Courage and conviction: Women in journalism honored

Growing up in a university town in China, Gao Yu's parents taught her about the golden age of press freedom in China during the first half of the 20th century. It was led by a pioneering publisher and reporter named Liang Chai Hsi, who was determined that the voice of the people be heard. Gao dreamed of carrying on that tradition. But just as she entered college in 1962, all media courses were canceled because of a nationwide famine. Her graduation was delayed by the Cultural Revolution (1966-76). She was banished to the countryside. A decade went by before she could realize her dream, after the government in Beijing finally reopened many of the news organizations it had closed.

She began writing political and economic stories, and was at the forefront of the reform movement, fighting censorship and championing human rights and democracy. As a result, she's been jailed twice, once for six years for "leaking state secrets" – ironically to a pro-Chinese government newspaper in Hong Kong.

"The Communist Party requires that history be forgotten and reality be whitewashed," she said through a translator. "But after the Tiananmen massacre [in 1989], there are more and more excellent journalists who are determined to tell the truth and go against the government. I draw strength from all of those young people as well as those who came before me."

As a young woman in Mexico in the early 1950s, Ms. Poniatowska's father noted her ability to type, take shorthand, and speak three languages. He suggested she'd be a good secretary. So she got a job, didn't like it, and quit.

Soon after, at a cocktail party for the US ambassador, her mother introduced her as a journalist. That was a surprise to Poniatowska. But the ambassador was charmed and invited her to interview him. Since it was his first chat with any member of the Mexican press, a major newspaper published her piece.

"I became a journalist like a donkey – I knew nothing about it," she says. "I learned from one day to the next."

Journalism suited her curiosity, and a somewhat curious nature. Though men got the plum assignments in the machismo culture, she liked to laugh. That made her stand out. Mexican journalists had a "pompous writing style" that took politicians way too seriously, she says. She decided instead to write what she saw.

"I saw the president nearly fall down as he entered Congress, and if a bodyguard hadn't caught him, he'd have been flat on his nose on the red carpet," she says. "I wrote about that and all of the crazy things I saw. People started laughing, and that changed the way Mexicans saw politics." It also helped revolutionize Mexican journalism.

Jill Carroll, the Monitor reporter who spent 82 days as a hostage in Baghdad, always knew she wanted to be a foreign correspondent. After college she worked for a short while as a reporting assistant at The Wall Street Journal. Ms. Carroll then went to the Middle East on her own, learned Arabic and went to Iraq and worked as a freelancer. She was on assignment for the Monitor when she was abducted Jan. 7. Her interpreter, Alan Enwiya, was killed in the attack. Her driver, Adnan Abbas, who witnessed the abduction, has had his life threatened. He and his family now live as refugees outside Iraq. Carroll is donating the money from the award to a fund to help his family.

She is currently on leave and a fellow at Harvard University's Joan Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics, and Public Policy. Carroll's full story can be found at: www.csmonitor.com/specials/carroll/index.html.

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