ABC News' Bob Woodruff to receive journalism award named after slain reporter Daniel Pearl

Bob Woodruff, the ABC News correspondent nearly killed by a roadside bomb in Iraq, has won the Daniel Pearl Award for Courage and Integrity in Journalism.

"We couldn't find a more deserving recipient of this award than Bob Woodruff," said Chris Woodyard, a USA Today reporter, in a statement Wednesday on behalf of the Los Angeles Press Club.

"Woodruff showed courage not only by going in harm's way to report in Iraq, but then bravely facing a long and difficult recovery after being wounded."

Woodruff will receive the honor named for Daniel Pearl, the late Wall Street Journal reporter who was kidnapped and killed in Pakistan in 2002, on June 21 in Los Angeles.

Woodruff suffered serious brain injury in January 2006, when a roadside blast in Iraq tore off part of his skull. He spent 36 days in a medically induced coma, but returned to the job 13 months later and recently won a Peabody Award for his series "Wounds of War — The Long Road Home of Our Nation's Veterans."

"Bob has become an iconic role model, not only of journalistic courage and integrity, but also of the capacity of the human spirit to turn injury into challenge," Daniel Pearl's parents Judea and Ruth Pearl said in a statement.

Past recipients include the late Michael Kelly of Atlantic Monthly, Time Magazine journalists Michael Weisskopf and James Nachtwey and Jesus Blancornelas, editor of the Mexican weekly Zeta. Last year's award was won by veteran war correspondent Kevin Sites.

The first award went to Pearl, who was researching a story on alleged links between al-Qaida member Richard Reid — the so-called shoe bomber — and Islamic militants in Pakistan when he was kidnapped and killed.

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