AFP, BBC News, ITV News and Orient XXI awarded the Bayeux War Correspondents Prize

The Bayeux Calvados-Normandie War Correspondents Prize recalls the crucial importance of journalism in conflict zones. Of the exercise of one of the most fundamental rights, freedom of the press, when it is most threatened.

Gazan AFP photographer Mahmud Hams won the first prize for war correspondents in the photo category on Saturday October 12 in Bayeux, alongside Andrew Harding (BBC News, radio category), Mohammed Abu Safia and John Irvine (ITV News, television) and Rami Abou Jamous (Orient XXI, written press).

Palestinian journalist Rami Abou Jamous won three trophies, in print media, television and the Ouest-France Jean Marin prize, a first in 31 editions of the Bayeux prize. He was awarded in the written press and Prix Ouest-France for Gaza newspaper, a day-by-day account of his daily life as a displaced person in Rafah after having had to leave his accommodation in Gaza City in the face of the advance of the Israeli army.

Mr. Abou Jamous wins the prize “large format television” For Gaza, escape hell with BFMTV. In a video shot in a tent in a refugee camp in the enclave he calls home “his villa”Rami Abou Jamous thanked the Bayeux prize for having proven that we could be “Palestinian and journalist”. He dedicated his prize to all his colleagues killed by the Israeli army in Gaza.

Mahmud Hams, of Agence France-Presse, was awarded for his entire coverage in Gaza. One of the winning photos shows a woman crying out in grief after an Israeli strike while searching for victims in the rubble of a building in Khan Younes, southern Gaza Strip, on October 17, 2023. Joined on stage by part of the Agence France-Presse team in Gaza, now based outside the enclave, Mr. Hams dedicated “this victory to all journalists who courageously and honestly cover the war in Gaza”, predominant during this edition of the Prix Bayeux.

“I am also very happy to win this award for the third time, I want to tell my colleagues in Gaza that our message is well received: the whole world is looking at Gaza through our lenses,” added the photographer. “This award is a well-deserved tribute to the absolutely remarkable work carried out by Mahmud in unimaginable circumstances,” greeted Phil Chetwynd, AFP News Director, on X (ex-Twitter).

In the radio category, Andrew Harding won with Sarah’s story an international investigation to find the smugglers who launched an inflatable boat in which Sara, a 7-year-old Iraqi girl, died while trying to cross the Channel with her family to escape being sent back to their country. “We are obsessed with migrants in England with populism, I tried to show what pushes these people to take such risks” Mr. Harding explained, “We found and confronted the smuggler of Sara’s boat but we are not the police.”

Gazan Mohamed Abou Safia won the television prize with his ITV News colleague John Irvine for the report The white flag, on a Palestinian shot dead in the Gaza Strip while walking in the street with a white flag to meet family members.

The Ukrainian conflict also found a place in the list with the public prize awarded to photographer Kostiantyn Liberov Libkos for The war in Ukraine. Pain, despair and hope. France 2 and BFMTV also received awards for reporting in Ukraine.

Anglo-American journalist Clarissa Ward of the CNN television channel said she felt “a real privilege to be president of the jury” at the opening of the awards evening. The only journalist to have managed to enter the Gaza Strip since October 7, 2023, she found “difficult to choose winners”, all the nominees made it “very proud to be a journalist”.

Gazan photographer Saher Alghorra, freelance for the Associated Press and Zuma Press, reached by video call because he still lives in Gaza, received the young photo reporter prize.

A tribute was paid to the secretary general of Reporters Without Borders (RSF) Christophe Deloire who died in June 2024.