Awards & Conferences

Photojournalist Eli Reed is winner of the 2021 I.F. Stone Medal for Journalistic Independence. For half a century, his photography has captured the face of racism in the U.S. and documented human suffering in conflicts around the world, from Beirut and Central America to Africa and beyond.

Announcing the award, I.F. Stone Medal jury chair Ricardo Sandoval-Palos said: “There is a depth to Reed’s reporting that organized strings of words cannot reach. Photography as investigative journalism combines art and science as an effective tool to engage the public and deliver the truth. It was our unanimous decision that Reed’s incisive work has done visually what I.F. Stone did with words over so many years. And like Stone, Reed is no detached observer. He is fiercely independent, a passionate seeker of truth and dedicated to fighting for social justice.”

Read the press release

Established in 2008, the I.F. Stone Medal recognizes journalistic independence and honors the life of investigative journalist I.F. Stone.

The award is presented annually to an American journalist or news executive whose work exemplifies the independent spirit, integrity, courage and indefatigability that characterized I.F. Stone’s Weekly published from 1953 to 1971.

A committee of journalists oversees nominations and the selection of an annual medal winner. The committee is chaired by PBS public editor Ricardo Sandoval-Palos. Other members are Jasmine Brown, a senior producer in the race and culture unit at ABC News’ “World News Tonight with David Muir”; Myra MacPherson, author of “All Governments Lie: The Life and Times of Rebel Journalist I.F. Stone”; Phillip W.d. Martin, a senior investigative reporter for WGBH News; Michael Riley, an investigative reporter for Bloomberg News and Businessweek magazine; and Bernice Yeung, a ProPublica reporter who focuses on labor and employment.

Journalist I.F. Stone’s passion for speaking his mind incurred the wrath of the powerful. His opposition to Sen. Joseph McCarthy and his determination to expose the excesses of J. Edgar Hoover’s FBI led to attacks on his credibility and reputation during the McCarthy Era in the early 1950s.

The I.F. Stone Medal bears a likeness of an issue of I.F. Stone’s Weekly with a headline on the Tonkin Gulf affair, ‘All We Really Know Is That We Fired The First Shots.’ (PDF)

Stone was one of only a few journalists who reported on the U.S. government’s false allegations that the North Vietnamese had attacked a U.S. destroyer in 1964, the claim President Johnson used to persuade the Senate to approve the Tonkin Gulf Resolution, which ultimately paved the way for the country to enter the Vietnam War.