For the Record
Dean Wright on Ethics, Innovation and Values
Honoring our finest: Journalists of the Year
Dean Wright is Global Editor, Ethics, Innovation and News Standards. Any opinions are his own.
This is the time of year when I’m reminded of how proud I am to work for Reuters News. So permit me to put criticism on hold for a moment and write a column of praise.
The 2008 Journalists of the Year awards were presented Thursday night at a ceremony at Thomson Reuters headquarters in New York. The 10 awards, presented by Editor-in-Chief David Schlesinger, honored individuals and teams responsible for the top journalism produced last year by Reuters News.
Looking at the winners, I’m not only proud but humbled. The expertise, the tenacity, the speed and in some cases the sheer bravery of these journalists is inspiring.
Take Goran Tomasevic, awarded Photo of the Year for his stunning image of Marine Sergeant William Olas Bee taking cover from Taliban fighters in Afghanistan. You can almost hear the bullets pinging into the foxhole. Goran is modest, though: “If I hadn’t already been pointing the camera at the Marine when the bullet hit the wall, there is no way I would have been able to react quickly enough to take those pictures.”
Or Emmanuel Braun, honored as Video Journalist of the Year for his work in Africa. He was the only agency TV crew to get into the Central African Republic, a near-forgotten crisis zone where conflict between rebels and the government has displaced tens of thousands. And when British mercenary Simon Mann went on trial in Equatorial Guinea, Emmanuel bravely carried on shooting subversively with a mini camera after his main camera was rendered useless by Guinean soldiers and he had been repeatedly threatened and told not to continue his coverage.
Tenacity doesn’t just happen in the world’s war zones, either. Patrick Rucker won the Scoop of the Year award for his July 11 report that the Fed would lend emergency funds to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. The Fed initially denied the story after markets closed that day, something competitors jumped on, even labeling our work erroneous. But Patrick’s reporting was rock-solid and, barely 48 hours later, his scoop was 100-percent confirmed.
