East-West Center honors STAR editor-in-chief

MANILA, Philippines — The East-West Center in Hawaii has chosen The Philippine Star editor-in-chief Ana Marie Pamintuan as one of this year’s Journalists of Courage and Impact.

In conferring the award, the East-West Center said Pamintuan and the six other honorees from across Asia, the Pacific and the United States “have displayed exceptional commitment to quality reporting and freedom of the press often under harrowing circumstances.”

Also receiving the award on Monday night were Sincha Dimara, news editor, Inside PNG in Port Moresby, Papua New Guinea; Tom Grundy, founder and editor-in-chief, the Hong Kong Free Press (Hong Kong); Alan C. Miller, founder of the Washington-based News Literacy Project; Soe Myint, editor-in-chief and managing director of Mizzima (Chiang Mai, Thailand); John Nery, columnist and editorial consultant of Rappler and Kamal Siddiqi, former news director of Aaj News (Karachi, Pakistan).

East-West Center president Suzanne Vares-Lum, a former US Army major general, handed out the award to the seven journalists.

The East-West Center, where Pamintuan was a Jefferson Fellow in 2001 and a Senior Journalism Fellow in 2011, is holding its international media conference in Manila at the Philippine International Convention Center. The gathering consistently draws over 350 attendees, mostly media professionals, from over 30 countries.

The theme of the conference, which is held every two years in different countries in the Indo-Pacific, is “The Future of Facts,” with a focus on the impact of social media and artificial intelligence on truthful reporting.

“The Philippines was chosen as the site for this year’s conference because it has one of the highest rates of social media consumption in the world, is home to a robust press corps with a history of courage and perseverance in a challenging media environment and sits on the front lines of both geostrategic competition and the worsening climate crisis in the region,” the East-West Center said.

Pamintuan has been with The Star since it was launched in 1986. She started as a reporter and rose through the ranks, becoming editor-in-chief in 2012.

She obtained her journalism degree with honors at the University of the Philippines, where the College of Mass Communications picked her as Outstanding Alumna for Journalism during UP’s centennial celebration in 2008.

Pamintuan is the recipient of other journalism awards, the latest granted in August 2023 by the Manila Overseas Press Club, Asia’s oldest press club, as Journalist of the Year.

In 2018, she entered broadcasting, co-hosting news and current affairs talk show “The Chiefs” on One News together with veteran journalists Luchi Cruz Valdes, Ed Lingao and Roby Alampay.