The following are remarks by NAMME Executive Director Toni Laws presented at the 2006 Awards Banquet on April 27, 2006
Tonight we are proud to pay tribute to a group of media professionals who have been nominated by their peers and colleagues to receive NAMME's "Award of Valor"
This new award was created in the wake of a year of turmoil and devastation, both at home and abroad—a year in which we witnessed staggering and unimaginable loss of life, limb and property.
We witnessed extraordinary acts of courage and bravery -- generosity and selflessness.
We witnessed journalism at its worst and journalism at its very best!
So why now and why NAMME?
Why now?
Well, some of you might be able to relate to the experience but it seems that as I get closer to 60, more and more, certain current events trigger memories from my youth.
2005 was extraordinary in the repetitiveness of catastrophic events:
- The war in Iraq
- The tsunami
- Hurricanes Katrina and Rita
- Stories of triumph over devastating personal tragedy and the cumulative effect triggered a time in my youth when my brother and I discovered among some things in a trunk, a medal from my father's service in World War II.
My father never talked much about the war except to say that he would never go down South again, a promise he kept to his death.
But on that day my brother upon learning his father had been a soldier, as boys are apt to do, with a gleam in his eye bombarded him with all manner of questions…
Daddy, did you have a gun? Did you shoot it? Did you ever kill anyone? Did you ever get shot? And so on…
I remember that my father never answered any of those questions directly but he did share the story of a Frenchman he befriended named Devereaux, whose name my brother bears.
What I particularly remember is his last words on the subject and they were:
Courage is staying when the means to escape is handy and the path to safety is clear.
It's that phrase that came to me as I observed the journalists who forsook the convenience of easy stereotypes to pursue truth and clarity in coverage sometimes at great personal peril.
It came to me as I witnessed corporate executives who abandoned the safety of their offices to ensure first-hand that resources got where they were needed most, and as companies looked after employees first with little thought as to how much it would cost and co-workers selflessly shared what they had left of money and personal resources despite the fact of having lost everything themselves.
It seemed fitting that we should recognize their valorous deeds.
So, NAMME has chosen to honor media heroes and heroines for what some consider merely as "just doing their jobs".
Thank you for never letting us forget, from the comfort of our homes and our daily routines, the pain and suffering of others.
For reminding us that sometimes we must sacrifice objectivity and not stand on the sidelines observing and reporting but lend a hand.
On behalf of the nation's readers, viewers, listeners, and all of those who were helped by your actions, we say: thank you for a job well done.