After Hard Year, Guild's Freedom Awards Celebrate Journalism's Best

Over the past year, more than 150 journalists have been killed around the world. An American reporter was jailed for refusing to reveal a source. Recent Pulitzer Prize-winning reporters are being called traitors by right-wing pundits for exposing government wiretapping and secret prisons. And newspaper chains across the country are slashing budgets and staffs.

During such tough times for journalism, speakers at The Newspaper Guild-CWA's annual Freedom Award Fund banquet said it was especially heartening to be able to honor reporters and organizations that are doing outstanding work no matter the obstacles.

Honorees included two Los Angeles Times reporters, two Knight-Ridder journalists, two Minnesota radio reporters, two student journalists and the International Federation of Journalists Safety Fund, which aids and protects journalists around the world.

The May 3 banquet in Washington, D.C., fell on World Press Freedom Day, a day that recognizes the grave risks many journalists take to cover the news and honors and supports those fighting oppressive regimes that are censoring the media and imprisoning reporters.

"A free press is not only an essential human right, it's the foundation of Democratic and tolerant societies everywhere," said Shashi Tharoor, head of communications and public relations at the United Nations.

Tharoor and Harold Meyerson, a nationally syndicated columnist and editor-at-large of The American Prospect magazine, were the evening's keynote speakers. Meyerson, a champion of labor rights and a sharp critic of the backlash against the press today, noted a recent column attacking reporters' patriotism for exposing government wrongdoing.

Meyerson said that columnist Max Boot "assumes that the government — this government — has an inherently greater commitment to our nation, to its well-being and its good name, than we in the press do."

"Is it more helpful to America and its standing in the world to sanction torture than it is to expose it?" he asked. "More in the national interest to break laws protecting Amercans' privacy from intelligence agencies operating without judicial review than it is to alert Americans to that policy?... My sense is that when history judges who were the truer patriots, it will give higher marks to (Pulitzer Prize-winning reporters) Dana Priest and James Risen and Eric Lichtblau than it will to George Bush and Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld."

The IFJ Safety Fund was honored with the fifth annual Herbert Block Freedom Award, named for the late, renowned Washington Post editorial cartoonist who was a lifelong defender of press freedom. Known professionally as Herblock, he was a member of the Guild for 67 years and left $50,000 to the international when he died in 2001. The gift provides a $5,000 award for Freedom Fund award winners.

This year the money will be used to continue the critical work of the safety fund, which helps protect journalists around the world and aids victims' families. The past year's recipients have included families of journalists killed in Iraq, others targeted for assassination and others still who died in natural disasters. In 2005, the worst year on record for job-related deaths of journalists and their staffs, 89 were killed while on assignment and another 61 were killed in earthquakes and accidents.

"Each of these deaths was a personal tragedy, but together they provide a moving testament to the sacrifice that many of our colleagues and their families make in the service of journalism and press freedom," said Aidan White, IFJ General Secretary, who accepted the award.

The IFJ is the world's largest federation of journalists. Its vice presidents include Linda Foley, president of TNG-CWA.

The winners of the annual Heywood Broun Award, named for the famed columnist who always fought for the underdog and helped found the Guild in the 1930s, were Los Angeles Times reporters Matt Lait and Scott Glover. The judges said their exhaustive reporting shed new light on a 20-year-old murder case, revealing both new evidence and errors in the prosecution. Hearings are underway to determine whether the convicted man will be released from jail, and even the prosecuting attorney has testified to his doubts about the man's guilt, based on the journalists' work.

Two "Awards of Substantial Distinction" were also given in the Broun contest. Knight Ridder reporters Chris Adams and Alison Young were honored for their series about the poor treatment of American veterans by both the government and non-profit veterans groups. The Veterans Administration stonewalled the reporters but since the series was published, a VA official has ordered staff to read and learn from it.

The other award went to Sasha Aslanian of American RadioWorks and Mike Edgerly of Minnesota Public Radio for "Toxic Traces" about the state pollution control agency and its failure to deal properly with chemical hazards created by Minnesota-based 3M's Scotchguard products.

The Broun awards, selected by a panel of acclaimed journalists, come with a $5,000 check for the top award and $1,000 for the awards of distinction.

Two student journalists were honored with scholarships named for David S. Barr, a passionate champion of justice and fairness as the Guild's longtime attorney. He died in 1997.

Sarah Halper, 18, of the A.W. Dreyfoos School of the Arts in West Palm Beach, Fla., won a $500 scholarship in the high school contest for "Censorship and Sensibility," an investigation of Internet filtering in her school district and the often arbitrary rationale for it. While students had access to websites selling guns and cigarettes, they were barred from such sites as the Human Rights Campaign, the Gay-Straight Alliance and Planned Parenthood.

Shahar Smooha, a student at the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism, won a $1,500 scholarship for his work documenting his experience as a Jewish-Israeli journalist traveling to Jordan to vote in the first democratic Iraqi parliamentary elections last year. His grandparents were among tens of thousands of Iraqi Jews deported from Iraq in the early 1950s and Smooha, as their descendant, had the right to vote. His entry was published in the Israeli newspaper, Haaretz.