Rana Sabbagh Accepts ICFJ Knight Trailblazer Award

Rana Sabbagh has spent more than four decades building a vibrant investigative reporting culture in the Middle East and North Africa - one of the most dangerous regions of the world for journalists to expose official wrongdoing. Sabbagh, who is the winner of the ICFJ Knight Trailblazer Award, delivered the following remarks on Nov. 14 at the Ronald Reagan Building in Washington, DC, at the ICFJ Tribute to Journalists 2024.

Good evening and thank you for this award. In the troubled region I come from, it often feels as though the world is looking away.

You've just been through a presidential election, so I don't want to talk to you about politics.

But I do want to talk about my colleagues in the Middle East, some of whom are living in the ruins of their homes in Gaza or Lebanon, mourning the family members who've been killed, scavenging for food and water for their loved ones who are still alive.

They define what is best in our journalism. The refusal to give up, the refusal to crouch in fear and indulge in self-pity - and the unwavering commitment to document the human suffering, the battles, the criminality and the selfless commitment of so many who daily risk their lives to help others.

They report the story - and theyAREthe story.

Journalism, real journalism, is never easy in my region.

Many of my colleagues have been sacked or imprisoned.

In the West, their cases get little, if any publicity.

I understand that stability in my region is a legitimate foreign policy goal for the West. Terror has to be fought. But aiming for stability in the region also means cementing injustice, the lack of human rights, and a press that's far from free.

Look at Tunisia's slide into a dictatorship after the country became a poster child of the so-called "Arab Spring."

The West has been largely silent about the president's coup against democracy. Why? He promised to work with Europe to stem the flow of migrants in return for millions of euros. Egypt is another example. The list is long.

Not so long ago I was summoned to a government office and invited to choose between my loyalty to my job and my loyalty to my country.

I told them I loved my country and my job and that's why I was reporting on those who broke its laws and looted its riches.

The question went away - but inevitably it will return to me and to others.

I've been fired from too many positions to believe that journalism in my region can ever be a safe profession.

And yet it's all relative.

Tonight, as every night, reporter Mohammed Abu Shahmeh will lie under the nylon roof he has built on the site of his destroyed house in Gaza City, where some 40 members of his family have been killed. He says he has no time to grieve them. "We bury nine corpses in one go and immediately leave to find water and food. For us this has become a normality."

Tonight as every night, brave Sudanese journalist Fath Rahman will eat dinner in his tiny new room in the UK after fleeing death threats by warlords who want to silence accountability journalism.

Iraqi colleague Assad Zalzali and his family will be asleep in their new refuge in the West. In one year, he was beaten up four times by militias, sustaining severe back injuries. They called him a "traitor" because he was working for "Al Hurra", a satellite TV channel funded by the U.S. government.

Yemeni colleague Aseel Sareeh, who won refugee status in Sweden, is waiting to reunite with his family, fleeing a civil war raging for 9 years.

So I'd like to dedicate my award to Mohammed, Fath, Assad, and Aseel, who have been investigating corruption and injustice with me, first at ARIJ and now at OCCRP. I would like to dedicate it to the hundreds of brave Arab colleagues I have worked with over the years.

They risk everything day after day to bring us the news and document the facts.

They represent the best of Arab society and with this award, I salute their courage - and sadly, all too often, their ultimate sacrifice.

Thank you.