Joe Torres is a Bangkok-based Filipino journalist and a two-time recipient of the Philippines’ National Book Award for Journalism for his books Unholy Nation: Stories from a Gambling Republic (2004) and Into the Mountain: Hostaged by the Abu Sayyaf (2002).
Joe was conferred the Benigno S. Aquino Jr. Fellowships for Professional Development by the Benigno Aquino Foundation and the US Embassy in Manila in 2005. He was also a fellow at the United Nations World Conference on Human Rights in Vienna in 1993.
Joe started as a writer of the alternative news service Philippine News and Features, which gave him the opportunity to bring to light for the first time in the early 1990s the bandit Abu Sayyaf Group.
He later worked as sub-editor for Saudi Gazette, the national paper of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. He came back to Manila in 1997 and worked as investigative reporter of the defunct Isyu newsmagazine. He later joined The Manila Times, The Philippine Post, The Sunday Paper and abs-cbnNEWS.com while doing a radio show on Radio Mindanao Network. He later helped set up GMANews.TV, and after four years put up Frontline.PH that later became remate.ph.
His article on Filipino Muslim converts titled “Troubled Return of the Faithful” got a citation in the 2004 Tolerance Prize. Another article, The Making of a Mindanao Mafia, was awarded the 3rd Prize in the Jaime V Ongpin Awards for Excellence in Journalism, Explanatory Category, also in 2004.
He now works as deputy editor of the Union of Catholic Asian News and editor of CathNews Philippines. Joe lives in Bangkok, Thailand, but often travels on assignment around southeast Asia, especially in the southern Philippine island of Mindanao.
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