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First, as far as the signers of the letter with whom I’ve spoken (Bob Lederer of Poz also circulated it) are concerned, the names of the judges who made this particular decision are not the issue. Our concern is that NLGJA have an awards process that is fair and which supports the goals of the organization, one of which is to promote coverage based, as the group’s brochure puts it, on “knowledge and truthfulness.”
In this context I find the notion that the judging should not include any consideration of a piece’s accuracy to be rather puzzling. I’ve always thought that a journalist’s first responsibility is to get the facts right, whether those facts are going into a news story or into a commentary. While no one would expect the judges to fact check every line, it doesn’t seem too much to ask that a piece receiving an award at least be in the ballpark in terms of accuracy.
Accuracy counts–especially when the issues we’re covering are literally matters of life and death.
