Named by Time magazine in 2020 as one of the 100 most influential people in the world, and awarded the Knight International Journalism Award by the International Center for Journalists (ICFJ) that same year, Egyptian journalist and activist Lina Attalah (Cairo, 1982) is one of the most courageous champions of press freedom in the Arab world. Co-founder and editor-in-chief of Mada Masr, the last major online newspaper free from state control in Egypt, she has dedicated her life to investigative journalism, documenting milestone events such as the 2011 Egyptian revolution, the Syrian revolution, the 2013 Iranian presidential elections, and the Darfur conflict in Sudan. She has written for international publications including the Daily Star, the Cairo Times, and the Thomson Reuters agency, and previously served as editor-in-chief of the Egypt Independent, an English-language newspaper shut down in 2013 following the military coup. In 2023, the editorial team of Mada Masr received a special mention at the Inge Feltrinelli Prize for independent publishing in Milan.