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Ambassador Aubrey Hooks Honors Best Ivoirian Journalists
Journalists play an important role in society, as they are at the same time educators and historians,” declared the Ambassador of the United States in Côte d’Ivoire, Aubrey Hooks. Ambassador Hooks was speaking at a press conference organized in honor of Ivoirians journalists who won the 2006 Ebony Prize Award designed to reward the best journalists in the country.
Members of the National Union of Journalists of Côte d’Ivoire, including its Executive President, Amos Béhonaho, and the laureates of the award attended this ceremony aimed at encouraging the exemplary work of media practitioners. Ambassador also wanted to recognize the important contributions of these journalists to the development of their profession.
Speaking on behalf of the journalists, Mr. Lébry Léon Francis, journalist with the state-owned Fraternité Matin, thanked the Ambassador for his attention for journalists and the Ivoirian press in particular. “The United States is a great nation of journalism where the profession has a history, a life and remains a living symbol of modernity and is a practical model,” said Mr. Lébry. He called on the Ambassador to, “give winners of this year Ebony Prize the opportunity to go to the United States to learn more about this model.”
For his part, Mr. Russel Michel Lohoré, Vice-President of UNJCI for the Ebony Prize, the immense support of the American Embassy to the media in Côte d’Ivoire has helped to encourage professionalism and a free press. However, he hoped that the Embassy would find ways to further strengthen this assistance by sending more journalists to the United States for training.
In his reaction, Mr. Hooks promised to work closely with the Ivoirian media practitioners to enable them to take part in the International Visitors program, which sends leaders to the United States. He noted that this program offered hundreds of Ivoirians both men and women the opportunity to exchange with their American counterparts. Finally, Ambassador Hooks stressed the importance of a free press in a society for “it facilitates relations between rulers and the public to foster democracy.
