Presidential Media Awards on April 10 at BMICH

The Presidential Media Awards in honour of Media personnel who have excelled in Print, Radio, Television and Web journalism will be held on Wednesday at the BMICH, under the patronage of President Maithripala Sirisena and Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe, the Media Ministry said.

The event has been organised by the Ministry of Mass Media under the direction of Minister Ruwan Wijewardena and the supervision of Mass Media Ministry Secretary Sunil Samarweera.

The objective of awards programme is to evaluate the skills, talents and special capabilities of journalists towards ushering in a media culture with social responsibility, the Ministry said.

It is also aimed at encouraging the media to build up a well-informed civil society and to provide State sponsorship for journalists through evaluation of their performance covering the entire Mass Media field.

Creative work done in 2017 was considered for the awards.

The main committee was presented with nominations recommended for the awards, through sub committees comprising professionally qualified senior journalists appointed by the Ministry, with the recommendations of Media heads.

From advertisements published in the Media, 1,674 nominations were received within the specified period.

A total of 51 awards in all the fields in all 3 Languages, covering all categories inclusive of 4 Lifetime awards, will be presented.

The Ministry said the panel of judges have selected Dr. Edwin Ariyadasa for Print Media, Karunarathna Amarasinghe for Radio, Lucien Bulathsinhala for Television and Lakshman Jayawardene for Web Media, as the 4 distinguished Media personnel for the Lifetime awards.

The Newspaper category consists of Best News Reporting, Best Photography, Best Column, Best Cartoon, Best Page Design, Best Feature Article, Best Investigative Press, and Most Promising Press Journalist of the Year.

The Radio category consists of Best Newscaster of the Year, Best Programme, Best Children’s Programme, Best Exploratory Programme, Best Educational Programme, and Most Promising Radio Journalist.

The Television category consists of Best News Reporting, Bests News Reading, Best Programme Presentation, Best Investigative Programme, Best Documentary Programme, Best Discussion Programme, Best Educational Programme and Most Promising Television Journalist.

The Web category consists of Best News Casting, Best Reporting, Best Multimedia Content and Best Blogger.