Since 1992, almost eight hundred journalists have been killed for doing their job, and the graph of the annual total rises steadily upward over time. Many thousands more have been imprisoned, including—just to put one name on the statistic—Thet Zin, an editor of the Myanmar Nation weekly in Rangoon, who was arrested shortly before I was to meet him on a trip to Burma last year, and who is serving a seven-year sentence for possessing a report issued by the United Nations special envoy to Burma for human rights. The one organization that can be counted on to keep alive the names and fates of these easily forgotten men and women is the Committee to Protect Journalists.

Every year, CPJ holds a fundraising gala at the Waldorf-Astoria in midtown Manhattan. The event allows CPJ to continue for another year doing its job of defending journalists around the world—calling attention to murders, threats, attacks, and imprisonments, lobbying for journalists’ safety and release, supporting endangered journalists and their families and survivors. There’s no way to pay for this necessary work other than to sell tables for a dinner in the grand ballroom, and invite members of the media world, who arrive in tuxedos and evening dresses, and are waited on as they eat and drink and listen (or not) to introductory speeches by media luminaries. I’ve attended a number of these dinners, including last Tuesday’s, and invariably the same thing happens.

At just the moment when any half-conscious journalist is beginning to feel a little sick—sick of the rich food, of the self-congratulatory tone, of the overdressed guests, of himself or herself, of the gap between what we say we do and what we aspire to do and what we all-too-often really do—it’s at that moment that the hosts announce the winners of the year’s awards. Along with the awards come videos that tell the recipients’ stories. The hum of chatter across the tables suddenly dies—for the stories are of brave, humorous, quietly defiant men and women, rareties and eccentrics who nonetheless seem to exist in every country, upholding high journalistic standards in the world’s most dangerous places, with no powerful backers, and almost no one paying attention except government thugs or anonymous gunmen.

Then, unless they’re in jail or otherwise prevented from travelling, the awardees themselves come to the podium, and they say a few modest and inspiring words, which often require an interpreter, always making sure to mention the colleagues and friends back home who have been killed or imprisoned or are still at work. And sometimes they pay homage to the renowned example of the luminaries in the room. By that point, any half-conscious journalist is burning with shame and admiration.

Last Tuesday, CPJ honored an Azerbaijani investigative reporter named Eynulla Fatullayev, a Sri Lankan columnist named J. S. Tissainayagam (both currently in prison), a Tunisian editor named Naziha Rejiba, the New York Times reporter and columnist Anthony Lewis, and a Somali radio correspondent named Mustafa Haji Abdinur, who is only twenty-seven. Given the extreme chaos of Mogadishu, where there is no state at all that can be pressured to protect the press, his presence was especially powerful. After Abdinur’s speech, delivered in flawless English, I spoke briefly with him.

He originally came from Baidoa, where he had gone from being an English teacher to translating international news reports for the local radio station. After militiamen forced the station to close, he moved to Mogadishu, became a correspondent for Agence France Presse, and started his own news station. Some of his friends were killed, and he received numerous threats. He moved his family to Hargeisa, in Somaliland, but he stayed on in Mogadishu, living in his office.

“All the stories I cover in Somalia are about violence,” Abdinur said. I asked how he managed to stay alive—did he need to cultivate relationships with the various armed factions? “That means you compromise with them,” he said. “The only contact I have with them is for news. It’s not that they are allowing us to do our work—they are not pleased with us. But it’s our work, and we insist on doing it.”

In this country, the standing of journalism has never been lower, and in some ways deservedly so. The American media is hardly worthy of honoring Mustafa Hajj Abdinur: we should emulate him, not the other way around, which is why those CPJ galas always leave me feeling equally inspired and depressed. But whenever you’re tempted to throw your remote control at the yappers on cable news, remember what Abdinur told the gala audience last Tuesday: