Announcing the 2023 Winners of the Mike Berger Award & the Paul Tobenkin Memorial Award
ProPublica & the Center for Public Integrity Honored
Columbia Journalism School announced today that reporters from ProPublica and the Center for Public Integrity have won the 2023 Meyer “Mike” Berger Award and the 2023 Paul Tobenkin Memorial Award, respectively. The two awards are judged by the faculty of Columbia Journalism School, and are given annually at graduation.
Lynzy Billing, a reporter with ProPublica, has won the 2023 Meyer “Mike” Berger Award for her investigative series “The Night Raids,” about CIA-directed death squads called “Zero Units” in Afghanistan. Often raids were based on staggeringly flawed intelligence and resulted in scores of executions--farmers, students, and teachers with no connection to the Taliban. For over three years, working solo for most of them, Billing conducted diligent shoe-leather reporting across dangerous swaths of Afghanistan. It began as a personal quest. Billing’s mother and twin sister were killed thirty years earlier in a night raid in the civil war that followed the defeat of the Soviet Union in Afghanistan. Her father later died in the conflict. She soon learned about the Zero Units, and eventually visited the sites of 30 raids in the course of her reporting. The Berger Award, named after the late New York Times reporter Meyer “Mike” Berger, is awarded annually to a reporter(s) for an outstanding example of in-depth, human interest reporting. The award carries a $1,500 honorarium.
Yvette Cabrera, a senior reporter at the Center for Public Integrity, has won the 2023 Paul Tobenkin Memorial Award for her investigation of the devastating effects of uranium mining on the Navajo Nation. Published with ICT, formerly Indian Country Today, Cabrera’s investigation laid bare generations of suffering caused by radioactive waste from hundreds of uranium mines the U.S. government used to make nuclear weapons during the Cold War. Earl Tulley, a Navajo activist who tried to hold the government accountable for the multitude of cancers and deaths in his community caused by the toxic waste, was a key source in Cabrera’s reporting. But when Tulley discovered during the reporting that he had an aggressive form of non-Hodgkin lymphoma, a cancer linked to radiation exposure, he became the centerpiece of the narrative. The Paul Tobenkin Award, named in honor of the late New York Herald Tribune reporter, recognizes outstanding achievements in reporting on racial or religious hatred, intolerance, or discrimination in the United States. The award also carries a $1,500 honorarium.
2023 Berger Award Jurors’ Citation:
Lynzy Billing is the winner of the 2023 Meyer “Mike” Berger Award for her ProPublica story entitled, “The Night Raids,” about CIA-directed death squads called “Zero Units” in Afghanistan that killed countless hundreds. Often raids were based on staggeringly flawed intelligence and resulted in scores of executions--farmers, students, and teachers with no connection to the Taliban. For over three years, working solo for most of them, Billing did diligent shoe-leather reporting across dangerous swaths of Afghanistan. She takes the reader into the shadows of the U.S. war on terrorism that accomplished the opposite of what was intended. “You go on night raids, make more enemies, then you gotta go on more night raids for the more enemies you now have to kill,” a member of the U.S. special operations forces told Billing, about his regularly going out with Zero Units.
It began as a personal quest. Billing’s mother and twin sister were killed thirty years earlier in a night raid in the civil war that followed the defeat of the Soviet Union in Afghanistan. Her father later died in the conflict. She soon learned about the Zero Units, and visited the sites of 30 raids. She interviewed doctors, forensic examiners, eyewitnesses, and family members of civilians shot point-blank. She gained the trust of Afghan commandos who questioned their actions, and interviewed the former Afghan spy chief who admitted to raids being conducted on flawed intelligence. Billing’s gripping and powerfully written story echoes the CIA-spawned “Phoenix Program” during the Vietnam War that also killed innocents. “The Night Raids” should be read by U.S. citizens so they know what is being done in their name, as well as everyone at the CIA’s Langley, Virginia, headquarters.
Jurors: Joanne Faryon, Meg Kissinger and Dale Maharidge
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2023 Tobenkin Award Jurors’ Citation:
Yvette Cabrera, a senior reporter at the Center for Public Integrity, has won the 2023 Paul Tobenkin Award for her investigation of the devastating effects of uranium mining on the Navajo Nation. Published with ICT, formerly Indian Country Today, Cabrera’s investigation laid bare generations of suffering caused by radioactive waste from hundreds of uranium mines the U.S. government used to make nuclear weapons during the Cold War. Earl Tulley, a Navajo activist who tried to hold the government accountable for the multitude of cancers and deaths in his community caused by the toxic waste, was a key source in Cabrera’s reporting. But when Tulley discovered during the reporting that he had an aggressive form of non-Hodgkin lymphoma, a cancer linked to radiation exposure, he became the centerpiece of the narrative. Cabrera powerfully traces Tulley’s story in the Blue Gap-Tachee community against a bleak history of destruction and neglect by the U.S. government on Navajo land. The result is a story of unbreakable courage in the face of systemic cruelty.
Jurors: Dolores A. Barclay, Duy Linh Tu and Elena Cabral
Link to work:
Nuclear buildup sickened his community. Then it caught up with him.