Read the magazine online (PDF) - Committee to Protect Journalists

The Committee | The Scene
Dinner at the Waldorf
A black-tie benefit becomes a fixture on the New York media calendar—and a
reminder of the sacrifices made by journalists worldwide.
By Geraldine Fabrikant Metz
Joseph Lelyveld, left, shown with fellow Burton Benjamin Awardee John F. Burns, says
the dinner serves as a reminder of the long struggle against repression.
For Zeljko Kopanja, accepting his
International Press Freedom
Award from the Committee to
Protect Journalists was a difficult and
painful task. But he was determined to
attend the annual benefit dinner and
walk up the steps to the stage of New
York’s Waldorf-Astoria hotel by himself
to claim the award.
Kopanja, co-founder and editor of
Nezavisne Novine, an independent
daily in Bosnia Herzegovina, had lost
both of his legs when a car bomb
went off outside his home in Banja
Geraldine Fabrikant Metz is a staff
writer for The New York Times and a
CPJ board member.
Luka in 1999. The bomb was an
attempt to silence the Bosnian Serb
journalist whose paper had been
aggressively chronicling Serbian murders
of Bosnian Muslims.
Kopanja would not give up. He
would not be silenced. His decision to
accept CPJ’s award himself, struggling
to reach the stage with the use of
prostheses, reflected his attitude to
his life’s work, which he continued
without the use of his limbs. That
November evening in 2000, the 46-
year-old journalist told the 800 guests
that it was “worth sacrificing a part of
me for the truth, since without ascertaining
the truth there is neither peace
nor freedom.”
CPJ
CPJ’s annual dinner celebrates some
of the world’s bravest journalists.
Many have served time in prison for
their work. One honoree, Cuban Manuel
Vázquez Portal, told the audience that
he came to New York with “the smell of
jail on my skin.”
Two honorees ultimately lost their
lives because of their fierce drive to
reveal the truth. Veronica Guerin, the
Irish reporter who covered the activities
of organized crime in Dublin, won
a press freedom award in 1995. Just
one year later, she was murdered by
those she threatened to expose.
Mazen Dana, a Palestinian photographer,
was honored in 2001 for his
photojournalism on the front lines in
Hebron. Dana, the first cameraman to
receive the award, had already been
wounded several times in the course
of his work. He was killed two years
later when a U.S. soldier shot him
while he was working in Iraq.
For American journalists, the
evening is a powerful reminder of how
crucial the daily work of reporting can
be in countries where oppressed people
are seeking freedom.
“I had a magazine editor tell me
that, ‘This is the night each year when
I feel best about being a journalist,’“
recalled Ann Cooper, former CPJ executive
director. “You are reminded of
just how important journalism is all
over the world.”
For hundreds of other guests who
know little about journalism, or even
why journalists do what they do, the
evening provides vivid examples of
how reporters struggle against deeply
corrupt governments around the
world to help make freedom more
than a dream. Many of these journalists
come from places and experiences
that most of us could not imagine.
In some instances, the spotlight
of the press freedom award has
helped to save them.
Vázquez Portal was finally released
from a Cuban jail in 2004 after an
aggressive campaign on his behalf
that included efforts by CPJ. Today,
the power of the committee and its
central role in battles to help journalists
around the world is enabled in
large part by the $1.3 million raised at
the annual dinner. That amount
accounts for about 45 percent of the
annual budget.
When the benefit was initiated 15
years ago, a decade after the birth of
the committee itself, it was not nearly
the stellar, or lucrative, event that it
has become.
“There was not a lot of enthusiasm
at all for it,” recalled James Goodale,
then the committee’s chairman and
still a board member. “It was a blacktie
evening and there was a lot of
debate about whether it was appropriate
for journalists to dress up in black
tie for an elegant event when they
were discussing press freedom.”
Goodale remembers worrying that
some friends he had asked to attend
the event, initially held at the Pierre
Hotel, “would be angry at me for getting
them to go to a benefit that they
didn’t like.” But when a prominent
guest told him that she had been
“knocked out” by the evening, he said,
“that made me realize that we were on
to something.’‘
Even with some positive initial
reaction, the first years were disorganized.
“When Barbara Walters
walked in as a guest at the Pierre, I
walked up to her and said, ‘How would
you like to introduce some of the foreign
journalists,’“ Goodale recalled.
“She said that she would be thrilled to
CPJ
Bosnian Serb editor Zeljko Kopanja is greeted by CPJ board member Kati Marton as
he reaches the stage.
do it. We did not have a stage. I stood
next to my table to make the introductions
and no one would shut up—
but it worked.”
Still, the evening needed an experienced
director. So after NBC News
anchor Tom Brokaw got up one night
and quieted the crowd, he ended up
running the program for several
years, Goodale said.
Of course, the emotional impact of
these evenings meant that many
went on far too long. Some ran past 11
p.m. as recipients spoke movingly of
what they had been through and how
much the award meant to them. Ultimately,
Cooper and others hit on a
plan to give presenters and recipients
time limits and to assist in editing
their speeches.
Whatever their length, the dinners
are always powerful events. They also
serve as important reminders, said
Joseph Lelyveld, former executive editor
of The New York Times and recipient
of CPJ’s annual Burton Benjamin
Memorial Award for lifetime service.
“In country after country,” he told a
rapt crowd in 2001, “repression actually
wins for years, even decades at a
time. When these people come face to
face with a demand that they silence
themselves, they know their duty: They
publish, they broadcast at great personal
risk.” In the United States, he said,
journalists do not face threats to their
lives or livelihoods. For them, “the duty
is to find out what is really going on
and to commit resources to uncovering
what’s being unreasonably withheld in
the name of national security.”
It is also our obligation to help
journalists around the world do their
jobs. That is the mandate of the Committee
to Protect Journalists and the
reason that the annual dinner is so
crucial toward delivering that aid. ■
8 Fall | Winter 2006 Dangerous Assignments
9