News
HRH presents an award and makes a speech at the Foreign Press Association Media Awards
25th November 2008
The Prince of Wales this evening presented the Journalist of the Year Award to Somali cameraman Abdullahi Farah Duguf and the Channel 4 News Team for their winning TV News Story of the Year on Somalia, which was judged the overall "Winner of Winners" at tonight's Foreign Press Association Media Awards 2008.
The Prince was the guest of honour at the awards which were presented at a dinner at the Sheraton Park Lane Hotel on Piccadilly in Central London.
The Prince gave a speech which focused on the need to realign ourselves with the natural world and said that our perception of nature had become "dangerously limited".
He said: “One of the downsides of consumerism, it seems to me, is that it forces us to compromise on issues that should not be compromised.
“I’m sure there are many people who know that it is wrong to plunder the Earth’s treasures as recklessly as we do, but the comprehensive world view which we now inhabit persuades us that such destruction is justified because of the freedom it brings us, not to say the profits.
“In other words, our tendency to consume is legitimized by a view of the world that puts Humanity at the centre of things, operating with an absolute right over Nature.
“And that makes it a very dangerous world view indeed.”
He went on : "You may believe that I have some curious and reactionary obsession with returning to a kind of mock medieval, forelock-tugging past.
"In fact, all I am saying is that we simply cannot contend with the global environmental crises we face by relying on clever technological fixes on their own."
He urged his audience of journalists to consider the view of the world that they presented.
Earlier, The Prince mingled with journalists at a reception.
BBC Newsreader Emily Maitlis had a long conversation with The Prince.
"He appears to be a very keen Newsnight viewer and asked if I had a night off," she said.
"We were discussing the financial crisis - just about how consuming it is really, and a bit bleak.
"He was asking about work in the financial services and whether there was a chance it would recover."
Meanwhile, Dame Ann Leslie, the veteran newspaper journalist, reminisced with The Prince about an encounter when she interviewed him in a "freezing" room at Buckingham Palace when he was just 23 years old.
"I had to plead with him to close the window," she said.
"He apologised because he likes the cold. He said to me then, 'I love draughts, I live in draughts'."
This year's ceremony at the Sheraton Park Lane Hotel in Central London marked the 120th anniversary of the FPA, which was founded in 1888 to help journalists from across the globe report on events in Britain.
It is the oldest foreign correspondents' club in the world and the only authorised accreditation body for foreign media in Britain.
The FPA's media awards, hosted this year by Sandi Toksvig, allow foreign correspondents to recognise and salute the work of their UK counterparts.
Click here to read The Prince's speech.