Austin Tice, a McClatchy reporter who has been detained in Syria since 2012, will receive the National Press Club’s John Aubuchon Press Freedom Award, the club announced on Thursday.
The award “recognizes those whose work has demonstrated the courage that lies at the heart of a free press,” the National Press Club said in a statement. It will present the award at its annual awards dinner on July 29.
“Austin Tice embodies the best of our profession, and whoever is jailing him represents the worst of the many threats to journalism,” club president John Hughes said. “In giving this award, we want to particularly make sure the world remembers Tice and the other freelancers who often work in dangerous places without adequate support and protection.”
Hughes announced the award during a program held at the club to discuss baseline standards for protecting freelance journalists in war zones. Groups participating were the club’s Journalism Institute, the Investigative Reporting Workshop and the Committee to Protect Journalists.
The club in March announced it would give its domestic freedom of the press award this year to Jason Rezaian, a Washington Post reporter imprisoned in Iran.
“This is an important recognition that both Jason and Austin are being held because of their commitment to gather, record and report the news,” Tice’s parents, Marc and Debra Tice, said in a statement. “With them, we believe that freedom of information and expression is a self-evident unalienable right belonging to every person. We earnestly hope and pray Austin and Jason will be here in July to personally accept this prestigious award.”
Tice is a Marine Corps veteran who went to cover the Syrian conflict for McClatchy and other news organizations. He disappeared in August 2012 near Damascus. Neither the Syrian government nor any group has admitted holding him.
A U.S. official last month, speaking on condition of anonymity according to the department’s protocol, said that no one had seen Tice on behalf of the U.S. government in Syria, but that there had been direct contact with Syrian government officials on the case.
His parents recently launched an awareness campaign to try to win their son’s freedom. At a news conference at the time, they said they’d been assured he was alive and not with the Islamic State militant group, but they declined to elaborate.
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