Not in Vengeance, But to Inform Item Type text; Pamphlet Authors Greene, Robert W. Publisher The University of Arizona Press (Tucson, AZ) Rights Copyright © Arizona Board of Regents Download date 09/10/2021 18:14:01 Link to Item http://hdl.handle.net/10150/583147 72v=sn5nnnsnnnnkt THE JOHN PETER ZENGER AWARD FOR FREEDOM OF THE PRESS AND THE PEOPLE'S RIGHT TO KNOW O 1977 O -% 4 I t-r I, >r> > 3 k NOT IN VENGEANCE, BUT TO INFORM An Address by ROBERT W. GREENE ,A.n.v...;gnan;gn'annag:,5=gan THE JOHN PETER ZENGER AWARD FOR FREEDOM OF THE PRESS AND THE PEOPLE'S RIGHT TO KNOW 1977 NOT IN VENGEANCE BUT TO INFORM An Address by ROBERT W. GREENE THE UNIVERSITY OF ARIZONA PRESS Tucson, Arizona PREVIOUSLY HONORED 1976 Donald F. Bolles, Arizona Republic 1975 Seymour M. Hersh, The New York Times 1974 Thomas E. Gish, Editor and Publisher, The Mountain Eagle 1973 Katharine Graham, Publisher, The Washington Post 1972 Dan Hicks, Jr., Editor, Monroe County Democrat 1971 A.M. Rosenthal, Managing Editor, The New York Times 1970 Erwin D. Canham, Editor in Chief, The Christian Science Monitor 1969 J. Edward Murray, Managing Editor, The Arizona Republic 1968 Wes Gallagher, The Associated Press 1967 John S. Knight, Knight Newspapers, Inc. 1966 Arthur Krock, The New York Times 1965 Eugene C. Pulliam, Publisher, Arizona Republic and Phoenix Gazette 1964 John Netherland Heiskell, Publisher, Arkansas Gazette 1963 James B. Reston, Chief, Washington Bureau, The New York Times 1962 John H. Colburn, Managing Editor, Richmond (Va.) Times -Dispatch 1961 Clark R. Mollenhoff, Washington, Cowles Publications 1960 Virgil M. Newton, Jr., Managing Editor, Tampa (Fla.) Tribune 1959 Herbert Brucker, Editor, Hartford Courant 1958 John E. Moss, Chairman of House Government Information subcommittee 1957 James R. Wiggnins, Vice -President, Executive Editor of the Washington (D.C.) Post and Times Herald 1956 James S. Pope, Executive Editor, Louisville Courier -Journal 1955 Basil L. Walters, Executive Editor, Chicago Daily News and Knight Newspapers 1954 Palmer Hoyt, Editor and Publisher, Denver Post FOREWORD The IRE team came from many directions, and we at the universities in Arizona are proud to have played a part through our students. Students from the University of Arizona and Arizona State University were full members of the team. I would like to recognize them now. From Arizona State University: Nina Bondarook, Carol Jackson, Mike Padgett, Mike Tulumello. From the University of Arizona: Rob Wilson, Jody Schreiber (now Mrs. Rob Wilson), Bob Rast, Paul Wattles, Captain Eugene McKinney. It was Allen H. Neuharth, president of Gannett Co., who said that John Peter Zenger "won for all America the right to know the truth -even the unpleasant truth." This is the 24th time that we have gathered to give this award to someone who has followed in the footsteps of the Colonial printer and patriot. Robert W. Greene and his IRE team told it like it was, and sometimes it was unpleasant. I am reminded of the words of a non -journalist, Harry Truman, who was asked by a reporter in 1948: "Did you really give 'em hell on that last campaign trip, Harry ?" "Nope," replied Mr. Truman. "I simply told the truth. They think it's hell." Greene was elected a member of the Board of Directors of the Investigative Reporters and Editors Group (IRE) in June 1976 and has served as president since March 1977. At the request of the IRE, he put together an investigative team composed of 36 reporters representing 24 newspapers, CBS Radio and KGUN -TV of Tucson, to go to Arizona to prepare a series of stories on the background of the state in which Don Bolles, the investigative reporter for the Arizona Republic, was assassinated. Reporters from the Chicago Tribune, Detroit News, Denver Post, and Milwaukee Journal worked alongside re- [5] THE JOHN PETER ZENGER AWARD -1977 porters from the Arizona Daily Star, Elyria (Ohio) Chronicle and the We- natchee (Wash.) World. Under Greene's direction in Arizona, team members worked seven-day weeks, 14 -hour days starting Sept. 24, 1976, and ending March 1, 1977. Greene forged the chain. It proved unbreakable. The Arizona project was a unique experiment in American journalism resulting in a 23 -part series carried widely throughout the U.S. Greene became Suffolk editor of Newsday in 1973 after serving as senior editor in charge of Newsday's prize- winning investigative team. He origi- nated and refined the concept of a permanent investigative team in 1967 and since then had functioned as the chief of the team's daily operations in ad- dition to reporting and writing with fellow team members. From 1969 -1975, this team won more recognized professional awards, including the 1970 and 1974 Pulitzer Prize Gold Medals for Distinguished Public Service, than any other similar unit in the history of American journalism. Greene began his journalistic career in 1949 as a reporter for the Jersey Journal in Jersey City. From 1950 until 1955, he served as senior staff inves- tigator with the New York City Anti -Crime Committee specializing in or- ganized crime. In 1957, at the request of the late Sen. Robert F. Kennedy, Greene took a one -year leave of absence from Newsday and served on the staff of the U.S. Senate Labor Rackets Committee, heading a staff of inves- tigators working on the ties between the Teamsters and organized crime in the New York City area. In 1969, Greene led an investigative reporting team that won for Newsday a Pulitzer Prize for its three -year investigation and exposure of secret land deals in eastern Long Island, which led to a series of criminal convictions, discharges and resignations among public and political officeholders in the area. Again, in 1974, Newsday won another Pulitzer gold medal for public service for the work of another investigating team under Greene's direction. This award was for "The Heroin Trail," a 32 -part series published in 1973, which traced the drug from Turkish poppy fields to French processors to dealers in New York City and Long Island. In all, since its inception in 1967, the investigative team during Greene's tenure won 20 top journalistic honors. Not all of Greene's assignments for Newsday have been in the investigative field. He covered the Presidential campaigns of 1964, 1968 and 1972, the Democratic national conventions of 1960, 1964 and 1968 and the Republican national convention of 1968. In 1969, Greene was in Los Angeles for 110 days covering the trial of Sirhan Sirhan for the assassination of Sen. Robert Kennedy. And in mid -1969 [6] FOREWORD he headed up a reporting team seeking details of the fatal accident in Chap - paquiddick, involving Sen. Edward Kennedy. He was born July 12, 1929, in New York City and attended Fordham University. He is married and the father of two children. Mr. Greene, it is my pleasure, and the honor of the University of Arizona, to present to you the 1977 John Peter Zenger Award for outstanding service in support of press freedom and the people's right to know. George W. Ridge, Jr. January 21, 1978 [7] NOT IN VENGEANCE, BUT TO INFORM An Address by ROBERT W. GREENE My name is Greene. I am a reporter and an editor. I am here to speak about the tradition of public service reporting. The responsible exercise of this tradition has earned the communications media its memorable moments of greatness. Callous disregard of this tradition has occasionally exposed us as venal, craven and manipulated. Public service reporting is reporting that goes beyond appearance and penetrates to reality. Much of public service reporting is not investigative reporting, although that is part of it. Public service reporting is also what, in America's myriad city rooms, we used to call hard -nosed reporting: asking the impolite question, demanding to see a certain government file instead of having it read to us, refusing to accept words and platitudes as a substitute for facts, checking the veracity of statements and claims before we commit them to print. Public service reporting is also depth reporting: careful collection of all available facts which are then placed in the context of history and current mores so as to present a penetrating look at particular problems and events. Public service reporting is also investigative reporting: the uncovering of facts which people or groups are consciously trying to keep secret. All forms of public service reporting are difficult and frequently unpopular. Investigative reporting is often dangerous as well. At best the investigative reporter toils along an uphill path strewn with legal obstacles and packed with hidden traps. The investigative reporter can afford few friends, constantly worries his or her editors, and is a frequent source of social embarrassment to his or her publisher. Most of these uphill paths lead nowhere and must be laboriously reclimbed to other turnings. And all too often when the investiga- tive reporter reaches the top, his or her reward is a minefield of spurious law suits, judicial demands for the betrayal of sources, the threat of imprisonment, and occasionally, assassination. Don Bolles of Arizona is not the only member of our media to die because he sought to find and report the truth. [9] THE JOHN PETER ZENGER AWARD -1977 There was Socrates, the preeminent commentator on his times, who sipped from the bowl of hemlock rather than retract the truth as he had reported it. There was Christ, The Man, the ultimate teacher and commentator on the raison d'etre of existence, who chose death by crucifixion rather than renounce His truth. There was, in our own nation, Elijah Parish Lovejoy of Illinois, the editor, who persisted in telling the truth about the horrors of slavery and was shot to death at his presses by an angry, pro -slavery mob.