Haitian journalist Robertson Alphonse has been awarded the National Association of Black Journalists Percy Quoboza Foreign Journalist of the Year Award.
Alphonse has lived in exile in the United States since he was attacked by gunmen while on his way to work to host his radio programme on Magik9. He was shot in both arms.
Since then he has continued to heal and has returned to work for Le Novelliste as News Editor and at Magik9 as Information Director. He is also a University of Michigan Knight-Wallace Fellow.
When Guardian Media reached out to him about the award, Alphonse said, "I am a journalist. My job is to collect, verify, shape, and disseminate information. I sometimes go beyond the facts to analyze the reasons behind events. Revealing information of public interest that the powerful seek to conceal is an exhilarating mission. There may be a price to pay for all this. October 25, 2022, could have been the day of my assassination. I survived. I decided that no one would silence me."
NABJ said the Percy Quoboza Foreign Journalist Award "recognizes a foreign journalist who has done extraordinary work while overcoming tremendous obstacles that contribute to the enrichment, understanding, or advancement of people or issues in the African Diaspora."
Alphonse is one of the special awardees who will announced during the opening ceremony of the NABJ convention in Chicago on July 31.