The Online Journalism Awards 2020 named “The Pangolin Reports: Trafficked to Extinction” – a collaboration of 40 journalists from newsrooms and organizations in 14 countries, including the Centre for Media and Development Initiatives (MDI), winner of Excellence in Collaboration and Partnerships.
In addition to the above, the project also won the 2020 SOPA Awards for Excellence in Journalistic Innovation.
From late 2018 to September 2019, journalists documented the illicit trade of pangolins, the world’s most trafficked animal – a subject which has been underreported so far and which was widely unknown to the general public until the pandemic brought the trade to spotlight – from roadside poachers in Cameroon and Nigeria and Southeast Asia to prisons in transit hubs like Kathmandu and Hong Kong to restaurant kitchens in Myanmar and pharmaceutical companies in China.
Listen to the podcasts on Sustainable Asia, which provides a closer look into the reporting process:
