Mick Hartley

Reuters' Kurt Schork awards – named for the journalist killed in an ambush while on an assignment for Reuters in Sierra Leone – "recognises and assists freelance journalists, local journalists and news fixers who make a critical contribution to international understanding but whose work is often overlooked".

The 2022 Local Reporter Award was originally conferred on Shatha Hammad, a Palestinian freelance journalist based in the West Bank. But there was a slight problem:

The Thomas Reuters Foundation has rescinded its Kurt Schork Award from a Palestinian journalist after comments made on social media surfaced in which she likened herself to Hitler and claimed she wanted to ‘exterminate the Jews’.

On Sunday, media watchdog HonestReporting uncovered posts made by Shatha Hammad, a freelance journalist who has written for Middle East Eye and Al Jazeera, in which she signed off her Facebook comments using the nickname “Hitler”.

Ms Hammad, who is based in the West Bank, also referred to Palestinian terrorists who killed five Israelis as “martyrs”, denied Israel’s right to exist, and described herself as "friends" with Hitler.

Two days after Ms Hammad’s comments resurfaced, News agency Reuters announced that it had made the ‘difficult’ decision to withdraw the 2022 Kurt Schork Award for International Journalism and a £5000 reward from Ms Hammad, as well as the chance for her work to be “spotlighted through a multimedia campaign on Reuter’s social media channels.”

Quite why it was a "difficult" decision is unclear. Perhaps "embarrassing" decision would have been more honest.

A reporter, it would seem, whose work richly deserves to be "often overlooked".