Anja Niedringhaus | 2005 Courage in Journalism Award

Associated Press, Germany.

On October 23, 2005, Anja Niedringhaus (1965-2014) accepted the IWMF Courage in Journalism Award at a ceremony in New York. The Award was presented by American broadcast legend Bob Schieffer.
Watch their speeches here:

In 2012, Niedringhaus and her AP colleague Kathy Gannon set out together to document the war in Afghanistan from a different perspective – a perspective that would would lead them into the mountains of Eastern Afghanistan. Arranged by the Afghan Ministry of Defense, Niedringhaus and Gannon became the first foreign journalists to embed with the Afghan National Army.
After they returned, the two Courage Award winners shared their experiences and explained what compels them to continue their dangerous work in this exclusive interview with the IWMF.

About Anja Niedringhaus (1965-2014)

Niedringhaus began full-time work as a photojournalist in 1990 when she joined the European Pressphoto Agency (EPA) in Frankfurt, Germany. One of her first assignments for EPA was covering the conflict in the Balkans, where journalists were regularly targeted by Bosnian Serb forces. On her first day in Sarajevo, Niedringhaus was hit in her flak jacket by a sniper’s bullet. She stayed in the region for ten years, covering Albania, Bosnia, Croatia, Kosovo, Macedonia and Serbia and exposing herself to the dangers of civil war.

In 1997, her foot was crushed and broken in three places by a police car while she was covering demonstrations in Belgrade, requiring three reconstructive operations. That same year, Niedringhaus became EPA’s chief photographer.

In Kosovo in 1998, Niedringhaus was blown out of a car by a grenade while caught in cross-fire. In 1999, in Albania, she was with a group of other journalists at the Albania-Kosovo border crossing when they were mistakenly bombed by NATO forces. Niedringhaus says that she and her colleagues tried to hide in bunkers and cars as the NATO forces continued to fire. The bombing went on for 20 minutes, until NATO got word of their mistake. Some of the journalists’ cars were destroyed and a few of the other journalists in the group were injured.

In 2001, Niedringhaus photographed the aftermath of September 11 in New York City for the EPA. Shortly after that, she traveled to Mazar-e-Sharif and Kabul, where she spent three months covering the fall of the Taliban in Afghanistan.

In November 2002, Niedringhaus moved to the Associated Press as a traveling photographer. Much of her work since then has taken her to the Middle East, where she has reported on events in the Gaza Strip, Israel, Kuwait and Turkey. Once the war in Iraq began, Niedringhaus traveled to that country, which is considered one of the most dangerous places in the world in which a journalist can work. According to the International Press Institute, 23 journalists were killed in Iraq in 2004. In November 2004, Niedringhaus was embedded with the U.S. Marines during the U.S.-led offensive into Fallujah. She also photographed the bombings of the Red Cross headquarters in Baghdad and the Italian base in Nasiriyah, as well as events at the Abu Ghraib prison and the 2005 Iraqi elections.

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Niedringhaus also covered the G-8 Summit in Geneva, the terrorist bombings in Madrid and the 2004 Olympic Games in Athens for the AP.

She was the only woman on a team of 11 AP photographers awarded the 2005 Pulitzer Prize for breaking news photography.

She was born on October 12, 1965, in Hoexter, Germany. She died on April 4, 2014, when an Afghan policeman opened fire while she was sitting in a car with AP reporter Kathy Gannon in eastern Afghanistan.

Anja Niedringhaus is the first Courage in Journalism Award winner from Germany.

read-more-btnRead also:
Reporting from the Front Lines of War | Exclusive interview with Anja Niedringhaus and Kathy Gannon
Kathy Gannon | 2002 Courage in Journalism Award
Sumi Khan, Bangladesh | 2005 Courage in Journalism Award
Shahla Sherkat, Iran | 2005 Courage in Journalism Award


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Anja Niedringhaus

Anja Niedringhaus with Judy Woodruff (left) and fellow 2005 Courage Awardees Shahla Sherkat (Iran) and Sumi Khan (Bangladesh), and IWMF Lifetime Achievement Awardee Molly Ivins (United States) in Los Angeles, November 2, 2005

Anja Niedringhaus

Kathy Gannon (left) and Anja Niedringhaus (right) on the border crossing between Pakistan and Afghanistan, traveling with NATO oil tankers from Quetta in Pakistan to Kandahar. ©AP

Anja Niedringhaus

Anja Niedringhaus with colleagues in Budapest, 2003