ISLAMABAD: Six journalists representing four local, national and international news organisations won honours at the inaugural Pakistan Data Journalism Awards organised by Media Matters for Democracy.

The winners included Swatbased journalist Niaz Ahmad Khan, Alia Chughtai and Asad Hashim of Al Jazeera English, Ramsha Jahangir of Dawn, former The Express Tribune reporter Riazul Haq and former Samaa digital journalist Hisham Sajid.

The awards were distributed at a ceremony in Islamabad. The contest received 76 entries from journalists representing different types of media, including print and digital, and various publications from all over Pakistan.

The jury comprised media strategist Sahar Habib Ghazi, broadcast journalists Amber Rahim Shamsi and Hamid Mir, andMediaMatters forDemocracy co-founders Asad Baig and Sadaf Khan.

The Best News Investigation of the Year award was won by Niaz Ahmad Khan for an investigative report exposing the police tactics to misreport cases of honour kill-ings in Swat.

Alia Chughtai and Asad Hashim received the award for Best Data Visualisation for News for their collaborative work on series of interactive visualisations about Pakistan`s 2018 general elections.

Ramsha Jahangir won the awards for Best Use of Data in a news report or series and best data journalist portfolio (print) for her coverage of online freedom of expression issues, social media regulation and the manipulation of social media conversations by politicalparties.

Riazul Haq`s multimedia story dealt with human trafficking from Punjab province to European countries.

Hisham Sajid won the award for his stories on elections and economic activity for Samaa TV`s news website.

The awards committee also presented a trophy to Khalid Khattak of The News and founder of the online data journalism website Data Stories for his efforts towards promotion of data-driven news reporting in Pakistan.

Asim Bashir Khan, an economist and freelance writer, was also awarded an honourable mention for his data analysis and commentary on Pakistan`s economic situation.