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I.F. Stone Award for Journalistic Independence

10.20.08 | 1 min read | Text by Steven Aftergood

On October 7, the first I.F. Stone Medal for Journalistic Independence was awarded to John Walcott, now of McClatchy Newspapers. As the Washington bureau chief for Knight Ridder, Mr. Walcott led a team of reporters including Jonathan Landay and Warren Strobel who distinguished themselves for thoughtful, critical and skeptical news coverage of the lead-up to the war in Iraq.

The award ceremony served as an occasion for an assessment of the state of journalistic independence, and an attempt to derive the lessons of the recent past. The highlights of the ensuing discussion were presented by Dan Froomkin of the Nieman Watchdog in “The Lessons of our Failure,” October 17.

The I.F. Stone Award is administered by the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard University along with the Nieman Watchdog.

A rich archive devoted to the life and work of I.F. Stone may be found here.

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