The Committee for the Protection of Journalists (CPJ) has presented its annual Press Freedom Award to four journalists, including a Russian and Iranian.
The awards for courageous reporting were handed out on November 25 in New York to Mikhail Zygar, editor-in-chief for Russian TV channel Dozhd, and Siamak Ghaderi, an Iranian freelance journalist and former editor and reporter for the Islamic Republic's official news agency IRNA.
The other winners were Aung Zaw of Burma, also known as Myanmar, and Ferial Haffajee of South Africa.
The CPJ said, that under Zygar's leadership, "Dozhd has provided an alternative to Kremlin-controlled federal TV channels by focusing on news content and giving a platform to opposition voices."
The CPJ said Ghaderi "made international headlines when he chose to rebut former President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's claim in 2007 that there were no homosexuals in Iran by publishing online his own interviews with several gay Iranians."
Ghaderi was jailed in 2011 after being convicted of "propagating against the regime" and other charges.