Florida journalists honored with Bar media awards
Florida journalists honored with Bar media awards
Journalists from around the state were honored September 19 with the 61st Annual Florida Bar Media Awards for excellence in legal reporting.
Florida Bar President Bill Schifino, Jr., presented first-place awards to reporters from WTVT Fox 13 News (Tampa), the Daytona Beach News-Journal, and WLRN 91.3 News (Miami) at the Bar’s Reporters Workshop dinner in Tallahassee. The event was held on the 22nd floor of the Capitol, with Chief Justice Jorge Labarga and several other justices among the attendees.
The awards contest, sponsored by the Media & Communications Law Committee, recognizes outstanding journalism highlighting the system of law and justice as it affects Floridians.
Any newspaper, blog, radio station, TV station, or wire service located in Florida is eligible to enter. Cash prizes were awarded to winners: $500 for first place and $250 for second place. Journalists and their media organizations also received plaques.
“This year’s entries covered a wide range of legal topics,” said Media Awards Committee Chair Samuel J. Morley, general counsel for the Florida Press Association. “All the entries did a good job of increasing the public’s understanding, but those singled out to receive awards rose to the top of the list with hard-hitting, but fair and creative reporting.”
‘Field Drug Test’
Reporter Gloria Gomez of WTVT Fox 13 News in Tampa won first place in Television for “Field Drug Test.”For one year, Gomez investigated an issue of great concern to the community and the legal system. Innocent people were being sent to jail based on bad drug tests. It took a U.S. Marine from Tampa nearly five months to clear his name after an over-the counter pill in his possession tested positive for meth in a field drug test. Once the public saw what happened to him, more victims came forward with their stories.
“What we discovered and what we proved,” said Gomez, “drew the attention of local judges, the ire of the state attorney, and it led to significant changes in how drug cases are handled.”
New training policies developed by the Hillsborough County sheriff’s office are now a model for other law enforcement agencies in the state.
‘Shots Fired’
Frank Fernandez and Skyler Swisher of the Daytona Beach News-Journal won first place in Print for “Shots Fired.” This extensive report looked at the legal ramifications of officer-involved shootings in Florida. The News-Journal spent nearly one year finding the answers to two questions: How often do Florida law enforcement officers use deadly force? And under what circumstances are shots fired?
Hundreds of public records requests and thousands of documents later, they found that no state agency in Florida accurately tracks how often police in the Sunshine State shoot someone. About 70 percent of law enforcement agencies investigate themselves when one of their officers shoots someone. During 2013 and 2014, 249 officer-involved shootings occurred in Florida — about one shooting every three days. More than 40 percent of those shot were black men. More than 25 percent of those shot had histories of mental illness or drug issues.
The project caught the attention of state legislators, and proposed legislation this year sought to have the state better track officer-involved shootings and to have the Florida Department of Law Enforcement investigate all shootings. Swisher is now a reporter for the Sun-Sentinel in Ft. Lauderdale.
‘How a Tourist Murder Changed Juvenile Sentencing in Florida’
Wilson Sayre of WLRN News 91.3 FM in Miami took first place in Radio for“How a Tourist Murder Changed Juvenile Sentencing in Florida,” reflecting nearly two months of research and interviews.
The report contained two stories in one piece. First, the tourist murders of the early 1990s, in which several foreign visitors who rented cars met their deaths along Interstate I-95, and law enforcement’s perspective of what was going on. Second, the growing narrative about young criminals and the discovery of an excessively punitive shift in juvenile sentencing. So many tourists had died in such a short period of time that the German government issued a travel advisory. That advisory cost Florida’s $30 billion tourism industry half of its German business almost overnight. Politicians feeling pressure passed harsh legislation aimed at juvenile offenders, and years later some of those sentencing guidelines were seen as too extreme and finally as unconstitutional.
The undoing of many of the laws put in place in the 1990s is ongoing. In May, the Florida Supreme Court ruled that juvenile offenders have a right to have their punishment reconsidered if they are serving sentences so lengthy they amount to life terms.
‘School Zone Speed Traps’
Noah Pransky of WTSP-TV 10 News in St. Petersburg won second place for Television for “School Zone Speed Traps.”
This six-month investigation exposed how the city of St. Petersburg used misleading signs and poor engineering to issue millions of dollars in school zone speeding tickets. Drivers didn’t know they had to slow down, because the reduced-speed zones were poorly marked, far from schools, and sometimes in inexplicable places.
10 News showed how city employees lied about years of requests from the state, county, and some drivers to improve the safety of the crossings.
‘Focus on Force’
Rene Stutzman and Charles Minshew of the Orlando Sentinel picked up second place in Print for “Focus on Force.”Orlando Sentinel reporters had been hearing for years that the city’s police were too quick to use force.
But in 2014, officers started getting arrested and charged with beating suspects. In 2015, Stutzman proposed that the Sentinel find out whether OPD officers were too aggressive in how and when they used force. Her proposal launched a 10-month examination of the police department’s use of force over the previous five years. Stutzman and her team found that OPD used force far more often than other departments and that the internal affairs division never investigated officer violence that resulted in the city paying $1 million to settle excessive force cases.
The city began implementing changes, including requiring officers to sign a directive warning that they could be fired or prosecuted if they intentionally abused suspects, and the department also fired an officer who was initially suspended without pay for a week after being arrested and charged with using excessive force. In January, Orlando Police Chief John Mina told his officers to use only the minimal amount of necessary force. And if they see an officer using too much force, they should step in and stop it, then report it.
Susan Spencer-Wendel Award
The Susan Spencer-Wendel Award for Lifetime Achievement recognizes a Florida journalist who has written or reported extensively in an outstanding fashion to educate citizens on the system of law and justice in the state.
Spencer-Wendel was a longtime Palm Beach Post courts reporter who died in 2014 from ALS.
This year, the award was presented posthumously to award-winning journalist Julie Kay, who covered the courts and law in Florida for nearly 30 years, most recently as a reporter for the Daily Business Review. Kay died in August of cancer.
Kay was a member of the 2001 Reporters’ Workshop class. She won Media Awards in 2007 and 2012 and was a panelist for the Bar’s Media Law Conference in 2010 at FIU College of Law. She had been the Florida bureau chief of the National Law Journal and a Florida consultant for C-SPAN. She also worked for the Miami Herald and the Palm Beach Post.
Catherine Wilson, managing editor of the Daily Business Review, said, “Julie loved the life of a reporter. She found joy in delivering thought-provoking articles that attorneys would gravitate to, and a hint of scandal about lawyers behaving badly really grabbed her attention.”
Sallie James, a friend of Kay’s for 30 years and a former colleague, accepted the Susan Spencer-Wendel Lifetime Achievement Award on behalf of the family.
