Sky News Wins Twice at Foreign Press Association Media Awards

Sky News has won two prestigious Foreign Press Association Media Awards in the News TV and Web Innovation categories, winning both accolades they were nominated for.

The News TV Award was given to Special Correspondent Alex Crawford, Deputy Foreign Editor Tim Miller and Cameraman Martin Smith for Battle for Zawiyah. The award winning report exposed Gaddafi’s regime opening fire on unarmed protesting civilians in the Libyan city. Sky News beat two Channel 4/ITN reports to win the category. 

The judges commented that the “Battle for Zawiyah was a very powerful piece, filmed in incredibly difficult and dangerous circumstances, that moved the world and offered Paris and London proof of what Gaddafi was up to.  Alex Crawford and her team were the only Western Journalists in the Lybian Town of Zawiyah when Colonel Gaddafi’s forces unleashed a huge assault on the civilian population.  Her report provided the first independent evidence gathered by a Western journalist that Gaddafi was firing on innocent civilians.”
 
Sky News for iPad, which launched in March, also won the Web Innovation Award, beating off competition from The Guardian and The Bureau of Investigative Journalism. The judges described the app as “truly ground breaking”, enabling users to “look at the news in a different way with outstanding quality of images and well-chosen graphics and was the first time the iPad language had been used for news.”
 
John Ryley, Head of Sky News, commented: ‘These are two fantastic awards for us. This year has been a phenomenal one for international news, and Alex, Tim and Martin’s report from Zawiyah was journalism at its absolute best. Winning the Web Innovation Award is also testament to the team here who have created a world-class news app like no other out there.’
 
Earlier this year Alex Crawford was named RTS Journalist of the Year for a third time, and Sky News was named News Channel of the Year for the eighth time.  Battle for Zawiyah also won a Golden Nymph Award at the Monte Carlo Television Awards in June.