Journalism exposing hidden injuries from faulty products to foul balls honored at NPC awards event
The National Press Club celebrated this year’s best journalism on Wednesday, in its virtual 47th Annual National Press Club Awards event.
A special highlight of the evening was an honor that is not bestowed every year. NPC President Michael Freedman presented the President's Award for lifetime achievement to Charles Osgood, who served as anchor of "CBS Sunday Morning" for 22 years, hosted the long-running radio commentary series "The Osgood File" and became known as the "poet laureate of CBS News."
Freedman said that in a tumultuous year like 2020, it was fitting to honor someone "who for more than half a century has brought into our lives the gentle side of journalism both on radio and television."
Osgood accepted the award in a video filmed in front of his Christmas tree. "From the bottom of my heart, I thank you," he said. "I'll see you on the radio."
Freedman also announced the winners of Club-sponsored scholarships. Laila Nasher of Detroit, Michigan, a student at Universal Academy who is headed to Harvard, won the Julie Schoo Scholarship for Diversity in Journalism. Christina Walker of Stockbridge, Georgia, and a student at Paideia High School, won the Richard G. Zimmerman Journalism Scholarship. Derek Schwabe of Morada, California, won the Shirley and Dennis Feldman Fellowship. Schwabe is a data journalist and graduate student at the University of California at Berkeley.
Most of the program centered on the winners of the Club's 2020 journalism contest.
Representing Reuters’ winning investigative series “Hidden Injustice” in consumer journalism’s print category, reporter Jaimi Dowdell, told how this two-year project revealed and quantified how courts’ sealed files and evidence could have saved lives had the public only known. “Deaths and serious injuries could have been prevented,” she said, “had information filed secretly in court been made public.”
“Hidden Harm” by Christina Jewett of Kaiser Health News won the consumer journalism award for periodicals after exposing a secret government database of medical-device malfunctions and the harm they caused. “For about 20 years,” the senior correspondent told her virtual audience, “the FDA was allowing medical device makers to quietly get exemptions to report medical device injuries and malfunctions outside of the traditional public channels” where scientists, doctors and patients expect to learn about problems that could arise from risky medical devices used in surgeries, and even implanted inside people’s bodies. “We focused on the surgical stapler,” she said, “and about 10,000 reports of malfunctions with that device have essentially been hidden from public view.”
In consumer journalism’s broadcast category, an NBC News Investigative Unit used Freedom of Information Act requests to reveal, for the first time, how many fans are injured by foul balls during MLB games: one “fracturing the skull of a 2-year-old.” A short video on its report, “Fans, Fear and Foul Balls,” showed the Chicago White Sox as the first MLB team to extend protective netting all the way to the foul poles.
Former Club president Jonathan Salant of NJ Advance Media won for best Regional Reporting. “The award serves as a powerful argument for keeping local reporters in Washington,” he said. “Being in Washington allowed me to sit in a congressional office when a New Jersey couple poured out their anguish to lawmakers after their daughter, a college senior, was murdered when she got into a fake Uber.” That story helped lead to Sammy’s Law, named after the victim.
VICE News’ Adam Desiderio won the News Photographer Award for capturing personal stories of victors and victims of the Battle of Baghouz, Syria—a last stronghold of an Isis caliphate.
Before introducing the evening’s speakers, Freedman said the Club is working with journalist Austin Tice’s family to help secure his return after his 2012 capture in Syria eight years ago.
He also pointed out two “tools of the trade” flanking him online: a typewriter belonging to former UPI White House Correspondent Helen Thomas who covered 10 U.S. presidents, and “the holy grail of broadcast journalism,” Edward R. Murrow’s microphone used to broadcast news from London during World War II.
Freedman also invited the audience to participate in the Club’s new initiative with Howard University Hospital, Help the Heroes, that provides care-givers with meals.