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Newspaper Guild Award Banquet Honors Crusading Journalists
A writer who went to jail for nearly six months to protect her sources and the First Amendment, reporters who exposed a cancer center’s fatal wrongdoing and a pair of promising young journalists were honored in May at The Newspaper Guild-CWA’s first Freedom Award Fund Banquet.
“Tonight we honor those journalists who keep the spirit of social justice alive,” CWA President Morton Bahr told the audience of 220 journalists, union activists and their guests at the Hyatt Regency on Capitol Hill.
After a welcome from TNG-CWA President Linda Foley, National Public Radio’s Bob Edwards took over as emcee. The host of “Morning Edition” praised the award winners as “a diverse group that shares a passion and vision that sets them apart from their contemporaries.”
The event showcased the Guild’s newest award, the Herbert Block Freedom Award named for the famed Washington Post editorial cartoonist, known as Herblock, who died last October at age 91.
The award, and a $5,000 check, was presented to Vanessa Leggett, a Texas writer who served 168 days in a federal prison for refusing prosecutors’ demands to hand over her notes and all other materials for a book she was writing about a Houston murder.
The dinner also recognized the winners of the annual Heywood Broun Award, named for the crusading columnist and TNG founder and given since 1941 to journalists whose work “helps right a wrong or correct an injustice.”
Seattle Times reporters Duff Wilson and David Heath received the award and a $5,000 check for their series on a famed Seattle cancer center where patients weren’t told the risks of experimental treatments. At least 80 patients died in the clinical trials, and the reporters’ work revealed that some of the center’s doctors had financial ties to the involved drug companies.
Two other entries were honored with Broun Awards of Substantial Distinction and a $1,000 check.
A Washington Post series, “The District’s Lost Children,” documented the deaths of 229 children between 1993 and 2000 after they were placed in Washington, D.C.’s child protection system. It was reported by Sari Horwitz and Scott Higham, with the assistance of database editor Sarah Cohen.
The ABC 20/20 entry, “Empty Arms, produced and written by Joanna Breen and featuring correspondent Tom Jarriel, reported on the struggle of 12 adoptive couples whose Cambodian children were refused admission into the United States. Outraged viewers immediately flooded the White House and congressional offices with protests. Officials reversed their decision just two days later and the babies were allowed to leave the country with their new families.
The Broun winners were chosen from among 188 entries, including 44 broadcast entries, that were judged by a panel of professional journalists. The TNG-CWA Executive Council chose the Herb Block winner.
In addition, a high school radio reporter and a college newspaper editor were honored with the David S. Barr Award. Barr, a union lawyer with a strong sense of justice and fairness, served as the Guild’s attorney for more than 25 years. He died of a heart attack in 1997.
Megan Lynn Matteucci, 22, a student at Suffolk University in Boston, won the Barr Award’s $1,500 scholarship for a piece in her campus paper that looked at how colleges are exploiting part-time faculty. Colleges are hiring more part-timers to teach undergraduate courses, paying little and offering no health care or other benefits.
Jesus Gonzalez, 16, of El Puente Academy for Peace and Justice in Brooklyn, N.Y., won a $500 Barr scholarship for his work in the WNYC Radio Rookies workshop. His story explored the easy availability of guns in his neighborhood through interviews with a gun dealer, school principal and assistant district attorney.
The evening also featured a keynote address by Ben Bradlee, Jr., Boston Globe deputy managing editor for projects, who gave a detailed account of how the Globe broke and is continuing to report on sexual abuse of children by Catholic priests and the church’s cover up.
“Tonight we honor those journalists who keep the spirit of social justice alive,” CWA President Morton Bahr told the audience of 220 journalists, union activists and their guests at the Hyatt Regency on Capitol Hill.
After a welcome from TNG-CWA President Linda Foley, National Public Radio’s Bob Edwards took over as emcee. The host of “Morning Edition” praised the award winners as “a diverse group that shares a passion and vision that sets them apart from their contemporaries.”
The event showcased the Guild’s newest award, the Herbert Block Freedom Award named for the famed Washington Post editorial cartoonist, known as Herblock, who died last October at age 91.
The award, and a $5,000 check, was presented to Vanessa Leggett, a Texas writer who served 168 days in a federal prison for refusing prosecutors’ demands to hand over her notes and all other materials for a book she was writing about a Houston murder.
The dinner also recognized the winners of the annual Heywood Broun Award, named for the crusading columnist and TNG founder and given since 1941 to journalists whose work “helps right a wrong or correct an injustice.”
Seattle Times reporters Duff Wilson and David Heath received the award and a $5,000 check for their series on a famed Seattle cancer center where patients weren’t told the risks of experimental treatments. At least 80 patients died in the clinical trials, and the reporters’ work revealed that some of the center’s doctors had financial ties to the involved drug companies.
Two other entries were honored with Broun Awards of Substantial Distinction and a $1,000 check.
A Washington Post series, “The District’s Lost Children,” documented the deaths of 229 children between 1993 and 2000 after they were placed in Washington, D.C.’s child protection system. It was reported by Sari Horwitz and Scott Higham, with the assistance of database editor Sarah Cohen.
The ABC 20/20 entry, “Empty Arms, produced and written by Joanna Breen and featuring correspondent Tom Jarriel, reported on the struggle of 12 adoptive couples whose Cambodian children were refused admission into the United States. Outraged viewers immediately flooded the White House and congressional offices with protests. Officials reversed their decision just two days later and the babies were allowed to leave the country with their new families.
The Broun winners were chosen from among 188 entries, including 44 broadcast entries, that were judged by a panel of professional journalists. The TNG-CWA Executive Council chose the Herb Block winner.
In addition, a high school radio reporter and a college newspaper editor were honored with the David S. Barr Award. Barr, a union lawyer with a strong sense of justice and fairness, served as the Guild’s attorney for more than 25 years. He died of a heart attack in 1997.
Megan Lynn Matteucci, 22, a student at Suffolk University in Boston, won the Barr Award’s $1,500 scholarship for a piece in her campus paper that looked at how colleges are exploiting part-time faculty. Colleges are hiring more part-timers to teach undergraduate courses, paying little and offering no health care or other benefits.
Jesus Gonzalez, 16, of El Puente Academy for Peace and Justice in Brooklyn, N.Y., won a $500 Barr scholarship for his work in the WNYC Radio Rookies workshop. His story explored the easy availability of guns in his neighborhood through interviews with a gun dealer, school principal and assistant district attorney.
The evening also featured a keynote address by Ben Bradlee, Jr., Boston Globe deputy managing editor for projects, who gave a detailed account of how the Globe broke and is continuing to report on sexual abuse of children by Catholic priests and the church’s cover up.