Minister for Information in Jordan, Mr. Naser Joudeh (left), former Prime minister Mr. Taher Al Masri and journalist Ghassan Saleh from Syria at the ceremony of the ARIJ Awards 2008. Photo: Lotte Dahlmann/IMS

Greetings from the King of Jordan accompanied two Syrian and a Jordanian reporter, when they were rewarded and applauded for their outstanding work in the field of investigative reporting at the first ARIJ Awards ceremony in Amman

The ARIJ Award is a new prize established by the ARIJ board to instill courage and to encourage Arab journalists to embrace the tools of investigative reporting in order to shed light on issues in society that may benefit from the critical attention of the public that investigative reports by the media may generate.

At the Galla dinner during the ARIj regional conference, the prize was given to three journalists in recognition of their outstanding work.

Ghassan Saleh from Al Baath newspaper in Syria wrote about the agony of thousands of Syrian patients in need of a kidney transplants.

Randa Haidar from Syria wrote about women workers in the private sector being victims of harassment and weak legal protection mechanisms.

And finally, Ashraf Al Raii from Jordan newspaper Al-Ghad was awarded for his story on the lack of systematic health monitoring at night clubs and bars which leads to the spread of sexually transmitted diseases.

King Abdullah of Jordan encourages investigative reporting

In his speech at the galla dinner, the Jordanian minister for Information, Mr. Naser Joudeh stressed the importance of investigative journalism as a tool to expose issues in society that need to be addressed, and said that the King of Jordan fully backs these efforts.

The minister's words were backed by the fact that King Abdullah of Jordan had just days before met with chief editors of Jordan's main newspapers and told them that changes were about to be made in Jordan's media environment. This was later noted by Tim Sebastian, former host of BBC's "Hard Talk" and now head of the Doha Debates in a opinion piece for the International Herald Tribune. IN this, Tim Sebastian referred to the ARIJ regional conference as an example of outstanding new developments on the media scene in the Arab world.Tim Sebastian was invited as a speaker at the regional conference and took part in the ARIJ Awards ceremony.

Actively sharing their experiences

All prize winning reporters participated in the first regional conference on investigative reporting organised by ARIJ and coinciding with the ARIJ Awards ceremony. The award winners took active part in sharing their experiences with investigative reporting as well as learning from the experiences presented by many of the other skilled investigative journalists present at the conference.

During the opening debate of the regional conference, Jordanian prize winner of the ARIJ Awards 2008, Ashraf Al Raie took the floor to explore the insights of the keynote speaker, Sheila Coronel, professor at Columbia University. (Photo: Lotte Dahlmann/IMS)