ISLAMABAD: Forty-three journalists and writers were given the Agahi awards at a ceremony held at the National Library on Saturday. Six anchorpersons were also recognised for their work.

The event, ‘Shaping the future of journalism’ was jointly organised by two NGOs, Agahi and Mishal.

This year, the organisers received more than 3,500 nominations in over 35 categories from the print, television, radio and online media. The organisers said they reached more than six million Pakistanis through the social media and almost 1.5 million through SMS for the people’s choice awards.

Nasim Zehra was recognised as the most credible anchor of the year; Waseem Badami and Ayesha Bakhsh bagged the award of people’s choice while Arshad Sharif and Adeel Raja got the investigative journalist of the year awards. ARY News was declared people’s favourite channel for the year.

Speaking on the occasion, Australian High Commissioner Margaret Adamson said her country was supporting the special category to encourage journalists to raise community awareness.

“Australia’s aid programme is supporting a range of programmes to improve nutrition and food security in Pakistan. I am confident this initiative will help build the capacity of journalists to effectively report on this issue and in turn policymakers and legislators implement cross cutting measures with supporting funding to eliminate the urgent issue of malnutrition and hidden hunger in Pakistan,” she said.

The CEO of Mishal, Amir Jahangir, said the idea to give awards to journalists was conceived in 2011 as there was no mechanism to appreciate the good work of journalists.

“We are honouring people who safeguard the future and interests of Pakistan and the Australian High Commission has supported us in this job,” he said.

A documentary played on the occasion claimed that in Pakistan it was not easy to become a journalist as a number of mediapersons died in the line of duty.

Published in Dawn, December 11th, 2016