(Bayeux) Anglo-American CNN journalist Clarissa Ward will chair the 31e edition of the Bayeux War Correspondents Prize, announced Thursday Patrick Gomont, the mayor of Bayeux, a town in Normandy.
Organized from October 7 to 13, 2024, this edition will mark “one year of conflict in Gaza, which unfortunately continues,” noted Mr. Gomont during a press conference.
Aged 44, Clarissa Ward worked for Fox News, then ABC, CBS and finally CNN, in Moscow, Beijing, London and in numerous war zones – Syria, Afghanistan, Ukraine, etc.
She is to date the only Western journalist to have entered Gaza without authorization from Israeli troops since October 7.
“With each edition, international news gets worse, now the war is almost at our borders,” lamented the mayor of Bayeux, recalling that the profession of journalism is still paying “a heavy price with 103 journalists killed in Gaza, including 22 in the exercise of their functions”.
Each year, the names of journalists who died for their mission to inform are inscribed on the steles of the reporters’ memorial, located in a garden in Bayeux. These names are proposed by the organization Reporters Without Borders (RSF), after investigation.
Applications are open for radio, photo, television and written press reports, to be sent before June 6, 2024. Ten prizes in total will be awarded, from a selection of around 400 candidates.
Since 1994, the city of Bayeux, associated with the Department of Calvados and the Normandy Region, has organized this prize intended to pay tribute to journalists who practice their profession in perilous conditions to allow access to “free information”.