“A news sense is really a sense of what is important, what is vital, what has colour and life – what people are interested in. That’s journalism.”
Burton Rascoe
Publications
Amnesty International Press Award
A highlight of my career has been winning an Amnesty International Award for a feature on the plight of Tibetan women living in exile. The article first appeared in British Marie Claire and was subsequently reprinted in numerous other Marie Claires (and a handful of other publications) around the world. The women who featured in this piece spoke to me about the persecution they'd suffered in Tibet under Chinese rule a consequence to having borne "too many" children. Forced to flee from their country, most stole away from their villages after dark and ventured on a spectacularly dangerous trek over the Himalayas. I travelled to the remote community of Dharamsala in northern India to meet these formidable women and to persuade them to share their stories (and formidable they truly were: most had left behind their entire families and all their possessions and had undertaken their journey wearing nothing but a few layers of rags and a pair of thin-soled shoes... imagine climbing Everest in a tatty old pair of trainers). Dharamsala is synonymous with the Tibetan government in exile and I stayed there as a guest of the Dalai Lama's sister. After publication of this feature, I received the highest accolade of my working life: a letter from the Tibetan spiritual leader thanking me for raising international awareness of the on-going hardships faced by his people.
Why not browse through a sample selection of my articles?