Sami Shoresh, 2003 winner
Sami Shoresh, a reporter for RFE/RL’s Arabic service, Radio Free Iraq, was cited by RFE/RL President Tom Dine for his “indefatigable energy, resourcefulness and courage” in covering the war in Iraq.
Dine, who called Shoresh’s reporting “the stuff of journalistic legend,” described how the broadcaster was in a convoy in northern Iraq when it was struck mistakenly by a U.S. Navy plane, killing 18. Dine said, “Having just escaped death by the narrowest of margins, he immediately gave the first foreign report of the tragedy as an eyewitness.”
Shoresh, accepting the award at RFE/RL’s headquarters in Prague, Czech Republic, praised the broadcast organization for teaching journalists to conform to “the ideals of democracy, human rights and the free flow of information.”