Noche Winners Paid Tribute to Those They Cover

In a night full of winners, the hard truth about too many of today’s Latinos, told with compassion and defiance, took center stage.

With their bold words, the winners at NAHJ’s 20th Annual Noche de Triunfos Journalism Awards Gala paid tribute to those they cover and shined a bright light on years of unpunished crimes across the border, on the hard life of farm workers, on the scourge of racial injustice, and issued a call for the U.S. to stop using the country’s immigrants as scapegoats.

The often-touching evening gave Yvette Cabrera, a columnist for the Orange County Register, a chance to explain to a ballroom packed with 275 journalists, politicians and activists the dire situation of the scores of women being murdered in Ciudad Juárez, Mexico.

“It’s hard to believe there are places in this world where a woman’s life is not valued, but Ciudad Juárez, Mexico, is one of them,” said Cabrera. “It’s a place where a woman was stabbed and those in the nearby panadería didn’t stop selling tortillas to help … One of the questions I was asked most as I worked on this story was who is committing these crimes? I can’t answer the who, but the key question is why …Why? Because more than 10 years have passed, woman after woman dies, and anyone who wants to kill knows they can get away with it.”

Cabrera made the comments laced with sadness and outrage as she accepted the Guillermo Martínez-Márquez Award for Latin American Reporting given to her and her colleague, fellow columnist Minerva Canto, for a series on the murders of women in Ciudad Juárez, Mexico.

The gala, held Sept. 15 at the Mandarin Oriental Hotel in Washington, D.C., honored journalists in 18 categories for their exemplary news coverage of the Latino community and leadership in efforts to achieve newsroom diversity.

Many of the evening’s award winners thanked their families and newsroom colleagues and reflected on their careers and those that they have covered, while others commented on important issues facing the Latino community and the media.

The Miami Herald’s Manny Garcia, honored along with his colleague Jason Grotto for their work on a story that revealed racial inequities in Florida’s justice system, told journalists not to ignore small stories.

“This project started when my editor saw a little brief in the paper,” said Garcia. “My lesson to you all is don’t ignore the little things because from that little thing, we dug deeper … and we were able to get the law changed in Florida.”

CBS News Correspondent Vince Gonzales received the ñ Award for Broadcast Journalist of the Year for his varied work as an investigative reporter, including stories about the West Coast power crisis and revealing the identity of the Unknown Soldier from the Vietnam War.

He blasted some sectors of the media and issued a call to Latino journalists to cease being timid in the defense of immigrants.

“Before Hurricane Katrina hit, according to many broadcast and cable news blowhards, the greatest threat to this nation was illegal immigration,” said Gonzales. “That is a problem, but, instead of trying to solve it, people crossing the border from Mexico were simply being demonized … it got to the point in some areas that it didn’t matter if your family was new to this country or, like mine, had been here for generations, armed vigilantes were given license to detain you and terrorize you … We [Latino journalists] need to be in America’s newsrooms, to raise our voices, to raise red flags, and to point out that it is a short hop from scapegoating people to persecuting them … We need to be there not as attack dogs, not as lapdogs, but as watchdogs as we have a responsibility when we’re in those newsrooms not just to journalism, but also to our roots.”

The Associated Press’ Juliana Barbassa received the ñ Award for Emerging Journalist of the Year and paid tribute to the farm workers she covers in the agricultural centers of Fresno and surrounding areas in California.

“All I do is write,” said Barbassa. “They are out there living it … I talked to the son of a man who died [working in the fields] and who went back to the same fields to continue picking grapes. That’s really hard. Writing that story really isn’t hard, you just have to be there.”

The evening’s Honorary Gala Chair and special presenter Geraldo Rivera, senior correspondent for the Fox News Channel, urged his colleagues not be pushed around on the issue of immigration. “There is hypocrisy because the same people hysterical against those coming in undocumented are the same people who hire them in their kitchens, nurseries and factories,” said Rivera. “I urge you not to chicken out, not to be ashamed of who you are. Bust them on their hypocrisy.”

For more information on this year’s awards gala, including a full list of the evening’s honorees and a photo gallery of the event, please visit www.nahj.org.