The Women’s Institute for Freedom of the Press (WIFP) announced the recipients of the 2024 Women and Media Awards at a ceremony October 27th in Washington, DC.

WIFP honors six media women:

Ann Wright is a writer and a courageous activist for peace and justice. Her writings
have appeared in Common Dreams, LA Progressive, San Francisco Bay View, The
Union, ScheerPost, World BEYOND War, and CODEPINK, Women for Peace. She is
the co-author with Susan Dixon of Dissent: Voices of Conscience: Profiles of
Whistleblowers and Others Who Have Dared to Speak the Truth About the War in
Iraq.

Photo credit: Francois Achan

Ann Wright is a retired U.S. State Department official and retired U.S. Army Colonel who
spoke out against the Iraq War. She served in Nicaragua, Grenada, Somalia,
Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Sierra Leone, Micronesia and Mongolia. She received the
State Department Award for Heroism in 1997. In March 2003 she resigned from the
State Department the day before the onset of the Invasion of Iraq in protest of the war.
She has since dedicated herself to peace and justice issues, writing knowledgeably for
many varied sources to inform the public about vital issues. She works closely with
many women’s organizations including Code Pink: Women for Peace and Women
Cross DMZ.Ph

Mariam Barghouti is a Palestinian-American writer, blogger, researcher, commentator,
and journalist. She lives in Ramallah. Her political commentary and research work has
been notably featured in CNN, Al Jazeera English, The Guardian, BBC, Huffington Post,
New York Times, Middle East Monitor, Newsweek, Mondoweiss, International Business
Times and TRT World.

Maha Nazih Al-Hussaini is an award-winning journalist and human rights activist
based in Gaza. Maha started her journalism career by covering Israel’s military
campaign in the Gaza Strip in July 2014. In 2020 she won the Martin Adler Prize for her
work as a freelance journalist. She is the director of strategies at the
Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Monitor in Geneva, Switzerland. The International
Women’s Media Foundation rescinded their 2024 Courage in Journalism Award to
Maha Hussaini under pressure. This will not happen with the WIFP Award.

Hind Osama Al-Khoudary is a Palestinian journalist based in the Gaza Strip. She has
reported for multiple media outlets including Al Jazeera English, Middle East Eye, +972
Magazine, RT, The Intercept, and Anadolu Agency.

Lara J. Bitar is an independent media worker based in Beirut, Lebanon, and the
founding editor of journalist-run publication, The Public Source. She contributes reports
on social movements and civic unrest to grassroots media projects in the U.S. and
Lebanon and writes for regional and feminist publications.

Ghadi Francis is a Lebanese journalist and war correspondent. She is a field
correspondent, program producer and writer. She reports on Palestine, Gaza, Lebanon,
Syria, Israel and more with thousands of articles on the region and Arab countries. In
2011 she published a book in which she collected her testimony about the Syrian war
entitled My Pen and My Pain – One Hundred Days in Syria.

WIFP announced the recipients of the 2023 Women and Media Award October 29th at a celebration in Washington, DC.

The annual Awards are granted to women who have made outstanding contributions seeking media democracy and toward expending women’s voices.

This year, WIFP honored seven deserving media women.

Briahna Joy Gray is an American political commentator, lawyer, and political consultant who served as the National Press Secretary for the Bernie Sanders 2020 presidential campaign. Formerly a columnist and Senior Politics Editor at the Intercept, she was also contributing editor to Current Affairs Magazine. Joy Gray has written for the Guardian, New York Magazine, and Rollings Stone. She currently co-hosts The Hill’s Rising. Her popular podcast is called Bad Faith.

Mnar Adley is founder, CEO, and editor in chief of MintPress News, an independent watchdog journalism organization that provides issue-based original reporting, in-depth investigations, and thoughtful analysis of the most pressing topics facing our nation. Adley is also a regular speaker on responsible journalism, sexism, and neo-conservativism within the media and journalism start-ups.

Catherine Murphy is a DC-based filmmaker who has spent much of her life living and working in Latin America. She is founder and director of The Literacy Project, a multi-media documentary project on literacy in the Americas. Her films explore the intersection of education and justice movements in the Americas.

Fiorella Isabel is a journalist and geo-political analyst. She is the co-host of the Convo Couch which airs on independent media platforms like Rokfin, Rumble, and YouTube. Fiorella Isabel reports for RT (Russia Today) and currently lives in Moscow.

Kimberlie Kranich is Director of Community Content and Engagement at WILL AM-FM-TV (25 years). She is senior manager and a member of the Leadership Team. Her expertise is in managing a diverse pool of public media talent across multiple platforms with multiple community partners. Kranich has been an Associate of WIFP since she first joined as an intern in 1988.

Jo-Anne McArthur is a photographer and the founder of We Animals media. She is the cofounder of The Unbound Project which celebrates women animal advocates worldwide. Documenting our complex relationship with animals in almost sixty countries for over fifteen years, McArthur is the author of three books, We Animals, Captive, and Hidden.

Alexis Baden-Mayer, Esq. is Political Director of the Organic Consumers Association. The Organic Consumers Association (OCA) is a network of more than 1 million activists committed to creating a healthy, just, democratic, and regenerative food system. Baden-Mayer is a key organizer of some of OCA’s most popular campaigns, including the “Monsanto Makes Us Sick” campaign to ban Roundup.

Emergency Actions To Support Julian Assange If He Is Extradited

• By Assange Frontline Defense, Popular Resistance.

• September 26, 2023

As Julian Assange’s options to appeal the decision to extradite him to the United States are being exhausted, he could be extradited as early as the beginning of October. We must be prepared to support him and fight for his release in the United States.

It is time to start planning now in your organization or community for emergency actions as soon as we become aware that he is being extradited (if there is a warning) or as soon as he is on his way (if it happens without warning).

If there is a warning, all focus will be on the British Embassy to protest their extradition. You can join the rally in Washington DC or hold an action locally in a highly visible place.

If Julian is transported to the United States without warning, we will protest at the Department of Justice in Washington, DC and then move to the Federal Courthouse in Alexandria, Virginia. Local solidarity actions could take place at Federal Courthouses or highly trafficked areas.

Please sign onto the pledge at PopularResistance.org to take emergency action as an individual or organization and they will keep you informed plus provide an action toolkit to you.

Pledge

If Julian Assange is extradited to the United States, I/my organization will join the emergency actions across the nation to show support for Assange and to demand that the Biden administration drop the charges. Publishing true information is the right of all journalists and media outlets. Access to information is the right of all people.

https://popularresistance.org/all-out-for-assange-emergency-actions-if-he-is-extradited/

#FreeAssange #PressFreedom

Recipients of the 2022 Women and Media Award were announced on the occasion of WIFP’s 50th Anniversary, October 23, 2022:
Shireen Abu Akleh (posthumous), Birgitte Jallov, Sabrina Salvati, Frieda Werden, Abby Martin, Ariel Dougherty, Katie Halper, Rania Khalek, Kim Iversen, and Jennifer Barckley.

Birgitte Jallov

Birgitte Jallov is the founding Director of EMPOWERHOUSE, an initiative to advance communities access to strong, sustainable community media, which Birgitte has worked to advance since the early 80s where she was a part of the budding community radio movement in her home country of Denmark. Since then Birgitte has worked systematically with documenting how community media can advance women’s voices, rights and empowered lives in more than 70 countries worldwide, based on which she is presently preparing a podcast series about “Women on the Global Community Airwaves.” Birgitte is the author of EMPOWERMENT RADIO – Voices building the community on how to build sustainable community radio.

Sabrina Salvati

Sabrina Salvati is the host of Sabby Sabs podcast and the co-host of Revolutionary Blackout Network. She is also an activist and a former educator. As a military child, she spent most of her childhood growing up overseas Sarina’s platform focuses on censorship, healthcare, education, criminal justice and the failures of the two party system in the United States. Sabrina holds a Bachelor of Arts degree from the University of South Carolina and a Master of Education degree from Northeastern University.

Frieda Werden

Frieda Werden is the co-founder and series producer of the long-running radio series WINGS: Women’s International News Gathering Service. The series is produced in collaboration with women radio producers from around the world, and distributed to community radio stations in multiple countries. Prior to co-founding WINGS, Frieda had a background in radio production with Longhorn Radio Network and National Public Radio. She also worked in print media and as Associate Curator of the Texas Women’s History Project. In 2002 Frieda and her partner Suzette Cullen relocated to Canada where she continues to produce the WINGS program.

Abby Martin

Abby Martin is an American journalist, TV presenter and activist. She helped found the citizen journalism website Media Roots and serves on the board of directors of the Media Freedom Foundation, which manages Project Censored. In 2019, she launched The Empire Files: Gaza Fights for Freedom, an investigative documentary.

Ariel Dougherty

Ariel Dougherty is an independent filmmaker and feminist media strategist. Her work is grounded in fifty years of media advocacy for women’s cinematic story-telling, encouraging it to unleash from patriarchal domination. Co-founder of Women Make Movies, celebrating its 50th anniversary in 2022, she has mentored hundreds of women filmmakers, produced many dozens of works, and directed eight films of her own. She writes about the intersection of feminist media, women’s rights, and funding. She is completing a book about community-based feminist teaching groups, their successes and challenges.

Katie Halper

Katie Halper is a journalist, writer, filmmaker, podcaster and political commentator. She began her career performing as a stand-up comedian, including performing at Netroot Nation and on the annual Seminar Cruise of The Nation magazine. She is the host of the podcast The Katie Halper Show and co-host of the podcast Useful Idiots with Matt Taibbi. The Katie Halper Show takes a humorous look at the news segments and conversations with writers, journalists, activists, artists, and political comedians. 

Rania Khalek

Rania Khalek is a Lebanese-American journalist for Breakthrough News, where she hosts the show Dispatches. She also co-hosts the Unauthorized Disclosure podcast with Kevin Gosztola. Based in Beirut, Lebanon, she has written for many outlets, including The Nation, The Intercept, Al Jazeera, Fairness and Accuracy In Reporting (FAIR), Salon, Vice, AlterNet, Truthout, and the Electronic Intifada, where she served on the editorial board. She has reported from around the world, including the Middle East, the Horn of Africa, and Latin America, where she has focuses on wars and the impact of imperialism. She has also covered social justice issues in the U.S., with a focus on racism, inequality, and police brutality.

Kim Iversen

Kim Iversen is a syndicated talk show host and co-founder of The Left Media Network, and the Kim Iversen Show. Kim as long been interested in polarization, immigration, Supreme Court rulings, policy, and social issues. She served as a spokesperson for Stop Child Trafficking Now which raises awareness and money to help victims of sex trafficking. Her mother is a Vietnamese refugee and her father is the son of a small town farmer Kim studied Philosophy with an emphasis in Ethics at the University of California – Davis.

Jennifer Barckley

Jennifer Barckley is the Senior Vice President of Marketing and Communications for The Humane League, a global nonprofit ending the abuse of animals raised for food. Her life and career are centered around nourishing people and our planet – through care, curiosity, kindness, and plants.

Shireen Abu Akleh

Shireen Abu Akleh is a palestinian-American journalist who worked for the Arab-language channel Al Jazeera for 25 years, reporting for decades in the Israeli-occupied Palestinian Territories. On May 11, 2022, while wearing a blue vest with “PRESS” written on it, she was shot and killed by the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) while covering a raid. She was one of the first female field reporters in the Arab world. [Shireen’s niece Lina Abu Akleh is receiving the Award on her behalf.]

Frieda Werden, a radio producer with a long involvement with women and media activism, is one of the recipients of WIFP’s 2022 Women and Media Award. She will be in Washington, DC, at WIFP’s 50th Anniversary celebration October 23rd where all the Award recipients will be announced. If you do not already know Frieda, you will enjoy reading about this impressive woman.

Frieda Lindfield Werden is Series Producer of the long-running radio series WINGS: Women’s International News Gathering Service.  The series is produced in collaboration with women radio producers from around the world, and distributed to community radio stations in multiple countries.

Prior to co-founding WINGS, Frieda had a background in radio production with Longhorn Radio Network and National Public Radio.  She also worked in print media and as Associate Curator of the Texas Women’s History Project (1979-81), under curator Ruthe Winegarten; and she collaborated on some of Ruthe’s books, notably Black Texas Women: 150 Years of Trial and Triumph (University of Texas Press.) A slogan she later wrote for WINGS was “Today’s News is Tomorrow’s History – Keep Women’s Actions on the Record!”

Frieda has a lifelong passion for hearing and telling women’s stories from women’s points of view.  As a 5-year-old on her first day of Sunday School she spoke out against the story of Adam and Eve.  Her first radio series for LRN was 13 episodes about feminist activism released under the mundane title “Women Today.” Also in the 1970s, at the Austin Women’s Center, she joined founding editor Carol Stalcup in creating a tabloid publication called Texan Woman. Among other things, it made fun of the editorial process of Texas Monthly Magazine (where Frieda was then employed).

In 1981, Frieda moved to New York and was hired by NPR docudrama producer Jo Ellyn Rackleff — first as associate producer of an NEH-funded radio series about Willa Cather, and then as Series Producer for 13 docudramas on Latin American fiction writers, also funded by NEH.  Frieda moved to Washington DC to manage that project.  She herself produced the two programs about women writers in that series – one on Mexican writer Elena Poniatowska, and one on Brazilian Clarice Lispector.

As the Reagan administration got underway, the National Endowment for the Humanities came under the control of extreme right-winger Lynne Cheney, making federal funds inaccessible for anything Frieda wanted to do.  She applied for funding to produce a drama by 10^th century German canoness Hrotswitha, but even that was considered too feminist.

Meanwhile, Frieda got hired at Current public broadcasting newspaper as editor for radio and emerging technologies.  It was there that she discovered Dr. Donna Allen’s Media Report to Women.  Donna’s concept of media in which the women covered speak for themselves made a strong impression on Frieda, and contributed to the founding of WINGS.

In 1985, Frieda was offered the job of managing Western Public Radio – a training and production facility in San Francisco.  Part of the incentive to move there from Washington DC was the opportunity to produce a project of her choice.  On arrival in the Bay Area she connected up with community radio producer Katherine Davenport, who was volunteering for the Women’s Department of community radio KPFA in Berkeley. Katherine had formerly co-produced a program at the New York City Pacifica community radio station WBAI, with Judie Pasternak. Frieda and Judie convened a Women’s Caucus meeting at a conference of the National Federation of Community Broadcasters in DC. Katherine and Judie’s show was titled “51%: The Women’s News” (not to be confused with a later women’s radio show out of Albany titled 51%). They made phone calls to women around the world to get their news stories, and had once asked Frieda to cover a story in DC. That sparked Frieda’s interest in the news genre.

Katherine and Frieda moved in together and started working on creating an international women’s news project. The pilot for WINGS, produced by Katherine Davenport, Augusta del Zotto, and Frieda, was funded with a director’s discretionary grant made by Sandra Rattley, from NPR’s Satellite Program Development Fund. The pilot debuted on the Public Radio Satellite in May of 1986.  The idea was to do ongoing follow-up of the international connections women had made during the UN Decade for Women (1975-85).  Frieda had attended the first UN Women’s Conference in Mexico City in 1975, but had not had a chance to go to the others, in Denmark and Nairobi.

Initial outreach included sending letters (this was the era before email) to a list of women radio producers who had attended a meeting of radio women at the 3^rd World Conference on Women in Nairobi.  Genevieve Vaughan, who convened that meeting, would become a funder and supporter of WINGS (among other feminist media projects).

It soon became obvious in many ways that public radio considered a program “only about women” too radical.  The Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which had taken over from the Satellite Program Development Fund, explicitly stated “this is an idea whose time has passed.”

Fortunately, the National Federation of Community Broadcasters offered Frieda a grant to attend the 2^nd-ever conference of the World Association of Community Radio Broadcasters (French acronym AMARC), which took place in Vancouver, Canada – just up the road from San Francisco. Katherine and Frieda both attended and made connections with stations and producers that would endure over the decades.  After a few more years of trying to market WINGS to public radio stations, WINGS concentrated entirely on supplying programs to community radio stations around the world.

Especially while located in California, WINGS eventually received grants from several foundations.  After the earthquake of 1989, Frieda, Katherine, and WINGS re-located to Kansas City.  In 1991, Genevieve Vaughan sent Frieda and another woman to the Philippines to attend the Who Calls the Shots? Women in Media and Advertising conference.  There, Frieda met for the first time her idol Dr. Donna Allen, who was presenting about the use of Space Bridges (later known as satellite feeds – an early precursor of today’s Zoom events).

The trip to the Philippines was related to Frieda’s consultative role in the founding of a women’s shortwave program known as FIRE (Feminist International Radio Endeavour) – based in Costa Rica, where there was a shortwave station called Radio for Peace International. FIRE was eventually thrown off of that station, and the station was then thrown off of the UN property where it had been located; but FIRE continued for many years, doing many live interviews with women at international conferences, and streaming and archiving audio online, both in English and Spanish.  Maria Suarez, whom we hired to head the FIRE project, recently gave a talk about it online [link to come – her talk will be this coming Saturday].

In 1992, Katherine Davenport died of leukemia, in Kansas City. A few months later, Genevieve Vaughan invited Frieda to move back to Austin, Texas, and take up a job with the Foundation for a Compassionate Society.  Part of the job included continuing to produce WINGS, as well as participating in the design and execution of a panoply of remarkable national and international feminist events – which yielded excellent content for radio. 

A few years after that the Foundation closed, and in 2002 Frieda and her partner Suzette Cullen relocated to Canada.  Frieda worked for 12 years as Spoken World Coordinator at the campus radio station of Simon Fraser University, then retired to an island – where she still produces and distributes WINGS today, with the help of contributing producers from around the world.

After the Foundation closed, Frieda continued to follow Genevieve’s events and projects.  One of the most recent is a series of Zoom salons that can be found on the website maternalgifteconomymovement.org – some of the presentations in that series have found their way into WINGS programs, as well. 

Over the years, the distribution process for WINGS has become simpler and less costly – from mailing cassettes (later CDs) to the stations, WINGS has gone to digital distribution online, largely through the community radio networks of the US, Canada, and Australia.  WINGS is also in the process of putting our entire archive of programs online on the website archive.org.

Along with her work with WINGS Frieda has been involved in two international media organization. She eventually became the Women’s Representative from North America, and then Vice President from North America on the AMARC Board.  Donna Allen’s pal Mal Johnson persuaded Frieda to come with her to a meeting of the International Association of Women in Radio and Television in India.  Later, Frieda would become a radio juror, then a Board member, and finally President of IAWRT. In 2022, she served on the board of the US chapter, and as a member of the international elections committee. Through both the Women’s Network of AMARC and IAWRT, Frieda has been able to connect with United Nations women’s activities, and of course has met new producers for WINGS.

Despite having held various offices, Frieda considers herself more of a listener than a leader.  Listening to women and putting together radio shows of their ideas and voices and stories and theories is her primary passion.  It has been more than 36 years since the first edition of WINGS went up on the satellite.  She hopes to be able to continue the weekly show for a few more years at least, and to be sure that women’s actions get – and stay – on the record. 

To be added to the WINGS mailing list, and to find locations for their archives, email wings@wings.org.