71st OPC Awards, Festive and Celebratory

Andy Rooney and OPC President Allan Dodds Frank

Videos from the evening are available now at www.youtube.com/opcofamerica

OPC President Allan Dodds Frank said the reporters were fabulous and their work was fabulous and the event was fabulous. He said using other words like “sensational” might have a mixed meaning in a roomful of journalists. He was right on all counts, and it was a great evening.

The 2009 OPC Awards was held for a fifth year at the Mandarin Oriental Hotel on the 36th floor, overlooking panoramic views of Central Park and Columbus Circle. What was different about this year’s awards was the pre-party sponsored by Microsoft that took place at the bar on the 35th floor, with spectacular views of the Park and the setting sun. It was packed with journalists catching up with one another and vying for cocktails and appetizers.

At 7, the lights blinked at the bar and people made their way to the 36th floor. Before the dinner began, Frank welcomed everyone to the event and introduced David Rohde of The New York Times who lit the candle in honor of the journalists killed last year in the line of duty. Rohde and an Afghan reporter/translator Sultan Munadi, were kidnapped by the Taliban in November 2008 as they were on their way to interview a Taliban commander near Kabul. Munadi was killed, and Rohde was held captive for seven months until he made a stunning escape in June 2009 by taking advantage of sleeping guards and jumping from a second story, dropping down a 20 foot wall with a rope. Rohde said while foreign correspondents face dangers, it is the local correspondents who are most at risk.

“Sultan’s death shows an underlying reality that we all know, local journalists face vastly more dangers than foreign correspondents,” he said. “Across the world, local journalism is thriving...but they face more danger than ever.”

Rohde is now working with CPJ and the DART Center to find ways to prevent kidnapping and to help journalists’ families learn how to respond to kidnappings when they occur.

“Each kidnapping case is different. In certain cases, where government might respond to external public pressure such as Iran, publicity clearly helps. In others, such as mine, where militants are involved, publicity can hurt. Each case should be examined on a case-by-case basis and the wishes of the families involved should always be respected.”

Kimberly Dozier, most recently correspondent for CBS News Washington bureau and is now the new Associated Press intelligence correspondent, was the awards presenter this year.

“I thank colleagues who’ve overcome not just the dangers of the front lines, but other perils like talking bosses into covering stories in a shrinking news budgets, and also winning back an audience that is sometimes distracted,” she said. “What you do reminds them that there is a world out there that needs their attention, sometimes their help and also puts their own problems into perspective. For that we thank you, your bosses and the OPC for recognizing them.”

Farnaz Fassihi won The Hal Boyle Award for her courageous reporting of the unfolding drama in Iran where she covered the opposition’s protests from the perspectives of doctors, students, and even a member of the feared Basij militia who beat demonstrators and broke up marches in the bloody aftermath of the Islamic Republic’s disputed presidential election.

“[The Iranian government] was spreading a rumor that she had been shot. An arrest warrant had been prepared for me,” she said. “As I stand here safe and accept this award I’d like to thank you and think that by honoring me you have also honored them.”

A call for stories from the people, not just the headlines and news makers, was sounded by Fassihi and other award winners, like Soraya Sarhaddi Nelson who accepted The Lowell Thomas Award for the segment she did with Lauren Jenkins and Douglas Roberts for “Afghanistan: Nightmares and Dreams of a Nation at War.” Nelson was a print journalist and joined NPR in 2006 and serves as NPR’s bureau chief in Afghanistan. She said that Afghanistan is a place where journalists can do great story telling. She speaks Farsi and has traveled to 26 of the 34 provinces meeting with Afghans.

“We get caught in the loop of Karzai government vs. the U.S. military vs. the Taliban,” she said. “There are a lot of reporters who are now coming to Afghanistan and I hope that in the midst to tell the breaking news story ... that we don’t loose focus of the people. If you tell their stories, you’ll have a greater understanding for why things are as complex and why things might not be going so well for us as we’d like in Afghanistan.”

Jon Lee Anderson won The Robert Spiers Benjamin Award for his work in the The New Yorker, “Gangland,” but was unable to attend because of a reporting assignment. Amy Davidson, an editor from The New Yorker accepted the OPC Award on his behalf. Another winner was sidetracked from attending the awards gala because of the disruption in flights from the volcano eruption in Iceland. Alissa J. Rubin, who won The Ed Cunningham Award for her piece in the The New York Times Magazine “How Baida Wanted to Die,” explores the background, motivation and training of one of 16 would-be female suicide bomber in Iraq. Rubin’s husband, James Castello, delivered remarks she prepared.

“I was very sorry not to be here with you tonight and it seems, amazingly ironic, that as soon as I made it out of the deadly Korengal Valley in Afghanistan on the first leg of my journey to New York, only to be stranded in Paris,” she wrote. “It is a great and unexpected honor, and I thank the Overseas Press Club and my translator Anwar Jabbar who risked as much as I did in reporting this story. Women translators in war zones are perhaps even less numerous than women correspondents and this was a story whose protagonists would have only shared their thoughts with other women.”

Each award winner provided comments similar to Rubin’s that indicate that international reporting is alive and well, even as the economic climate among media corporations has been tumultuous in the past few years. They also provided an insight into where journalism is headed, as T. Christian Miller said in his acceptance speech for The Online Journalism Award, the work of ProPublica to produce “Disposable Army” was done by several news organizations and journalists pooling their resources.

Dipping back into journalism’s history, the OPC President’s Award went to America’s columnist, Andy Rooney from "60 Minutes" in recognition of seven decades of reporting, news writing, essays, books and commentary. Rooney has also been a member of the OPC since 1947.

“Gosh, I’ve had such a life. I hope it isn’t over,” Rooney joked.

Frank said that during the interview process of Rooney for the 10-minute video that accompanied his award that he was astounded to learn that if there was an award for not swearing in a newsroom, Rooney would win it.

“That is so true,” Rooney said. “I have never believed in using profanity. That doesn’t make me a wonderful person, but that’s the way I see it.”

See videos of acceptance speeches, photo slideshows and links and photos of the work awarded at www.opcofamerica.org.