Recognizing press freedom

Today is World Press Freedom Day and in Ottawa, there's an annual lunch to mark the occasion. At today's event, two of our colleagues from the Parliamentary Press Gallery were named winners of the press-freedom award - Gilles Toupin and Joel-Denis Bellavance from La Presse.

They garnered the honour for their continuing refusal to name the source of a classified CSIS document they received in a report on terrorism suspet Ardil Charkaoui. Here's a neat summary of the issue by the respected group Reporters without Borders.

It should also be noted here that the Star's own Bill Schiller, Asia correspondent, was also among the finalists. Bill was nominated by the Canadian Journalists for Free Expression for his continuing legal fight in a defamation case over an article he wrote in 2001.