A Capuchin priest has been awarded the Honesty Award for the year 2013 for journalism.Fr. Jacob Kani, editor-in-chief of Indian Currents weekly, was conferred the ‘Honesty Award 2013 for Journalism’ at Indore in Madhya Pradesh on Dec 30, 2013.
According to a press statement, the award has been given to him in recognition of honest, fearless and courageous stand taken by him as a journalist and editor of the weekly over the years.
Honesty Awards are established by the Honesty Foundation, Goa that is founded by Bernardo De Sousa with the intention of “recognizing and awarding every act of honesty in all walks of life.”
The Foundation had been awarding honest students in the past years. It introduced the award for honest journalism for the first time in 2013.
The priest received a citation and cash prize of 30,001 rupees during the annual “Knit India” program organized by the Universal Solidarity Movement (USM) founded by Fr. Varghese Alengaden.
The statement said that the priest through the publication has been waging a relentless battle against corruption, religious fundamentalism and growing communalism in the country.
Whenever the country faced the onslaught of religious fundamentalism and communal tensions, Indian Currents came out courageously and strongly against such forces and ideologies, while adhering to the values of truth, justice and peace. More specifically, Indian Currents was in the forefront to expose those behind the violence in Kandhamal, it added.
In September 2012, Fr. Kani received the Bennet Memorial Award for Excellence in Journalism in New Delhi.
The Indian Catholic Press Association (ICPA) honored Indian Currents in December 2013 for “fearless journalism” as the weekly completed 25 years of publication.