2010 First Amendment Awards Dinner Coverage
To view multimedia coverage from throughout the RTDNF First Amendment Awards Dinner, please visit the navigation bar on the left hand side of your screen.
View from the Dais
By Stacey Woelfel, RTDNA Chairman
I’ll close out the coverage of last week’s First Amendment Awards
dinner with a few thoughts I collected from my vantage point looking
out over the event. I was on the rear left of the platform party, as
viewed from the audience. Check out the videos from the event and
you’ll see me there behind Leon Harris in the front row. My role on
the dais was, as I joked to Bill Roswell, just to be a pretty face.
The RTDNA chairman has no official role at the First Amendment dinner.
For me, that will come next year when I take over the position of RTDNF
chairman. I was the only one on the platform without a speaking role,
which left me free to look and listen all night.
What I saw and heard from my perch pleased me. The room was
electric that night. There was, of course, the low roar of 500 people
conversing and having a good time. But there was more than that.
There was a sort of charged hum to it, too. I think that sound was
coming from so many people in tune in the same place on the same
night. It was a happy hum, and the hum was just the soundtrack to the
visuals in the room. With the full house that we had, I could see a
sea of faces and shoulders and smiles sweeping all the way back into
the dark recesses of the room. I mention the smiles because there were
so many, with candlelight and camera flashes reflecting back to me off
all those exposed teeth. These people were having a good time.
More than a couple of people at the event that evening said the
feel in the room took them back 50 years to the old RTNDA dinner scene
we all saw in “Good Night and Good Luck.”
The black tie, black and white dinner that opens and closes the
film had the same vibe as the dinner last Thursday. The movie shows a
group of men and women at the convention in 1958 waiting to hear from
Edward R. Murrow. They laugh, talk, clink glasses, and set up the same
sort of a scene as we had last week. Perhaps the same electricity that
accompanied Ed Murrow all those years ago was with us in the room as we
honored today’s network TV and radio’s top names.
Now, one thing that was different—thankfully—from 1958 was the
diverse nature of the crowd in our room. Murrow’s audience was made up
of mostly newsmen and their wives. Ours was anything but that. In
every row and across the room, professional men and women shared the
roles of boss and worker, reporter and producer, editor and writer.
News people of color populated the tables in a way not possible in
1958. The combination of an old time feel with the modern advances in
our business turned our scene into a mix of nostalgia and modernity.
As the speeches began, there was something else I could see that
might have eluded the rest of the platform party and gathered diners.
Each honoree grabbed hold of the audience and did not let go the entire
time at the microphone. I could see their eyes light up as they leaned
in the hear David Westin’s pledge to transform journalism to protect it
for future generations. I could see their expressions of solidarity as
they listened to Barbara Cochran call on the Supreme Court to allow
cameras and microphones into its proceedings. I could see their tears
of joy as Harvey Nagler asked Cami McCormick to stand to the applause
of the room. I could see their nods of agreement when Marcellus
Alexander proclaimed this is a great time to be a broadcaster. And I
could see their grins of glee as they chuckled through Brian Williams’
Bob Schieffer impression. I saw it all.
The entire evening is one I will not soon forget. I hope that
everyone in the audience and the rest of the platform party, each with
his or her own vantage point on the events of the evening, enjoyed the
sights and the sounds as much as I did. Next year I’ll be the emcee of
the event and will see it in another way altogether. I don’t know yet
who the honorees will be that night, but I know our new association
chairman will be sitting behind me in my old seat. I’m going to advise
him in advance to enjoy his view from the dais.
Broadcasting's Biggest Names Honor The First Amendment
By WBAL's Scott Wykoff (click here to see the full WBAL Article including pictures and audio from the dinner)
On a night when some of the biggest movers and shakers in broadcast journalism came together to honor their own, it was the First Amendment that was the star of the night.
In Washington, DC on Thursday night, the Radio Television Digital News Foundation (RTDNF) honored Brian Williams, anchor and managing editor of NBC Nightly News, RTDNA President Emeritus Barbara Cochran, National Association of Broadcasters Education Foundation President Marcellus Alexander and the NABEF, Harvey Nagler, vice president of CBS Radio News and David Westin, president of ABC News at the First Amendment Awards Dinner.
It was the 20th anniversary of the awards dinner.
"In my day I use the First Amendment so many times," said NBC's Brian Williams as he was presented with the Leonard Zeidenberg Award before a crowd of more than 400. "Using it now, used it when I just came from work tonight".
Williams also talked about the importance of getting the facts right. He said it's expensive and costs money and you've got to really want to report facts.
"Information is very easy, facts are tough," said Williams. "Facts are best when they are right and we have to be right every day and every night. And let's get this difference down, good information, facts, news, should be paying for I think. It's not free."
"Our attention and focus on the protection of the First Amendment has been firmly supported by our board of directors," said National Association of Broadcasters Education Foundation President Marcellus Alexander as he was presented with the First Amendment Award. "It is the core of who we are as broadcasters and it is our inspiration to serve the American People."
Alexander is the former Vice President and General Manager of WJZ TV in Baltimore.
During his remarks after accepting the First Amendment Service Award (the first ever presented to a person in radio news), CBS Radio News Vice President Harvey Nagler honored Cami McCormick, one of his colleagues at CBS Radio News.
McCormick was seriously injured last year in an IED attack while she was reporting for CBS Radio News in Afghanistan.
"I realize you have not heard very much about Cami since that first announcement of her injuries, because that's the way she wanted it," said Nagler as his voice began to crack with emotion. "Her only desire was to get better and return to covering stories."
"Tonight after numerous surgeries and months and months of painful rehab, Cami McCormick, one of the most courageous, fearless individuals I have ever known. An inspiration to all of us. Someone who never complains and is constantly telling me guess what I was able to do today. Cami is almost ready to return to work. And right now I am able to say something I'm was not sure I would have the opportunity to say again. Cami please stand up and be recognized."
Sitting at a table with her colleagues at CBS Radio News, Cami stood up to a standing ovation from the crowd in the ballroom at the Ritz Carlton.
"It has been my great honor to serve as RTNDA's spokesperson for the last 12 years," said RTDNA President Emeritus Barbara Cochran. "But the incidents this week (Supreme Court's refusal to release audio of arguments in a major case) reinforce the idea of how essential RTDNF is in fighting on behalf of journalists. Our industry needs RTDNF. So in the future I may be cheering from the sidelines but I'll certainly be cheering on the future leaders of this great association and foundation and my fervent wish is that all of you will too."
"We all know why the First Amendment is so important," said David Westin, president of ABC News, when he was presented with the First Amendment Leadership Award. "We can not have a successful Democracy without an informed electorate. The way James Madison out it, knowledge will forever govern ignorance and the people who need to be their own governors must arm themselves with the power which knowledge gives them."
Then Westin said that all sounds pretty abstract and he posed the question, "what does it mean in day to day life.
"It certainly means we have the right, but also the obligation to hold our government to account, even when some people in our government might not like what we are reporting," said Westin. "And it certainly means we as reporters have an obligation to protect the confidentiality of our sources...and it means sometimes standing up to advertisers."
But then Westin said he wanted to talk about another obligation that he said isn't normally associated with the First Amendment.
"None of us can invoke the First Amendment unless we have reporters out in the field doing the work that needs to be done," said the president of ABC News. "And we have the resources to support them."
David J. Barrett, President & CEO, Hearst Television Inc. presented the First Amendment Award to Marcellus Alexander and the NABEF.
Steve Capus, President, NBC News presented the Leonard Zeidenberg Award to Brian Williams.
Walter Isaacson, President and CEO, Aspen Institute presented the First Amendment Leadership Award to David Westin.
Andrea Mitchell, NBC News Chief Foreign Affairs Correspondent and Host, "Andrea Mitchell Reports" presented the First Amendment Award to Barbara Cochran, RTDNA President Emeritus.
Bob Schieffer, Chief Washington Correspondent, CBS News presented the First Amendment Service Award to Harvey Nagler, Vice President, CBS Radio News.
Funds raised at the dinner help support RTDNF's work to promote excellence in electronic journalism through research, education and training for news professionals and journalism students.
