The 2009 Goldsmith Career Award for Excellence in Journalism was given to Gwen Ifill, the moderator and managing editor of Washington Week and senior correspondent for The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer on PBS. Her book, The Breakthrough: Politics and Race in the Age of Obama, was published in January 2009.
Cenziper and Cohen’s investigation revealed how Washington, D.C. landlords drove hundreds of tenants from rent-controlled apartments by refusing to make repairs and other harassment methods, and then profited from redevelopment. As a result of the investigation, the Washington, D.C., attorney general sued 23 landlords, half the city’s housing-inspection force was fired and “The Tenant Protection Act of 2008” was introduced. It provided funds for building repair as well as help for tenants suing landlords for code violations.
The 2008 Goldsmith Career Award for Excellence in Journalism was given to Paul E. Steiger, former managing editor of the Wall Street Journal, chairman of the Committee to Protect Journalists, and editor-in-chief of ProPublica, a new nonprofit investigative journalism organization.
Gellman and Becker’s four-part series examined the most powerful vice president in history, providing a greater public understanding of the Bush-Cheney era.
2007 Goldsmith Career Award winner Daniel Schorr, senior news analyst for National Public Radio, gave the keynote address at the 2007 awards ceremony. “The power of the press has lost its meaning,” Schorr said, lamenting what he saw as the American public’s waning confidence in the news media. A repercussion of this development, he said, is that the public nowadays is less likely to rally on behalf of journalists who, citing the First Amendment, refuse to disclose their sources.
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.