began while studying print journalism in the United States, when her documentary pitch about the effects of the Afghan war on child refugees was picked up by New York Times Television.
The film, Terrorist’s Children, went on to win two top journalism awards in the US and led to Obaid working for NYTT for three years. She said of the experience: “I think I quite baffled them [the television station] to be quite honest. They didn’t expect an educated Muslim woman from Pakistan to walk in with a proposal, ideas and an entire budget written out. And honestly, I took a chance.”
Obaid was originally hired as a director, but after one month of filming she discovered that she hadn’t recorded any audio. When the executives in New York asked her to go back and refilm they suggested that she front the piece, launching her career as an on-screen reporter.
She said her sex had helped her gain access to people that a man might not. “It helps tremendously that I’m a woman. If I was a man, I don’t think I could do the kind of journalism that I do; not in the kind of countries I go to and the people I speak to. They open up to me. They don’t perceive me as a threat because I’m a woman. If I were a man and said something to a militant in Kashmir that he would deem offensive he would retaliate.”
Obaid met Channel 4’s Kevin Sutcliffe when seeking for funding for a co-production on an American project, which led to her work on Unreported World. She said British television audiences were more knowledgeable about global affairs because of more coverage.
“In America they try and skirt around the issue whereas in England they are direct about what is happening in parts of the world. If you are doing a film about Pakistan for an American audience, first you have to tell them where the hell Pakistan is, what Pakistan is, its history – by the time you get into the story 10 minutes of the film is gone.”
Other winners in the awards included the Mail on Sunday’s Damien Lewis, recipient of the Popular Features award for his Darfur coverage, and ITV News’s Chris Rogers, who won the Children’s Rights award for his work on Romania’s unwanted children.
Postscript :
Full list of winners:
Broadcast journalist of the year: Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy, Unreported World, Channel 4
June 19, 2007
SBS Radio in Australia interviewed Sharmeen Obaid Chinoy about her documentary films
June 16, 2007
Sharmeen Obaid Chinoy with Jon Snow at the awards ceremony
Awards for Guardian journalists
June 15, 2007
Two of our reporters were among those who won awards last night for their dispatches from the developing world.
Murray Armstrong
Two Guardian journalists were awarded for their reporting from the developing world at last night’s One World Media awards.
Joanna Moorhead, along with freelance photographer Anna Kari, won the Millennium Development Goals award for their feature comparing maternity care in Africa and Europe. Different planets told the human stories behind an international report last year that showed the best place in the world to give birth is Sweden and the worst is Niger.
Our China correspondent Jonathan Watts picked up the Press award for his Weekend magazine feature, The big steal, a story of violent protest by millions of China’s peasant families against land grabs by local authorities and developers. The rapid industrialisation and urbanisation of the country has created an angry army of the dispossessed.
Broadcast journalist of the year is Sharmeen Obaid Chinoy of Channel 4 for her documentary on the ill-treatment in South Africa of migrants from Zimbabwe.
The special award for community media went to Radio Sagarmatha of Nepal, an independent community broadcasting station that defied the media ban during last year’s unrest.
The awards were presented by Jon Snow, a patron of the One World Broadcasting Trust and regular presenter of its awards. The trust was established in 1987 to promote understanding between developing and developed countries through the effective use of media.
The full shortlist of nominations is on the owtb.org website. All of the winners are not listed there yet but I’m sure they’ll be posted soon.
June 15, 2007
Sharmeen Obaid Chinoy was named Broadcast Journalist of the Year by One World Media Awards, at a ceremony held in London.
June 4, 2007
On June 4th 2007 , the Guardian newspaper profiled Sharmeen Obaid Chinoy’s work.
Sharing her view of humanity
Paul Hoggart
Monday June 4, 2007
Guardian
Next Thursday’s One World Media Awards are not quite the Baftas or the Emmys, but for broadcasters and journalists working in the developing world, or covering the developing world in the western media, they offer a welcome shaft of international limelight. Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy belongs to this second group.
At 27 she is the youngest ever nominee for the Broadcast Journalist of the Year Award. She has made 12 films in five years, for Discovery Times and PBS in America, al-Jazeera and for Channel 4, who have shown two of her films in the last three weeks. Afghanistan Unveiled, for Dispatches, on May 17, was a heartrending exploration of the situation of many Afghan women despite the defeat of the Taliban. Last Friday’s Birth of a Nation covered the struggles of democracy in East Timor for Unreported World.
Five of Obaid-Chinoy’s films concern her native Pakistan, but she has also made documentaries about women in Saudi Arabia, Native American women in Canada, illegal abortions in the Philippines, Muslims in Sweden and the ill-treatment of Zimbabwean migrants in South Africa. Her portfolio is a global tour of gender oppression and social injustice.
The filmmaker has a knack of walking into potentially dangerous situations with a self-confidence more commonly associated with upper-class Victorians. This is not entirely coincidental. She explains that she went to Karachi Grammar School. “One of the best schools in Asia, which followed the British system. They put a lot of emphasis on debating and I learned to be most vocal,” she recalls.
She began writing features for an English language newspaper at 14. “When I was 17 I wrote an expose of the behaviour of rich landlords’ sons, driving around with guns, forcing their way into private parties. The day after it appeared, my father found profane graffiti about me all over the city. He told me to stay indoors and sent his men round to paint over my name.”
Her father, a wealthy self-made businessman, initially opposed her going to university abroad, but her mother was determined her daughters should be educated up to masters level. “I staged a 36-hour hunger strike and my father let me go to Smith College in Massachusetts.”
On a visit home she decided she wanted “to do something” about the plight of Afghan refugees after the US-led invasion. “The American news channels were full of rhetoric about getting the Taliban and finding Osama bin Laden and nothing about the impact of the war on civilians. I wanted to do something visual, so people could be part of that experience.”
The then 22-year-old wrote to more than 80 TV companies without result, but an email to William Abrams, head of what was then New York Times Television, resulted in an agreement to fund her flights, and provide equipment and two weeks’ training, on condition she would pay them back if they did not like the result.
When Obaid-Chinoy Fedexed the first month’s filming to America, her executive producer told her the soundtrack had not recorded. She hired a cameraman who had never made a documentary and a soundman who had never recorded outdoors and reshot, adding explanatory pieces to camera. Originally just to help executives, these became part of the film, a style she has used since. The final result was the award-winning Terror’s Children.
After a string of films in America, she was advised to seek co-production partners in the UK. A meeting with Kevin Sutcliffe, Channel 4’s commissioning editor for news and current affairs, led to an offer to make Pakistan’s Double Game, shown in 2005. She has now made five films for Channel 4. “You can get away with saying a lot more in the UK,” she says. “Even a channel like HBO will air 10 documentaries about sex and drugs and one about a massacre in Iraq.”
Her work has often exposed her to hostility. Filming in Kashmir, Obaid-Chinoy and her crew made a hasty exit from a meeting with a warlord, when they realised he suspected, correctly, that her cameraman was Jewish. Sometimes situations are just distressing. In the Philippines she had to leave the room while filming an illegal abortion. “I can still hear the girl’s moans”.
Underlying all her work is a fierce sense that practising Muslim women can be educated and free. “Where in the Qur’an does it say a woman must cover her face? I’ve read it front to back and I can’t find it,” she says.
“I find the political manipulation of Islam to be very troubling. We can’t have a them-and-us attitude. We are part of this planet and we share it with the rest of humanity.”
MediaGuardian.co.uk © Guardian News and Media Limited 2007
June 1, 2007
“Birth of a Nation” will air on Channel 4 as part of its Unreported World series on June 1st at 7:35 p.m.
June 1, 2007
Sharmeen Obaid Chinoy has been short listed for the One World Media Award in the catagory “Broadcast Journalist of the year”
Winners will be announced on June 14th at a ceremony in London.