A 2019 novel by Jason Liegois, The Holy Fool: A Journalist’s Revolt, equates reporters with the holy fools of Russian literature, those who spoke truths that normal people could not or would not say. Most Americans are not so charitable: A Gallup survey last month showed seven in ten people had zero or little trust in mass media to report news “fully, accurately, and fairly.”
Good polling data on evangelical views of journalism is hard to find, but a survey last year by George Mason University and The Washington Post showed that only 13 percent of self-defined “white evangelical Protestants” in six swing states trusted journalists to be fair reporting on politics. The rest did not.
Yet those who lambast journalists generally miss out on some excellent, even courageous, stories. One example: Last month, The Bulletin, a Christianity Today podcast, featured an interview I did with Caitlin Dickerson of The Atlantic. To report and write her article “Seventy Miles in Hell,” published last August, she walked—as tens of thousands of would-be US immigrants have done—through the Darien Gap jungle in Panama.
Dickerson showed the trip’s dangers: “Looking down at a thrashing river, I held on to ropes that made it safer—slightly—to creep across sheer rock faces behind parents with crying babies strapped to their chests.” Like the migrants, she had to make it past jaguars and vipers and survive by “exceeding what I would have thought physically possible.”
Amid the hardship, Dickerson also recorded examples of empathy: “We came upon a fallen tree trunk covered in wet moss that we would have to cross like a balance beam above a racing river.” A little girl was “unsure of what to do,” so a teenaged boy not related to her “reached over, wrapped an arm around her belly, and carried her across.”
That’s one example of courageous, ground-level reporting, and today the Christian foundation Zenger House is announcing its fourth annual Zenger Prizes for thoroughly researched journalism that conveys a biblical understanding, whether or not the writers are Christians.
The name comes from John Peter Zenger, a brave 1730s Christian newspaper editor who told the truth about a corrupt New York royal governor. He went to prison for eight months during a time when laws defined journalism as public relations that should make government or church leaders look good.
Today’s 12 Zenger Prize recipients include Dickerson as well as Jason DeParle, for his November 24 New York Times article headlined “At Bible Study for the Homeless, a Search for Meaning.” (That piece and all the other winning articles since 2022 can be accessed at the Zenger Prize landing page.) The Times rarely runs a story about daily Bible studies, but DeParle described vividly and positively the Lamb Center in Fairfax, Virginia, which has been a sanctuary for the homeless for more than three decades.
Harvest Prude of Christianity Today is another Zenger Prize winner for her September 2024 article “The Christians Trying to Restore Our Faith in Elections.” Prude profiled officials and volunteer poll watchers who face criticism, threats, and even demonization. She describes one: “Christine Johnson is the type of American who kisses her ballot and thanks God whenever she votes.”
Zak Keefer is a Zenger winner for “I lied about everything,” his story last July in The Athletic about NFL player Grant Stuard, who hid his parents’ trauma and became the caretaker for his siblings, sometimes at age 11 driving them to school. Stuard eventually professed faith in Christ, transformed his own life, became an NFL linebacker, and helped his family recover and his mother to become sober.
Liz Essley Whyte won for her August 7, 2024, Wall Street Journal story, “Doctors Can Now Save Very Premature Babies. Most Hospitals Don’t Try. “Medical advances have increased survival rates for babies born during the 22nd week of pregnancy. At some hospitals, two-thirds stay alive. Many hospitals, though, either lack the capability or choose not to resuscitate due to high costs, disability risks, and pessimism about treatment.
Wednesday’s announcement lists Zenger winners who reported on Hurricane Helene, US-Mexico border issues, a Trump rally, and social workers in India who saved the lives of baby girls. Other writers described how doctors and volunteers tried to rescue 370 children in a Sudan orphanage and how a retired professor taught 400 Afghan women to drive.
The complete list of this year’s winners, with links to their winning writing, is at zengerhouse.com, which also features winners from the previous three years and their articles: Past winners include five CT writers: Emily Belz, Kara Bettis Carvalho, Angela Lu Fulton, Sophia Lee, and Andy Olsen. The Zenger House website includes a 13-minute video with highlights of interviews of eleven of this year’s prize winners.
The 12th winner this year is posthumous: Marshall Allen, who died last year of a heart attack at age 52, is receiving a prize not for a particular article but for years of investigating overcharges by hospitals. Allen’s work culminated in his 2021 book Never Pay the First Bill: And Other Ways to Fight the Health Care System.
Allen, once a missionary in Kenya, described in The New York Times in 2018 his “natural progression from the ministry to muckraking. … Both are valid ways of serving a higher cause. The Bible endorses telling the truth.”
Marvin Olasky, CT’s executive editor for news and global, chairs the Zenger House board and is one of five judges. He recuses himself from voting on CT writing.
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