The John Peter Zenger &
Anna Catherine Zenger Award
For Freedom of the Press
And The People's Right To Know
1998
Sen. Patrick J.
Leahy
Tucson, Arizona
May
5,
1999
Previous Zenger Award Winners:
1990
1989
1988
1987
1986
1985
1984
1982
Patrick Leahy
Senator (D -VT)
Mark Goodman
Executive Director of the Student Press Law Center
Nat Hentoff
Columnist, Washington Post
Ben H. Bagdikian
Reporter and Editor
Investigative Reporters & Editors - Rosemary Armao and Deborah Nelson
Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press
Jane E. Kirtley
Helen Thomas
United Press International
Peter Arnett
Cable News Network
Terry A. Anderson
The Associated Press
Robert C. Maynard
The Oakland Tribune
Jean H. Otto
Editorial Page Editor, The Rocky Mountain News
Eugene L. Roberts, Jr. Executive Editor, The Philadelphia Inquirer
John R. Finnegan
Editor, St. Paul (Minn.) Pioneer Press and Dispatch
Thomas Winship
The Boston Globe
Tom Wicker
Associate Editor, The New York Times
Fred W. Friendly
Edward R. Murrow Professor Emeritus,
1981
1980
1979
Paul S. Cousley
Walter Cronkite
Jack C. Landau
1998
1997
19%
1995
1994
1993
1992
1991
1978
1977
1976
1975
1974
1973
1972
1971
1970
1969
1968
1967
1966
1965
1964
1963
1962
1961
1960
1959
1958
Robert H. Estabrook
Robert W. Greene
Donald F. Bolles
Seymour M. Hersh
Thomas E. Gish
Katharine Graham
Dan Hicks Jr.
1957
James R. Wiggins
1956
1955
James S. Pope
Basil L. Walters
1954
E. Palmer Hoyt
The New York Times
Erwin D. Canham
J. Edward Murray
Wes Gallagher
John S. Knight
Arthur Krak
Columbia Graduate School of Journalism
Publisher, Alton (Ill.) Telegraph
CBS
Executive Director,
Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press
Lakeville Journal
Newsday
The Arizona Republic
The New York Times
Editor and Publisher, The Mountain Eagle
Publisher, The Washington Post
Editor, Monroe County Democrat
Editor -in- Chief, The Christian Science Monitor
Managing Editor, The Arizona Republic
General Manager, The Associated Press
Knight Newspapers, Inc.
The New York Times
Eugene C. Pulliam
Publisher, The Arizona Republic and Phoenix Gazette
John Netherland Heiskell
Publisher, Arkansas Gazette
James B. Reston
Chief Washington I3ureau, The New York Times
John H. Colburn
Managing Editor, Richmond (Va.) Times -Dispatch
Clark R. Mollenhoff
Washington, Cowles Publications
Virgil M. Newton Jr.
Managing Editor, Tampa (Ha.) Tribune
Herbert Brucker
Editor, Hartford Courant
John E. Moss
Chairman of US House Governmental Information Subcommittee
(http://www.johnemossfoundation.org/)
Vice President, Executive Editor of the Washington (D.C.)
Post and Times Herald
Executive Editor, Louisville Courier Journal
Executive Editor, Chicago Daily News and Knight
Newspapers
Editor and Publisher, The Denver Post
Zenger Award Winners and Speeches On Line: http: lljournalirm.arizona.edulzenger
2
Remarks Of
Senator Patrick Leahy
Recipient of the John Peter And
Anna Catherine Zenger Award
School of Journalism, University of Arizona
May 5, 1999
-
Professor Patten and Dean Smith, it is a great pleasure to have this connection
to you and to the students and faculty of the Department of Journalism, to this prestigious award, and to the distinguished company of its previous recipients. I only
regret that the Senate is in session and I cannot be with you tonight, instead of here
in Washington.
-
-
am the son of a struggling printer in Montpelier, Vermont
not unlike, in many
ways, John Peter Zenger in his time
so I come bye my abiding concern about
press freedom honestly. And I wish my father were able to be here to share this
moment, in particular.
I
The culture of Vermont also nourishes the love of liberty and press freedom in
those of us lucky enough to live in the Green Mountain State. We have a strong
tradition of independence and a commitment to the Bill of Rights. Vermont's own
constitution is based on our commitment to freedom and our belief that it is best
protected by open debate. In fact, Vermont did not join the Union until the Bill of
Rights was added to the Constitution.
Vermont sent Matthew Lyon to Congress and he cast Vermont's decisive vote for
the election of Thomas Jefferson. He was the same House member who was the
target of a shameful prosecution under the Sedition Act of 1789 for comments
made in a private letter. And Vermont's voice for personal freedom was heard loud
and clear in the dark days of McCarthyism, when Senator Ralph Flanders stood up
for democracy and in opposition to the repressive tactics of Joseph McCarthy.
Freedom of speech and of the press is one of the magnificent bequests that the citizens of this millennium make to those who will live in the millennia to follow.
These rights that we so easily take for granted in our society are not even three cen-
3
tunes old. They are fragile, needing the protection and defense of each generation.
The erosion of speech protections can easily come when lawmakers succumb to the
temptation to pander to fleeting public passions, instead of to the public good. In
any session of Congress you do not have to look far to see this dynamic at work.
Right now, in the Senate, several of us are fending off an attempt to amend the Bill
of Rights for the first time in our history, under the popular garment of a proposed
constitutional amendment to empower Congress to ban flag desecration. It is not
and it never will be.
politically popular to defend against erosive efforts like this
-
There is a NEW emerging field of battle in the struggle to preserve speech freedom:
the Internet. And here, too, we in the United States have a special opportunity and
obligation to defend speech freedom. The United States has largely incubated the
Internet during its infancy, and when we act to regulate the Internet, the world
watches.
Democracy and freedom of expression move in tandem, one fueling the other.
Neither survives alone. We have seen again and again that as countries move
toward freer, more open societies, the rights of the press and the public to speak
freely ... increase.
New computer technologies like the Internet are proving to be vital tools for resisting totalitarian regimes. Just look at what has happened in Bosnia: In 1996, pro democracy activists set up Web sites and used the Internet to publish uncensored
news and to fight back when President Slobadan Milosevic annulled local election
results in Bosnia. Later the Serbian leadership capitulated and restored the election
results.
And since the conflict in Kosovo started, the Internet has been a life -line for those
thirsting for uncensored information.
Totalitarian regimes fully appreciate the power of the Internet to give their citizens
unfettered access information from everywhere. That is why we see efforts springing up across the globe
from China to Singapore to Burma
to cut off those
countries from the Internet by creating internal "inter- nets," so that governments
can censor and control the electronic information reaching the computer screens of
their people.
-
-
Here in the United States, in bookstores and on library shelves, the protections of
the First Amendment are clear, even for indecent speech. They are less evident at
this early stage of the evolution of the Internet. But altering the protections of the
First Amendment for on -line communications could cripple this new mode of communication.
4
When the going gets rough, and the choices get tough, too often people who should
know better are willing to compromise the free speech rights which were so dearly won, and which are so easily lost. Today's challenges to press and speech freedom are not always as stark as the trial of John Peter Zenger, but that makes our
diligence all the more important. Times will come in the careers of each of you
when your diligence will be tested in defense of free speech.
We are blessed in the United States to enjoy the oldest and most effective constitutional protections of free speech anywhere. We should be providing cultural leadership to the world in how to use the Internet to its fullest, rather than ever offering
the world a model of censorship. Giving full -force to the First Amendment on -line
would be a victory for the First Amendment, for American technology and for
democracy.
-
-
in keeping the flame of press
Thank you, again, for your role past and present
generosity to a Vermont
you
for
your
freedom as robust as it is today, and thank
printer's son.
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