In case you haven't heard, John Garnaut has been given the 2013 Lowy Institute Media Award.
Fairfax's former China correspondent was awarded a $5000 cash prize and return airfares to Asia. Other finalists selected by the judges were Trevor Bormann from ABC's Foreign Correspondent, Rowan Callick from The Australian and Jo Chandler from The Global Mail.
The keynote address was delivered by Nick Warner, Director-General of the Australian Secret Intelligence Service. Nick gave a moving and insightful speech in tribute to his late father, distinguished war correspondent Denis Warner.
Denis Warner spent almost six decades reporting on conflict in Asia and Asia's rise; informally as a soldier in the Middle East during the Second World War, officially as a war correspondent during the Pacific, Korean and Vietnam wars, and as a foreign correspondent in Iran, Afghanistan, India, Cambodia and Indonesia. Nick's speech contained some remarkable anecdotes on war reporting, like this one about his father's time in Korea:
There was only one telephone line to Tokyo on which the journalists could file their stories. So, as dad later recounted, they queued up and went to sleep on the floor, and as each correspondent finished dictating his story he'd wake the next man.
An audio recording of the event is included below. An extended version of Nick Warner's address is available on the Lowy Institute website.
Photo by Peter Morris/Lowy Institute.