Sky News special correspondent Alex Crawford is to receive the British Journalism Review Charles Wheeler Award for outstanding contribution to broadcast journalism.
Crawford follows in the footsteps of previous winners including Jeremy Paxman, Lindsey Hilsum and Jeremy Bowen.
She became a foreign correspondent at the age of 46, has been awarded an OBE and won the Royal Television Society journalist of the year four times.
Her broadcasting coups include riding into Tripoli with Libyan rebels in 2011 and filing an awe-inpsiring report from Liberia with recovery teams collecting the bodies of dead Ebola victims. She also covered the trial of Oscar Pistorius.
Crawford, who is currently based in South Africa, began her career at BBC Radio Nottingham before moving to London, then switching to TV-am for a year before she joined Sky News in 1989 where she rose through the ranks to become Asia correspondent in 2005 and then special correspondent five years later.
The award is presented in memory of Wheeler, the late celebrated BBC foreign correspondent and Panorama and Newsnight producer and presenter. It will be presented to Crawford in person by Lady Wheeler.
The Charles Wheeler Lecture, which takes place annually, will this year be given by BBC creative director Alan Yentob on 4 June at the University of Westminster’s Old Cinema in London.
Last year, it was given by BBC economics editor Robert Peston.
