2006 Mongerson Prize Winners

Brian Thevenot and Gordon Russell won the 2006 Mongerson Prize--Print Category for their story "Rape-Murder-Gunfights" that corrected reports in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. Specifically, they corrected exaggerated accounts of looting, rapes and murder both in New Orleans and the SuperDome.

John Stossel and Melissa Cornick's ABC "20/20" report, "Cruelty to Owners?" won the 2006 Mongerson Prize--Electronic Category. The story looked at how animal advocacy groups were able to use local media outlets to their advantage. Many of the stories mischaracterized accusations of cruelty by owners and made efforts by animal groups to take animals from their owners as heroic. The story revealed that the actions by the groups often violated the owners’ “due process” rights.

In addition, three Award of Distinction winners were named:

• Mark Mazzetti and Borzou Daragahi were honored for their story, "U.S. Military Covertly Pays to Run Stories in Iraqi Press." This was one of the first stories to show how the Defense Department was writing stories for publication in the Iraqi press and then paying to ensure that they ran.
  
• David Barstow and Robin Stein won an Award of Distinction for their story, "The Message Machine," which looked at the use of video news releases by television news stations. The story showed how the U.S. government was producing news stories, which the stations were running them without acknowledging the source of the stories.
  
• Eamon Javers was honored for his story, "Op-Eds for Sale," which first ran on BusinessWeek.com and later ran in the print version of BusinessWeek. In it, Javers looked at how Jack Abramoff hired think tank scholars to write op-ed pieces that were favorable to Abramoff's clients.

The judges also honored two news organizations for their work with Citations of Excellence

• The Bakersfield Californian was honored for its internal investigation of the reporting of one of its writers who was accused of plagiarism.
  
• GradeTheNews.org was honored for its work to look at incorrect, inaccurate and misleading stories in the San Francisco Bay area. Their entry looked at a salesperson who would write positive restaurant reviews in the paper where he worked to reward businesses who ran ads with him.
  

2005 Mongerson Prize Winners

Michael Massing of The New York Review of Books, won the 2005 Mongerson Prize for his series “Now They Tell Us” in The New York Review of Books. In it, Massing questioned the media’s acceptance of the Bush administration’s claims that weapons of mass destruction existed in Iraq. “Thoroughly reported and clearly written, the stories put journalistic failings in context and serve as a cautionary tale for newsrooms,” the judges said in naming Massing the winner.

In addition, three Award of Distinction winners were named:

• Jonathan S. Landay and Tish Wells of Knight Ridder Newspapers were honored for their story, "Iraqi Exiles Fed Exaggerated Tips to News Media," which showed how 108 news stories had incorrect information due to Iraqi sources.
  
• Pete Slover of the Dallas Morning News won an Award of Distinction for his entry "Dan Rather's Doubts." In the series of three stories, Slover points out errors in the memos used in a "60 Minutes Wednesday" story about George W. Bush's Texas National Guard service. For example, an officer named in one of the memos had retired 18 months before the date on the memo. In addition, Slover was the first to report that the secretary who would have typed the memos called them fakes.
  
• Stephen Jimenez, Glenn Silber and Elizabeth Vargas of ABC's "20/20" were honored for their hour-long report "A Murder in Laramie: The Mystery and the Myth." The story looks back at the murder of Matthew Shepard. Witness now say that Shepard was beaten as part of a robbery for drug money and was not the victim of an anti-gay hate crime.

2004 Mongerson Prize Winners

Howard Kurtz, media reporter for the Washington Post, won the 2004 Mongerson Prize for breaking the story about Jayson Blair's plagiarism in The New York Times. Jim Avila of NBC Nightly News and Washington Post ombudsman Michael Getler each won a $1,000 award of distinction. The staff of the San Antonio Express-News was given a Citation of Excellence.

• Howard Kurtz's series of stories "Scandal at The New York Times" covered the initial reports about Jayson Blair's plagiarism at the New York Times. Kurtz investigated further to find other sources who said they never had spoken to Blair yet were named as sources in Blair's stories. Kurtz followed the internal investigation at The New York Times, including the resignation of writer Rick Bragg for using stringers to do the bulk of the reporting in some of his stories.
• For his story, "Jessica Lynch: Fact and Fiction," Jim Avila of NBC Nightly News went back to the site where Lynch had been held to correct inaccuracies in both the initial reports about her capture as well as follow-up stories that questioned the conditions surrounding her rescue. (Medill graduate Heidi Barker was the producer on this story.)
• Michael Getler was given an award of distinction for eight columns he wrote as ombudsman for the Washington Post. In them, Getler questioned reporters' tendency to take government and military sources on their face instead of investigating further. He specifically looked at reporters' coverage of Pfc. Jessica Lynch's rescue and the coverage of the war in Iraq.
• The staff of the San Antonio Express-News was given a Citation of Excellence for its work to expose the plagiarism of Jayson Blair for the New York Times.

2003 Mongerson Prize Winners

ABC "20/20" correspondent John Stossel and producer Kristina Kendall won the 2003 prize for their investigation of overhyped "scare stories" like shark attacks and road rage. Salon.com's Brendan Nyhan and Allan Wolper of Editor & Publisher each won a $1,000 award of distinction.

• John Stossel and Kristina Kendall's "20/20" segment, "Extreme Reality," examined the mainstream media's tendency to overstate problems like road rage and shark attacks in order to add an unwarranted urgency to their stories.
• "The Big NEA-September 11^th Lie" by Brendan Nyhan of Spinsanity for Salon.com debunked the myth that the National Education Association advocated a "blame America" approach to teaching students about the 9/11 terrorist attacks, a myth picked up by many major media outlets.
• Allan Wolper's Editor & Publisher column, "On the Wrong Beat," scrutinized the relationship between the Chicago Sun-Times and the Chicago Police Department, in which reporters handed over unsolicited source material to the police and reported on the subsequent investigation without mentioning their role.

2002 Mongerson Winners

Baltimore Sun media reporter David Folkenflik won the 2002 prize for his investigation of Fox News Channel reporter Geraldo Rivera's coverage of the war in Afghanistan. The Nation's Michael Massing and Wall Street Journal reporter Matthew Rose each won a $1,000 award of distinction.

• David Folkenflik's piece, "War News from Rivera Seems Off the Mark," found inconsistencies in Geraldo Rivera's coverage of the war in Afghanistan. Among them, Rivera said that he reported from a site where Americans and Afghans perished due to friendly fire.
• "Where Germs Rule," by Michael Massing for The Nation, scrutinized the tone of New York Times anthrax coverage by reporters whose book on biological weapons had just been released.
• Matthew Rose's story, "In War's Early Phase, News Media Showed a Tendency to Misfire," debunked a series of media myths that appeared in the early days of America's campaign in Afghanistan. These myths included stories about the Taliban's popular support and the futility of air strikes.