The website of One Young World announced five people as the winners of the Best Journalist Award 2022, and among them was Lotfullah Najafizada, the former head of TOLOnews.
One Young World described Lotfullah Najafizada as an award-winning journalist from Afghanistan and the former director of TOLOnews TV, leading Afghanistan’s top news channel for over a decade until the fall of Kabul last August.
As mentioned in the award, in addition to overseeing the largest news operation in the country, Najafizada has also conducted many high-profile interviews with global leaders, including British Prime Minister David Cameron, Afghan President Ashraf Ghani, Afghan Chief Executive Abdullah Abdullah and Iran’s Foreign Minister Javad Zarif.
The statement reads that Najafizada also hosted Afghanistan’s only presidential elections debate in 2019.
On World Press Freedom Day 2016, Paris-based Reporters without Borders awarded him the prestigious medal of Press Freedom Hero for his fight for free press in Afghanistan.
In 2016, TIME Magazine profiled Najafizada as a Next Generation Global Leader and in 2017 Forbes magazine selected him among the 30 under 30 Asia influencers in media. Mr. Najafizada was the only Afghan journalist who attended two rounds of civil society talks with the Taliban– in Doha (2019) and in Oslo (2022).
He is currently a Pritzker Fellow at the Institute of Politics, University of Chicago, offering seminars on Afghanistan’s politics and culture as a visiting scholar. He is a former fellow with the Asia Society, Rumsfeld Foundation, the Atlantic Council and World Press Institute.—Tolonews
