Former Citizen TV reporter, Dorcas Wangira, has won a cash prize in a global competition celebrating journalists for their fresh, innovative and insightful reporting that impacts the society.
Wangira parted ways with Citizen TV a month ago and joined the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) but the award was in relation to her work at the Royal Media Services-owned station.
The piece that steered her to stardom at the global competition was title “Born in prison”.
Wangira was celebrated on Thursday, November 25, receiving Ksh173,500 (ZAR25,000) after being ranked the overall winner by a panel of judges who are also media practitioners.
The award was organised by Media Monitoring Africa (MMA) in collaboration with United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) and named the Isu Elihle Awards.
The awards were launched in 2016 and have been celebrating journalists for the last five years. The award attracts hundreds of applications. They elevate the voices of journalists who cover stories of kids across the globe.
Judges, justifying the reason to award Wangira, noted that she comprehensively covered her topic using drawings, vivid descriptions that evoked emotions.
“Excellent series, a lot of time and effort was taken to present the issue comprehensively and from all angles. I love the inclusion of things like the drawings of children whose mothers were in prison and their memories of time there. The journalist engaged the issues with sensitivity, and you never got an impression of secondary trauma to the kids involved," the Judges stated.
"The stories were comprehensive and gave the reader a full picture. The article was very clear at drawing the two video reports together and then packaging the whole series together in a way that was comprehensive and showed the legal and ethical challenges, held the powerful accountable and presented options for the future. Very well done."
Wangira, throughout her career, has demonstrated a lot of passion about human interest stories that have even landed her a job with the BBC.
In the competition, she outsmarted Robyn Wolfson Vorster of South Africa and Caroline Ayugi of Uganda.
