DORADO, Puerto Rico -- The executive committee of the International Federation of Newspaper Publishers Friday named Pedro Joaquin Chamorro Barrios, publisher of Nicaragua's embattled La Prensa newspaper, to receive its Golden Pen of Freedom Award.
A spokesman said Chamorro was selected for the award for his newspaper's campaign 'against totalitarianism' and its questioning of Nicaragua's Sandinista regime, which has temporarily closed La Prensa six times.
Chamorro will be given the award, presented annually for defense of press freedom, at the federation's 35th annual congress in Oslo, Norway, next May.
The federation includes 26 newspaper publisher organizations in 24 non-Communist nations.
The American Newspaper Publishers Association, one of the members, nominated the 31-year-old Chamorro to receive the award during the regular meeting of the federation's executive committee held in Puerto Rico's Dorado Beach Hotel this week.
Chamorro became publisher of the Nicaraguan daily following the 1978 assassination of his father, a critic of late Nicaraguan strongman Anastasio Somoza Debayle.
