APA to Award Pierce Human Rights Prize to Innovative Journalism Enterprise

Abstract

Back to table of contents Previous article Next article CommunityFull AccessAPA to Award Pierce Human Rights Prize to Innovative Journalism EnterpriseKatie O'ConnorKatie O'ConnorSearch for more papers by this authorPublished Online:3 Mar 2020https://doi.org/10.1176/appi.pn.2020.2b25AbstractGlobal Press focuses on empowering local women in low-income communities and using the power of journalism to promote social change.Global Press reporters participate in a photojournalism workshop in Indian-administered Kashmir.Courtesy of Global PressNonprofit news organization Global Press will receive APA’s Chester M. Pierce Human Rights Award at the 2020 Annual Meeting.The organization works to ensure that people around the world have access to more dignified, precise information about the world and the people in it, according to CEO and Publisher Cristi Hegranes, who founded the organization in 2006. To achieve that goal, Global Press employs local women journalists to report on their communities.“Local impacts of Global Press journalism in multiple countries have included revisions of national laws or government policies that have been oppressive to minority populations,” said James Griffith, M.D., chair of APA’s Human Rights Nominating Committee and the Leon M. Yochelson Professor and Chair of the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at George Washington School of Medicine in Washington, D.C. “We were impressed by how closely the Global Press mission and its human rights impacts have matched our criteria for a Chester Pierce awardee.”APA established the human rights award in 1990 to raise awareness of human rights abuses. It was renamed in 2017 in honor of Chester M. Pierce, M.D., to recognize his work as an advocate against mental health care disparities, stigma, and discrimination. Pierce spent much of his career at Massachusetts General Hospital and coined the term “microaggression” in 1970.Global Press encompasses several components, including the Global Press Institute, through which women complete a 16-week training course in journalism. The reporters then work at the Global Press Journal, which employs them to produce stories in their own language and in English. A third branch of the organization, Global Press News Services, syndicates the news to hundreds of partner outlets.Among Global Press’s innovations is its Duty of Care program, which ensures the physical, emotional, digital, and legal safety of the reporters, who are located all over the world, including in Bangladesh, Haiti, Kenya, Mongolia, Nepal, Puerto Rico, Zambia, and Zimbabwe. The program provides a network of more than 20 wellness counselors who are available for unlimited sessions. It also offers workplace wellness programs and posttraumatic stress disorder screenings.Hegranes explained that Global Press has a nonassignment policy: Editors do not tell reporters what to write. Rather, they give reporters the autonomy to set their own risk tolerance. One reporter might want to be in the middle of a protest to get a story, while another might want to cover education and arts while remaining safely in her home. Either way, Hegranes said, Global Press supports the women’s decisions and works with them to ensure they can achieve their reporting goals as safely as possible.Global Press has been fighting for years to raise money and awareness for Duty of Care to help the organization’s reporters and other local reporters, Hegrames said, but the organization was often told that ensuring local journalists’ security is too complicated or too expensive.“To be recognized by an organization like APA gives such enormous credibility to the fights we’ve been fighting for the last couple of years to give prominence and credibility to this issue,” she said, and called it “an extraordinary honor” to receive APA’s Chester M. Pierce Human Rights Award. ■The award will be presented at the session “World Psychiatric Association’s Mission, Vision, and Action Plans” on Monday, April 27, from 1 p.m. to 2:30 p.m. in the Pennsylvania Convention Center. ISSUES NewArchived