Journalistic courage gets special notice.

Byline: Jim Godbold / The Register-Guard

AT A TIME WHEN shooting the messenger seems to be everyone's favorite sport (I wonder how it would do as a video game), it's refreshing to find examples of inspirational journalistic performance.

There's a very cool awards program at the University of Oregon School of Journalism and Communication that recognizes journalists for hanging tough and doing the right thing in spite of often intense pressure to bail.

Profiles in courage, if you will. Courage to publish or broadcast important information in the face of criticism from powerful adversaries. Courage to defend crucial principles and convictions when expediency suggests an easier, softer way. Courage to say no, even when that refusal could lead to incarceration.

That's the kind of backbone judges of the third annual Payne Awards for Ethics in Journalism found in Jay Harris, Voice of America and KOMU-TV in Columbia, Mo.

The Payne Awards were established at the UO School of Journalism by Ancil Payne, former president of King Broadcasting Co. of Portland and Seattle. The awards honor journalists who "encourage public trust in the media by courageously practicing the highest standards of their profession in the face of political or economic pressures."

Harris, former publisher of the San Jose Mercury News, is the 2002 winner in the professional category. Harris stood the newspaper world on its ear when he resigned in the wake of demands for higher profit margins from Knight-Ridder, corporate owner of the Mercury News. The dramatic departure of one of the industry's most respected publishers from a major metropolitan newspaper did more than any other thing to raise the profile of the quality vs. profits debate in American journalism.

The 2002 winner in the news organization category is Voice of America, the U.S. government-funded news and information service. I've never had a clue about VOA or its mission. I always assumed it was a puppet American propaganda arm of another U.S. agency with a three-letter abbreviation.

Wrong. VOA won the Payne Award for its fight to air an interview with Mullah Mohammed Omar, spiritual leader of the Taliban, despite fierce opposition by the State Department. Powerful bigshots in the National Security Council and State Department went ballistic at the thought of VOA giving a "platform" to a terrorist.

The courage part: VOA went ahead and broadcast a report that included material from its interview with Mullah Omar, upholding its charter to be "accurate, objective and comprehensive."

Here's a tidbit from VOA's Web site that gives you a hint of what the outfit's made of: The first VOA broadcast originated from New York City on Feb. 24, 1942, just 79 days after the United States entered World War II. Speaking in German, announcer William Harland Hale told his listeners, "Here speaks a voice from America. Every day at this time we will bring you the news of the war. The news may be good. The news may be bad. We shall tell you the truth."

A special award was given this year to honor university and college media. The winner was KOMU-TV8, a financially independent commercial station owned by the University of Missouri in Columbia. Amid the patriotic fervor and flag waving that emerged on many television news sets after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, KOMU News Director Stacey Woelfel made a controversial decision.

Woelfel resisted the temptation to jump on the red, white and blue bandwagon, instead affirming the station's commitment to unbiased journalism. Patriotic symbols were not permitted to be displayed on the air.

Not surprisingly, the decision supremely ticked off a lot of people. Powerful people. The station lost advertisers, and the legislature cut funding in response to Woelfel's policy.

Smarter people than yours truly will have to decide if short-term patriotic displays in the wake of something as horrific as the Sept. 11 attacks do lasting damage to journalistic impartiality. I certainly wrestled with the question before my emotions won out and I taped a flag poster in the window of my truck. Had second thoughts a few weeks later and took it down.

But there is an important principle at work here that speaks to a core value of journalism. Associating ourselves with powerful symbols directly connected to a news event can project an impression that we've made up our minds prior to investigation.

Woelfel didn't want KOMU viewers to get such an impression and had the courage to take an extraordinary stand, under the circumstances, to protect a principle.

The Payne selection committee also issued two special citations, one to prospective author Vanessa Leggett in the professional category, and the other to WPCO-TV in Cincinnati for an investigative documentary on Cincinnati's deteriorating urban core.

Leggett refused to turn over her notes to the judge in a murder case she was investigating in the course of writing a book. She was charged with contempt and served 5 1/2 months in jail.

Congratulations to the winners, and thanks for the personal and professional sacrifices in the service of journalism's highest ideals.

Jim Godbold is executive editor of The Register-Guard. He can be reached at 338-2413 or by e-mail at [e-mail].