Simon Ostrovsky is a PBS NewsHour Special Correspondent and an award-winning freelance news and documentary producer. This year Simon was awarded a Knight Wallace Reporting Fellow from the University of Michigan to work on a series of reports on countering disinformation. He has covered the uprising in Belarus, the war between Azerbaijan and Armenia as well as the Covid pandemic in Brazil for the NewsHour, and that’s just in the last year. He also works frequently with the Pulitzer Center to bring underreported stories to American audiences. Going further back, Simon is known for his coverage of the crisis in Crimea and the war in Ukraine for VICE News. His series, Russian Roulette, was nominated for two Emmys and went to over 100 episodes that have been viewed more than 35 million times. David Carr of the New York Times called his work “remarkable” and VICE News liked his dispatches so much they applied the template to their reporting from around the world, giving it the raw feel they're known for today.

In 2015, Simon’s documentary Selfie Soldiers was awarded the prestigious Columbia University Du Pont award. The investigation, carried out over several months, tracked a careless Russian soldier who was fighting in Ukraine and posting selfies in his spare time and proved Russia was sending troops to the conflict despite Moscow’s denials. In 2013, Simon was a producer for the VICE on HBO series, helping it earn an Emmy as an Outstanding Informational Series. But not everyone is a fan of his work. Some militants in eastern Ukraine kidnapped him, and kept him in a cellar for three days while he was covering the war there. Here’s how he described the experience after he was released.