Geoffrey Nyarota
2002 UNESCO World Press Freedom Prize Winner
 Geoffrey Nyarota is an award-winning investigative journalist, newspaper editor, and media entrepreneur, with more than 27 years of experience in Zimbabwe and southern Africa. Currently, he is a Visiting Professor of Political Studies at Bard College in Upstate New York. Previously, he was a Guest Professor in the Department of Media and Communication at the University of Oslo in Norway.
As editor of the Chronicle in 1988, Mr. Nyarota investigated and published details of widespread corruption in President Robert Mugabe's government, resulting in the resignation of six government ministers. He was a member of the team of African journalists who drafted the Windhoek Declaration in Namibia, back in 1991.
Mr. Nyarata launched Zimbabwe’s leading independent daily newspaper, the Daily News in 1999. The paper's printing press was totally destroyed in a bomb explosion in 2001. Despite that the paper never missed a single issue. The Daily News won an international award for publishing excellence in 2003 but was banned by government immediately thereafter. He was arrested on six occasions in connection with his work as editor-in-chief of the paper and was forced to flee from Zimbabwe in 2003 to escape from persecution by government.
Mr. Nyarata became a Nieman Fellow at Harvard University and a research fellow at the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy, also at Harvard.
He has received a total of nine international media awards for his work as a journalist and for his contribution to the development of the independent press in Zimbabwe. The awards include the Golden Pen of Freedom of the World Association of Newspapers and UNESCO's own Guillermo Cano World Press Freedom Award, both of which were presented to him in 2002.
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