EUGENE–Winners of the second annual Payne Awards for Ethics in Journalism, administered by the University of Oregon School of Journalism and Communication, include three journalists who refused to compromise their news standards and a Southern newspaper that examined untold stories of the civil rights era.

To be honored as 2001 award recipients on May 7 at a dinner during the annual Ruhl Symposium at the School of Journalism and Communication are:

• The Jackson (Tenn.) Sun, winner of the 2001 Payne Award for news organizations.

• Nellie Moore and D’Anne Hamilton of Anchorage, Alaska, and David Offer of Arlington, Va., winners of the 2001 Payne Award for individual journalists.

The Payne Awards were established by Ancil Payne, a long-time Northwest leader in broadcast journalism who is the retired chief executive officer of KING-TV in Seattle and KGW-TV in Portland. The awards honor journalists who encourage public trust in the media by courageously practicing the highest standards of their profession in the face of political or economic pressures.

"We’re pleased to be the home of the Payne Awards," says Tim Gleason, dean of the School of Journalism and Communication. "This is especially so given the school’s strong foundation of teaching its students the ethical practices needed for communicating in the public interest."

In October 2000, the Jackson Sun published a seven-day series on the civil rights history of its community even though the staff faced community pressure not to tell the story. The judges also noted the paper’s willingness to report on its own failure, 40 years earlier, to cover civil rights in a fair and accurate fashion. The series is available on the Web at <http://www.jacksonsun.com/ civilrights/index.shtml>.

When First Amendment issues arose, the three honored journalists could not find workable solutions that maintained their integrity. Moore and Hamilton were fired, while Offer resigned.

Moore and Hamilton, Native Alaskans with more than 40 years of experience as journalists between them, worked for Koahnic Broadcast Corp. in Anchorage, Alaska. As KNBA’s national program manager, Moore was host of "National Native News," a daily program aired by 130 public radio stations nationwide. Formerly a producer, Hamilton was director of the tribally owned corporation’s training center.

In March 2000, the pair were fired from their positions with the Koahnic Broadcast Corp. after challenging management over what they considered to be unethical interference in a proposed news program. The controversy erupted when the journalists learned that corporate officials would be on the air regularly and presented as impartial experts.

Moore believed the officials had a conflict of interest because they worked directly for native corporations, including one that finances KNBA, thus not fulfilling their touted role as an independent voice on the news program. More information is at <http://www.spj.org/news/041400_pressrelease.htm.

Offer was executive editor of Stars and Stripes, an independent Department of Defense publication partially funded by the federal government and published for service members, their families and DOD civilians overseas. He resigned Aug. 31, 2000, when the newspaper’s civilian publisher killed a staff-written front-page story on the possible deployment of a Patriot anti-missile unit from Germany to Israel. The Pentagon said the story contained classified information.

Offer, the paper’s civilian editor for just four months before his resignation, called the publisher’s decision a result of pressure from the Pentagon. He said that although he was upset at the initial decision to kill the story, he felt compelled to resign when the paper instead published a virtually identical story in its Pacific edition–and refused to run it in the European edition–the day after it had appeared on the front page of the Washington Post. Related stories about the incident are at <http://www.asne.org/kiosk/editor/00.sept/move2.htm> and at <http://www.pstripes.com/jan01/ed010601b.html>.

More information about the 2001 Payne Award winners and the Payne Awards Program is available at <http://jcomm.uoregon.edu/departments/payneawards/index.html>.

Besides Gleason, judges for the Payne Awards included Joann Byrd, editorial page editor, Seattle Post-Intelligencer; Everette Dennis, the Felix E. Larkin Distinguished Professor for Communications and Management at the Fordham Graduate School of Business in New York City; Larry Grossman, author and a former president of NBC News and PBS; Patsy Smullin, president, chief executive officer and co-owner of California-Oregon Broadcasting, Inc., Medford; Mark Trahant, chairman and chief executive officer of the Robert C. Maynard Institute for Journalism Education, Oakland, Calif.; Jim Upshaw, the KEZI Distinguished Professor of Broadcast Journalism at the UO School of Journalism and Communication; and Mark Zusman, editor of Willamette Week, Portland.

Last year’s winners were The (Sonora, Calif.) Union-Democrat, the news staff of the Los Angeles Times and the student editors of The Western Front at Western Washington University.

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