Newly minted “Meet the Press” moderator Kristen Welker, honored Tuesday with the National Press Club's Fourth Estate Award, urged the media to help break down the divisions that exist across the United States.
The media faces a “critical challenge” as political disagreements have led to toxic discourse, and driven people away from the consensus building that once defined U.S. democracy, Welker said in her acceptance speech at Fourth Estate Award Gala.
“How do we as journalists speak to the country, when much of the country has stopped talking to each other, and stopped listening?” Welker asked.
Welker, who has covered multiple presidential administrations as a reporter for NBC News, said one way to break down the divides that exist is to listen more to diverse and unique perspectives, something she has looked to do already in her first few months as the 13th moderator of the venerable Sunday morning show.
And Welker said it is important for journalists to continue to hold political leaders to account and seek the truth above all else, especially as the country prepares for another potentially divisive presidential election next year. By doing so, she said, Americans can start to “sew back together these threads of division.”
Welker is the 50th person to receive the Club's highest award. She joins such journalism luminaries as Walter Cronkite, Simeon Booker, Bob Woodward, Andrea Mitchell, Marvin Kalb, Clarissa Ward, Bob Schieffer, Lester Holt, Christiane Amanpour, Thomas Friedman and Gwen Ifill.
Welker said she found receiving the award “completely overwhelming,” and dedicated it to reporters around the world, including those in hostile environments in Ukraine and the Middle East. “They are reminders of why we do what we do,” she said.
The National Press Club also honored Iranian journalists Niloofar Hamedi and Elaheh Mohammadi with the John Aubuchon Press Freedom Award. The pair are currently in prison awaiting sentencing on national security-related charges after being arrested during the protests that followed the death in police custody of Mahsa Amini last year.
The Aubuchon Award also went to The Wall Street Journal’s Evan Gershkovich, a reporter who has been detained in Russia since March and is falsely accused of espionage. In accepting the award on Gershkovich’s behalf, his sister Danielle said she and her family have been “continually amazed by the solidarity” of the journalism community and the support they have received over the last eight months.
“Your support has been an anchor for us during one of the most challenging periods of our lives,” she said.
The Journal’s Washington bureau chief Paul Beckett, noting that Gershkovich’s detention has been extended until at least the end of January, said news organizations must continue to work together to advocate for the freeing of journalists. That includes sharing information on how to engage with the U.S. government, supporting the jailed journalist’s family, rallying staff to the cause and finding sympathetic third countries to help.
The overall goal should be to “find creative ways to deter autocratic regimes from doing this to our reporters,” Beckett said.
Reuters’ global race and justice editor Kat Stafford was recognized as the 2023 winner of the Neil and Susan Sheehan Award for Investigative Journalism for her series “From Birth to Death,” written while at the Associated Press and exploring the lifetime of disparities Black Americans face due to the legacy of racism in this country.
