2008 Award Winners

Think Progress: A Project of the Center for American Progress Action Fund

FAIZ SHAKIR is the research director at the Center for American Progress and editor in-chief of ThinkProgress.org and The Progress Report. He has been a research associate for the Democratic National Committee, a legislative aide to Senator Bob Graham (D-FL) on the Senate Veterans Affairs Committee and a communications aide in the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy. Shakir's work has appeared in Jerusalem Post, Florida Today and Salon. He is a regular guest on television and radio shows.

AMANDA TERKEL is the deputy research director at the Center for American Progress, managing editor for ThinkProgress.org and The Progress Report and the center's special assistant for strategic planning. She has worked for Senator Chuck Schumer (D-NY), the New York State attorney general, Senator Joseph Lieberman's 2004 presidential campaign and the inspector general. Terkel's writing has been published in The New York Times, Politico, The Guardian, American Prospect Online and InTheseTimes.com--and she has been a guest on television and radio shows.

Since its launch in 2005, ThinkProgress has served as the daily rapid-response research blog of the Center for American Progress Action Fund. In just two years, the progressive site has ascended to the ranks of the top three most popular political blogs in the world, attracting approximately 150,000 visitors each day. ThinkProgress serves as a resource for and a check on the mainstream media. The blog site engages in daily pushback against right-wing misinformation, and it counters corruption and incompetence in public office by increasing knowledge and awareness about the progressive agenda.

Some of Think Progress's most notable achievements in the past year include: documenting the lack of accountability over the Iraq war architects, revealing the conservative smear campaign against 12 year-old S-CHIP recipient, Graeme Frost, and analyzing the right-wing domination of talk radio and its negative effects. The Guardian newspaper once wrote, "With a staff of just [six], ThinkProgress punches well above its weight." Congressman Henry Waxman (D-CA) has said of ThinkProgress: It is "breathing new life into journalism."

Link: www.thinkprogress.org

ROBERT KUTTNER

The Squandering of America: How the Failure of Our Politics Undermines Our Prosperity

Knopf Publishing Group

ROBERT KUTTNER is the co-founder and co-editor of The American Prospect. His many books on economics and politics include Everything for Sale: The Virtues and Limits of Markets, which won the Sidney Hillman Foundation Book Award in 1997. A longtime columnist for Business Week, Kuttner continues to write columns for the Boston Globe.

His work has appeared in The New York Times Magazine and Book Review, The Atlantic, The New Republic, The New Yorker and Harvard Business Review, among many others. As the chief investigator of the Senate Banking Committee in the mid-1970s, Kuttner ran investigations that led to several significant pieces of legislation aimed at challenging business corruption and promoting fair-lending practices and community reinvestment. President Jimmy Carter appointed him executive director of the National Commission on Neighborhoods. Kuttner helped found and is on the board of the Economic Policy Institute. He is a distinguished senior fellow at Demos, a progressive think tank. Among his many awards, Kuttner has been the recipient of the Paul Hoffman Award of the United Nations Development Program, in recognition of his life's work on markets and social justice. His syndicated column received the John Hancock Award for business and financial writing and the Jack London Award for writing on labor.

While The Squandering of America: How the Failure of Our Politics Undermines Our Prosperity predates the current economic downturn, the book eerily foreshadows and cogently explains what is happening today. Robert Kuttner's book provides a grand summing up of the 30-year fiasco that has become American economic policy: the steady dismantling of regulatory control and oversight of the economy and the return of unfettered capitalism, extreme disparity and systemic risks facing the U.S. economy. He argues that the dismantling reflects the power of conservative ideology and the financial elites who have been able to take the questions of distributing prosperity, opportunity and economic security outside the scope of mainstream legislative debate.

Business Week described the book as "unapologetically and proudly progressive" without being "yet another screed....it's a deeply sober, highly analytical, historically informed look at economic, financial, and political trends over the past half-century." His work points us toward a return to economic sanity; one in which economic policy is the subject of democratic debate and capitalist greed is kept in check.

Link: www.squanderingofamerica.com/

BILL MOYERS AND KATHLEEN HUGHES

"Buying the War"

Bill Moyers Journal

BILL MOYERS was a founding organizer of the Peace Corps and a special assistant to President Lyndon B. Johnson. As a journalist, he has been publisher of Newsday, senior correspondent for CBS Reports and senior news analyst for the CBS Evening News. Moyers and his wife and creative partner, Judith Davidson Moyers, formed Public Affairs Television, which has produced several groundbreaking series--and their many documentaries have been highly acclaimed. Moyers also is the best-selling author of several books. He has won numerous awards, among them the Sidney Hillman Foundation Broadcast Award in 1977 and 1980 and more than 30 Emmys from the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences.

KATHLEEN HUGHES is a writer, producer and director. She has collaborated with Bill Moyers on many documentary specials. Her awards include the Emmy and the duPont Columbia Gold Baton. Her work has appeared on ABC News's Turning Point and PBS. She is currently a producer for NOW on PBS, covering such topics as bankruptcy reform, reproductive rights and chemical pollution. Hughes began her TV career as an associate producer for both Channel 13 in New York and CBS News's 60 Minutes.

In "Buying the War," Moyers and Kathleen Hughes turn their keen investigative attention to examining the role that the media played in convincing the American people to support going to war in Iraq.

And what they find is profoundly disturbing: with notable exceptions (Jonathan Landay and Warren Strobel of Knight Ridder newspapers, since acquired by The McClatchy Company), most print and TV reporters justified the war to the public by presenting as fact what was nothing more than the Bush administration's propaganda. In the wake of 9/11, it seemed unpatriotic to question the administration's veracity or the reliability of its information. And few journalists did. "Fear is in every newsroom in the country," Dan Rather tells Moyers.

"Buying the War" serves as a powerful wake-up call to news outlets caught asleep at the wheel. Following Moyers's and Hughes's lead, The New York Times recently gave front-page coverage to the role that retired military officers played in presenting the Pentagon's point of view in the media as expert analysis, without news outlets questioning sources or doubting their objectivity. This is the first award for "Buying the War." It is unlikely to be the last.

Link: http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/btw/watch.html

RAY RING

"Death in the Energy Fields"

High Country News

RAY RING is senior editor of High Country News, an independent, nonprofit, biweekly news magazine that covers the American West. Based in Bozeman, Montana (850 miles from the magazine's headquarters in Paonia, Colorado), his in-depth reporting covers politics, as well as community and environmental issues. In 2007 Ring won a George Polk Award for Political Reporting for his investigative piece on a libertarian campaign that was pushing anti-regulation ballot measures in six western states. His work has appeared in Harper's, Outside, The New York Times and the Los Angeles Times. Ring has worked as a professional uniformed firefighter, taxi driver, mechanic, small-scale logger and snowplow driver. And he is a published novelist.

In "Death in the Energy Fields: Disposable Workers of the Oil and Gas Fields," Ray Ring examines the human price--paid by death and devastating injury--of the oil and gas industry in America's interior West.

Focusing particularly on Wyoming, the nation's least populated state and its greatest energy producer, Ring describes a hurried, inordinately profitable industry, unconstrained by safety regulations and government oversight.

Through the personal stories of several killed or seriously injured workers (statistics are woefully incomplete and inaccurate), Ring paints a vivid picture of the energy industry's deadly ways.

Essentially left to regulate itself, it's a balancing act between going faster to reduce costs and increase profits and operating safely. And the act is "regularly tinged with blood."

But in a state where the energy industry dominates and regulation is an anathema, there's little chance, it seems, of taking the death toll out of the equation. Wyoming has six safety inspectors. Recently, after pressure from the governor, the legislature agreed to fund a trainer to make safety presentations to companies that request it. It would not fund even one more safety inspector. The irony of depending on potentially lethal jobs to survive is not lost on workers in the industry.

But usually, it is not news either. When Joe Laster bled to death waiting for help after the old drilling rig he was working on tore both arms from his body, Associated Press published the only story. It was 101 words long. Ring's searing tale of the energy industry's practices pays respect to those the industry has killed and maimed. And it inspires action.

Link: http://www.hcn.org/servlets/hcn.Article?article_id=16915

CHARLES DUHIGG

"Golden Opportunities"

The New York Times

CHARLES DUHIGG is a reporter for The New York Times and is based in New York City. Previously, he was a reporter with the Los Angeles Times. His work has appeared in The Washington Post, Slate, The New Republic, Cairo Times and The Albuquerque Tribune. A native of New Mexico, Duhigg studied history at Yale and received a Masters in Business Administration from Harvard.

Charles Duhigg's six-part investigative series, "Golden Opportunities," which examines how businesses and investors reap enormous profits off of the soaring ranks of older Americans, spurred public action almost immediately. Duhigg's expose led to more than two dozen government investigations, Congressional hearings and legislative inquiries in several states. His careful research has spawned a push to make significant changes to regulations and industry standards.

The series exposes the many ways that unscrupulous companies bilk the elderly, profiting at the expense of the health and economic security of countless seniors. Duhigg's revelations include the lengths to which some long-term-care insurers will go to deny paying claims. Mary Rose Derks's insurance company, for instance, concluded that she wasn't sufficiently infirm--despite dozens of hospitalizations, early dementia and her need for 37 pills a day--and denied her coverage for assisted living.

Criminal telemarketing companies, Duhigg finds, fraudulently solicit information that enables them to tap into seniors' bank accounts and clean them out. These companies begin by purchasing questionable databases. "Only one kind of customer wants to buy lists of seniors interested in lotteries and sweepstakes: criminals," notes a member of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police.

Duhigg also exposes the ways in which poorly trained financial advisers use their shoddy credentials (like "registered financial gerontologist," which are quick and easy to get) to steer trusting seniors into unwise investments. And he examines the consequences of private investment firms buying nursing homes to turn a profit: cuts in nursing staff, services, supplies and activities for the elderly. The results can be dire: Vivian Hewitt, for instance, died when a bedsore became infected with feces.

Duhigg's series is the kind of journalism that matters. He brings hard facts and personal narratives together to tell a story that not only raises awareness. It makes change happen.

Link: http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/business/series/golden_opportunites/index.html

LUIS SINCO

"The Marlboro Marine: Two lives blurred together by a photo"

Los Angeles Times

LUIS SINCO is a staff photographer with the Los Angeles Times, where he has been since 1997. Recognition for his work includes first place awards from the Associated Press News Executive Council, the Los Angeles Press Club, the National Association of Hispanic Journalists and the Asian American Journalists Association. In 2005 he was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in the category of feature photography. In 2004 Sinco was embedded with the Charlie Company of the 1st Battalion, 8th Marine Regiment.

A picture may be worth 1,000 words, but what an image says isn't always clear--as has become painfully evident with Luis Sinco's iconic photo widely known as the Marlboro Marine. Taken at dawn in Fallujah one November morning in 2004, after a night of combat, the photo of Marine Lance Corporal James Blake Miller--covered in war paint, blood trickling from his ear and nose--was splashed on the front page of more than 150 newspapers across the U.S. the next day. America was simply looking, it thought, at one of its brave heroes. And it was proud.

But this was just the beginning of Miller's tale and Sinco's involvement in it. One year after that fateful night in Fallujah, Miller was medically discharged from the Marines for a "personality disorder." Twenty-one years old, married to his high school sweetheart, he returned home to Jonancy, Kentucky, a troubled man. Sinco's photos and article (he wrote the story about Miller's life today) present a moving portrait of the very personal and profound price of war. Sinco compassionately chronicles Miller's troubles and his own involvement in trying to help. He drives Miller, more than once, to Connecticut to a treatment program for veterans with PTSD. But Miller does not stay.

There is no happy ending, just the ongoing struggle.

Once the American hero, Miller's story is now a cautionary tale, told on NPR, in Rolling Stone and elsewhere. In the Marlboro Marine, we now see the sorrow and devastation of war. Thirty percent of the troops who have seen combat in Iraq will suffer from PTSD, some experts predict. And with Sinco's Marlboro Man, we also see the powerful effect that an image can have--humanizing an experience, fueling our empathy and encouraging us to question.

Link: http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/marlboromarine/

WRITERS GUILD OF AMERICA, EAST

WRITERS GUILD OF AMERICA, WEST

Members of the Writers Guild of America, East (WGAE) and Writers Guild of America, West (WGAW) tell stories--fiction and news--that entertain and inform us. In November 2007 their story was the news.

For 100 days, 10,500 writers were on strike for an essential principle: working people have the right to be paid for the fruits of their labor. In the digital age, new distribution mechanisms, particularly the Internet, are rapidly changing the way that entertainment and news are distributed. But that doesn't alter the basic fact that work deserves compensation.

For 14 weeks, writers in the two sister unions, the WGAE and WGAW, put their creative talent and good old-fashioned labor solidarity together to garner support and pressure the media industry to respect their rights, now and into the future. In so doing, writers brought the public spotlight onto one of the fundamental issues facing working people in America today--the question of fairness. Their particular concern was earning residuals when their content is used on the Internet and in emerging new media outlets. But the issue of putting profit before people is universal.

Striking writers used new media to take on the major media conglomerates that are their bosses. Through blogs and viral videos, they got their message out and built and sustained widespread public support. And they were funny about presenting their case. Mock Congressional hearings and spoof newscasts humorously told of industry hypocrisy. While media conglomerates were claiming that it was too early to put a dollar amount on Internet content, Viacom sued YouTube for $1 billion for using its content on the Internet without paying for it.

Writers Guild members tell the stories that not only entertain us, they reflect our times and help shape how we think about the world and our place in it. Their strike experience may well inform their writing. It will definitely inspire others as they stand up to large corporations in the name of fairness and respect.

When the strike settled on February 12, 2008, writers had won contracts that provide new rights and protections for work distributed on and created for the Internet. And they had demonstrated what solidarity can do. Many unions, political leaders and public figures came together to support the writers.

The UNITE HERE Officers Award is being accepted by Michael Winship, president of the WGAE, and Patric M. Verrone, president of the WGAW, on behalf of the members of the unions.

DAVID BRODY

Professor of History Emeritus

University of California, Davis

The son of immigrant, working class parents, and David Brody's interest in labor history grew out of his own childhood and family story. Brody was one of the principal architects of "new labor history," which shifted the focus of labor scholarship onto the stories and experiences of workers. He is a member of the National Writers Union in San Francisco.

Brody is the author of numerous books and articles about working people in twentieth-century America. He is perhaps best known for his classic book The Steelworkers in America: the Nonunion Era, which deftly recaptures much of the lost history of early American industrial workers. Other prominent books of his include: Workers in Industrial America: Essays on the Twentieth-Century Struggle and his most recent, Labor Embattled: History, Power, Rights.

Brody received his Ph.D. in 1958 from Harvard University. He has held teaching positions at Ohio State University, Columbia University and the University of California at Davis. He has been a Senior Fulbright Lecturer, a National Endowment for the Humanities Fellow, a Guggenheim Fellow and a Social Science Council Research Fellow.