Using a combination of investigative reporting and scientific research the team revealed how, through “unethical manipulation,” top executives had amassed millions of dollars in stock options. The series led to a federal investigation of over 100 companies and forced many executives to step down.
The 2006 Goldsmith Career Award for Excellence in Journalism was given to Jim Lehrer, executive editor and anchor of The News Hour with Jim Lehrer.
The Times revealed that the government, in the name of national security, was systematically tapping into international telephone calls and e-mail traffic in the U.S. without court warrants. Risen and Lichtblau’s uncovering of this issue has created a national debate over what is necessary surveillance and what is a blatant violation of the law and an infringement on civil liberties.
Andrea Mitchell, chief foreign affairs correspondent for NBC News, received the 2005 Goldsmith Career Award for Excellence in Journalism.
A speech by Mitchell concluded the first night of the award ceremony, which took place on the evening of Tuesday, March 22. Although she lauded journalism’s power to provide “lasting images that, once stitched together, create our visual history,” Mitchell’s speech held a tone of caution. Condemning the use of video news releases and the government’s increasing infiltration into the mainstream media, she warned, “if we journalists are going to continue enjoying our front row seats, we really have to do a better job of justifying our privileged access.” According to Mitchell, journalists must walk a fine line, rejecting government encroachment so that they can retain their legitimacy, and thus, their audiences.
Henriques exposed a trail of deceit through which thousands of American soldiers were sold misleading insurance policies, often by former military officials who were operating with the knowledge, if not the approval, of the Pentagon. Her reporting revealed how former military officers were allowed by base commanders to make formal, official looking presentations to financially inexperienced soldiers headed off to war. Soldiers were sold insurance policies at ten, twenty, even fifty times more than the insurance provided by the federal government. As she dug deeper, Henriques found complicity from the top for all kinds of deceptive tactics, all designed to trade on the presumption of the soldiers that they would not be cheated by their own. She showed too, how in the face of pressure from big financial interests, the military brass would cave, in one case abandoning the investigation of a big financial company whose products and sales practices were suspect. The impact of Henriques’ reporting was fast and powerful, resulting in new laws, refunds and the like.
Supreme Court correspondent of the New York Times.
“Embedded” is a collection of deeply emotional and highly personal accounts of covering the Iraq War. Many of the world’s top war correspondents and photographers speak candidly about life on the battlefield. Here are articulate and heartfelt descriptions of fear and firefights, of bullets and banalities, of risking death and meeting deadlines.
With over sixty interviews conducted in Kuwait and Iraq shortly after many returned home, Katovsky and Carlson allowed these journalists to step outside their professional role as journalists and examine the lethal allure of combat reporting.
Paul M. Kellstedt explains the variation in Americans’ racial attitudes over the last half-century, particularly the relationship between media coverage of race and American public opinion on race. The analyses reveal that racial policy preferences have evolved in an interesting and unpredicted (if not unpredictable) fashion over the past fifty years. There have been sustained periods of liberalism, where the public prefers an active government to bring about racial equality, and these periods are invariably followed by eras of conservatism, where the public wants the government to stay out of racial politics altogether. These opinions respond to cues presented in the national media. Kellstedt then examines the relationship between attitudes on the two major issues of the twentieth century: race and the welfare state.
Althaus’ analysis of the relationship between knowledge, representation, and political equality (in opinion surveys) leads to surprising answers. Knowledge does matter, and the way it is dispensed in society can cause collective preferences to reflect opinions disproportionately.
The New York Times investigative series and Frontline documentary, “Dangerous Business,” found that hundreds of employers have killed their workers by willfully disregarding basic safety rules. Their work prompted a criminal investigation into safety and environmental records, leading to indictments, and to OSHA announcing steps to strengthen the oversight and punishment of persistent violators.