Guardian Australia’s Nauru files series has won in three categories at the United Nations Association of Australia media peace awards.
The awards presentation in Melbourne on Monday, hosted by the ABC’s Mary Guerin, showcased journalism that covered human rights in Australia.
The Nauru files, published by Guardian Australia in August, revealed trauma and abuse suffered by children on Nauru recorded in more than 2,000 incident reports. The series sparked a parliamentary inquiry and put Australia’s asylum seeker policies back into the national spotlight.
The series won the awards in the print, online and protection of children categories.
The judges praised Guardian Australia’s care and attention to detail in redacting the incident reports, and its innovative use of data journalism to publish the full reports.
Stories about Australia’s asylum seeker policies featured heavily in the awards.
Documentary maker Eva Orner won the inaugural “protecting freedom” award for her documentary Chasing Asylum.
Other winners included ABC’s Four Corners in the documentary category for its expose of detention of children in Northern Territory, and Waleed Aly and Tom Whitty, from Network Ten’s The Project, in the social cohesion category, for their “Send Forgiveness Viral” campaign.
