2020 Goldsmith Prize Announcement Video Transcript

Below is a transcript of the spoken portions of the video announcing the 2020 Goldsmith Prize for Investigative Reporting winner.

Hi, I’m Nancy Gibbs, Director of the Shorenstein Center on
Media, Politics and Public Policy at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government,
and this is not how we expected to
welcome you to the annual awarding of the Goldsmith Prize. Ordinarily, the
Kennedy School Forum would be full of students and faculty and friends, and we
could celebrate together some extraordinary acts of journalism this year. But
it’s exactly because this is such an unusual time that it’s all the more important
that we elevate the important, hazardous, enterprising work that our finalists
did this year.

The Goldsmith Prize recognizes journalism that promotes more
ethical and effective public policy and the practice of politics. It is made
possible by a generous grant from the Greenfield Foundation, and this year we
had a record number of entries – more than 175. So my thanks, first of all,
goes out to our judges, who worked very hard to study all of these entries and evaluate
them to come down to our five finalists, and our ultimate winner.

This year’s finalists represent some of the most important
trends shaping journalism today. It includes large national news organizations,
and the small local newsrooms that are increasingly embattled. Our finalists
are from legacy media and new media, print and online and broadcast, East
Coast, West Coast, and communities in between. Importantly, we saw a record
number of partnerships – whether it’s ProPublica joining forces with the
Anchorage Daily News, or the Arizona Republic and USA TODAY Network aligning
with the Center for Public Integrity. We saw superb reporting on matters of
national importance, like the war in Afghanistan, or regional importance like
the manipulation of legislation, or the absence of CO detectors in public
housing, or law enforcement in rural communities. And on issues of very
personal, intimate importance like the failures and harm caused by medical
devices.

Here are the five finalists for the 2020 Goldsmith Prize for
Investigative Reporting:

Lawless
By Kyle Hopkins
Anchorage Daily News and ProPublica

Hidden Harm
By Christina Jewett
Kaiser Health News

Silent Killer
By Suzy Khimm and Laura Strickler
NBC News

Fleeing Justice
By Shane Dixon Kavanaugh
The Oregonian/OregonLive

The Afghanistan Papers/A Secret History of the War
By Craig Whitlock
The Washington Post

These five finalists are a superb collection of ingenious,
enterprising, tireless reporting, of the kind on which democracy depends. Each
of the five finalists had a significant impact on U.S. public policy.

The winner this year is a collaborative project that built a
tool to ensure greater accountability and transparency in policy making all
across the country. I am thrilled to announce that the winner of this year’s
Goldsmith Prize is Copy.Paste.Legislate,
by the staffs of the Arizona Republic, USA TODAY, and the Center for Public
Integrity.