Many journalists – especially critical, independent journalists – have grown up reading and writing for Inter Press Service (IPS), which has shaped their journalism. Since its founding, IPS's attention to the developing world – or 'majority world' as photojournalist Shahidul Alam says – has been revolutionary. IPS' reporting from the perspective of the marginalised was a challenge to the status-quoist practices of mainstream journalism.
It comes as a shock, therefore, to hear that IPS plans to give the International Achievement Award to Prime Minister of Bangladesh Sheikh Hasina, who heads a government that has jailed celebrated Bangladeshi photographer and photojournalist Shahidul Alam using the Information Communication Technology (ICT) Act – which has been widely criticised for suppressing freedom of expression – and that plans to make the act even more draconian.