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Laura Poitras and Amy Goodman to be honored at Nieman

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Filmmaker Laura Poitras is winner of the 2014 I.F. Stone Medal for Journalistic Independence, awarded each year by the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard.

Amy Goodman, host and executive producer of “Democracy Now!,” also has been selected to receive a special I.F. Stone lifetime achievement award, the first ever presented by Nieman.

The two journalists will be honored at a ceremony at Harvard on February 5, 2015.

Poitras, a Berlin-based American documentary film director, journalist and artist, is co-founder of First Look Media’s The Intercept. She was chosen for the I.F. Stone Medal in recognition of her reporting exposing the massive illegal NSA surveillance program disclosed by whistleblower Edward Snowden, which is the subject of her new film CITIZENFOUR. The documentary is the third and final film in her trilogy about post-9/11 America.

In June 2013, Poitras traveled to Hong Kong with reporter Glenn Greenwald to interview Edward Snowden about his revelations about the NSA. Her coverage has received a George Polk Award for National Security Reporting, the Henri Nannen Prize for Services to Press Freedom, and contributed to the 2014 Pulitzer Prize for public service awarded to The Guardian and The Washington Post.

In addition to honoring Poitras, the Nieman Foundation will present a lifetime achievement award to Amy Goodman, investigative journalist, author and longtime host and executive producer of “Democracy Now!” A 1979 Harvard/Radcliffe graduate, Goodman is being honored for her entire body of work and tireless efforts as an advocate for a free press and independent media.