President of the Association of Caribbean Media Workers (ACM), Wesley Gibbings has been awarded the National Association of Black Journalists (NABJ) Percy Qoboza Foreign Journalist Award. Gibbings described the event as “one of the more humbling experiences of my professional life.”
“There are few greater tributes a journalist can receive to match the recognition of his or her peers. I come before you as a Caribbean person, from a small twin-island state, whose ancestry finds roots on the shores of more than one continent. People who came either through force, subterfuge or by choice to a new home we now call our own,” he said as he received the award Friday.
Gibbings told the award ceremony that for the Caribbean journalist, “our story is as much an explanation of ‘why’ things happen as it is an honest declaration of ‘what’ we confront as a people – both as the subjects and objects of history.
“For this reason, journalism in all its convergent manifestations and as the first draft of our story, is a singularly important imperative of our time and a free press one of our most valuable assets.”
Freedom cry in the Caribbean
But he noted that it is however amazing that as a people whose history emerges from institutionalized coercion, violence and bondage, that the freedom cry in the Caribbean should so tragically roam the social and political wilderness.
“This is the challenge my organization, the ACM, engaged, when we launched 16 years ago, with a message of freedom and a commitment to work harder to claim the power it provides to our people.
Today, my own contribution to this cause has brought me here, as if in sacred communion with peers,” he said.
Trinidadian columnist
Gibbings, a Trinidadian newspaper columnist, freelance journalist and media trainer received the award in recognition of his work over the decades in the promotion of press freedom throughout the Caribbean.
The Percy Qoboza Foreign Journalist Award earns its name from the late South African journalist, Percy Peter Tshidiso Qoboza, an editor of The World, a Soweto newspaper.
His dynamic columns ranged from coverage of the 1976 Soweto riots to the tragic horror of apartheid and the white minority government’s treatment of millions of black Africans. He remains a credit to his profession and has been an inspiration for many journalists.
Gibbings has been a journalist for over 35 years and is the founding president of the ACM which was established in 2001.
