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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Contacts:

Joel Kaplan, Contest Committee chairman, 315-443-1429
IRE offices - Len Bruzzese, 573-882-2042

Complete listings of winning news organizations and journalists, as well as finalists.

Videostreamed excerpts from television category winners.

April 3, 2001

WINNERS NAMED IN 2000 IRE AWARDS

COLUMBIA, Mo. - The Nation magazine and WTVF-Nashville took top honors in the 2000 IRE Awards, Investigative Reporters and Editors, Inc. announced today.

Winning the prestigious IRE medals were Jamie Lincoln Kitman of The Nation and Phil Williams and Bryan Staples of WTVF.

The annual awards recognize outstanding investigative work in print, broadcast, online media and for work furthering freedom of information.

The Nation won in the magazine/specialty publication division for "The Secret History of Lead," in which Kitman documents how American businesses produced and marketed leaded gasoline even though they knew there were safer alternatives. The contest judges remarked on how the work read like classic turn-of-the-century muckraking.

"The research manifested here is nothing short of breaktaking," the judges reported.

WTVF won a medal in the television category for below top 20 markets. Williams and photographer Staples investigated the work of off-duty Nashville police officers and soon discovered unethical activities by high-ranking officers that eventually led to resignations and changes in police regulations. The contest judges called it "an outstanding example of dogged local reporting" despite threats to Williams and his family.

"He went after one of the most powerful institutions in any town and broke the blue line by getting police officers to talk about their superiors," they said.

The Freedom of Information Award went to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution for seeking Olympic organizing committee documents - and not giving up. The paper was joined in its efforts by the state attorney general and ultimately Congress.

"The paper produced a remarkable series of stories that gave readers an incredible behind-the-scenes look at the Olympics and its organizers," said the judges. The FOI Award comes with an IRE medal.

The Tom Renner Award - for outstanding crime reporting - was given to KCBS-Los Angeles, where Joel Grover and Jennifer Cobb showed how corrupt doctors, nurses and street hustlers were defrauding the California Medicaid program. Judges called the work gutsy, smart and powerful. The Renner Award comes with an IRE medal and a $1,000 prize.

An IRE certificate was awarded for the first time in the online category, which was introduced last year. The Center for Public Integrity was named for "Our Private Legislatures," in which financial disclosure documents for legislators from all 50 states were gathered and made available in a database.

Others certificate winners:

• 60 Minutes II for "First Casualty," an investigation into the fate of a Navy pilot shot down in Operation Desert Storm.
• Dateline NBC for "The Paper Chase," an examination of the insurance industry’s process of reviewing patient records.
• KHOU-Houston for "Treading on Danger?" The station led the charge in investigating Firestone tires on Ford Explorers.
• The Orange County Register for "The Body Brokers," which details the $500 million-a-year industry in donated body parts.
• The Detroit News for "Detroit Fire Department: Out of Service," in which fire department shortcomings are linked to deaths.
• Naples Daily News for "Stadium Naples," for documenting corrupt dealings involving a golf-stadium development.
• Ted Gup for his Doubleday book "The Book of Honor: Covert Lives and Classified Deaths at the CIA."
• Living on Earth from NPR for, Ingrid Lobet’s "Beneath Native Land: Occidental Petroleum in South America."
• University of Missouri student Scott M. Finn writing for the Charleston Gazette about how campaign contributions, lobbyist spending and personal financial interests affect the West Virginia Legislature. The student certificate comes with a $1,000 cash scholarship.

The awards will be presented during a June 16 luncheon at the IRE National Conference in Chicago. The conference, to be held June 14-17 at the Chicago Hyatt-Regency, will feature many of the winners speaking about the techniques they used to develop their stories.

IRE is a nonprofit professional organization dedicated to training and supporting investigative journalists and is based at the Missouri School of Journalism.

Copies of all contest entries are available from the IRE Resource Center, 573-882-3364.

Complete listings of winning news organizations and journalists, as well as finalists.

Videostreamed excerpts from television category winners.