The Ridenhour Prizes are awards in four categories given annually in recognition of those "who persevere in acts of truth-telling that protect the public interest, promote social justice or illuminate a more just vision of society".

History

The awards are presented by

The Nation Institute Type Media Center (formerly The Nation Institute) is a nonprofit media organization that was previously associated with ''The Nation'' magazine. It sponsors fellows, hosts forums, publishes books and investigative reporting, and awards several an ...

and

The Fertel Foundation Ruth Ann Udstad Fertel (February 5, 1927April 16, 2002) was a Louisiana businesswoman, best known as the founder of Ruth's Chris Steak Houses, which was founded in 1965. Early life and teaching Ruth Ann Udstad was born into a poor family of Als ...

in recognition of Ron Ridenhour, the Vietnam War veteran who exposed the My Lai Massacre. Each prize carries a $10,000 stipend. The prizes were first awarded in 2004.

Prize categories

* The Ridenhour Courage Prize * The Ridenhour Book Prize * The Ridenhour Truth-Telling Prize * The Ridenhour Documentary Film Prize (since 2011)

Past winners

The Ridenhour Courage Prize

* 2004:

Daniel Ellsberg Daniel Ellsberg (born April 7, 1931) is an American political activist, and former United States military analyst. While employed by the RAND Corporation, Ellsberg precipitated a national political controversy in 1971 when he released the ''Pent ...

* 2005: Seymour Hersh * 2006:

Gloria Steinem Gloria Marie Steinem (; born March 25, 1934) is an American journalist and social-political activist who emerged as a nationally recognized leader of second-wave feminism Second-wave feminism was a period of feminist activity that began in ...

* 2007:

Jimmy Carter James Earl Carter Jr. (born October 1, 1924) is an American politician who served as the 39th president of the United States from 1977 to 1981. A member of the Democratic Party (United States), Democratic Party, he previously served as th ...

* 2008: Bill Moyers * 2009: Bob Herbert * 2010: Howard Zinn (posthumous) * 2011:

Russ Feingold Russell Dana Feingold ( ; born March 2, 1953) is an American lawyer and politician who served as a United States Senator from Wisconsin from 1993 to 2011. A member of the Democratic Party, he was its nominee in the 2016 election for the same U.S ...

* 2012: John Lewis * 2013:

James Hansen James Edward Hansen (born March 29, 1942) is an American adjunct professor directing the Program on Climate Science, Awareness and Solutions of the Earth Institute at Columbia University. He is best known for his research in climatology, his 1 ...

* 2014:

Frederick A.O. Schwarz, Jr. Frederick August Otto "Fritz" Schwarz Jr. (born April 20, 1935) is an American lawyer born in New York City. Family and early life Schwarz was born in New York City, the great-grandson of German-American Frederick August Otto Schwarz, the found ...

* 2015: James Risen * 2016: Jamie Kalven * 2017: Anna Deavere Smith * 2018:

Tarana Burke Tarana Burke (born September 12, 1973) is an American activist from The Bronx, New York, who started the MeToo movement. In 2006, Burke began using MeToo to help other women with similar experiences to stand up for themselves. Over a decade late ...

* 2019: George Soros (donated all of prize money to

Hungarian Spectrum ''Hungarian Spectrum'' was a daily blog from 2007-2021, covering current political and social developments in Hungary. Created in 2007 by historian Eva S. Balogh, it came to an end with her death, on November 30, 2021. History ''Hungarian Spec ...

) * 2020: Denis Hayes * 2021: José Andrés * 2022:

Anita Hill Anita Faye Hill (born July 30, 1956) is an American lawyer, educator and author. She is a professor of social policy, law, and women's studies at Brandeis University and a faculty member of the university's Heller School for Social Policy and ...

The Ridenhour Book Prize

* 2004:

Deborah Scroggins Deborah Scroggins (November 27, 1961 in Atlanta, Georgia"Deborah Scroggins." ''Contemporary Authors Online''. Detroit: Gale, 2007.) is an American journalist and author. A graduate of Tulane University and Columbia University, she was a reporter a ...

, for ''Emma's War: An Aid Worker, Radical Islam, and the Politics of Oil – A True Story of Love and Death in the Sudan'' * 2005:

Adrian Nicole LeBlanc Adrian Nicole LeBlanc is an American journalist whose works focus on the marginalized members of society: adolescents living in poverty, prostitutes, women in prison, etc. She is best known for her 2003 non-fiction book '' Random Family''. She wa ...

, for ''Random Family: Love, Drugs, Trouble, and Coming of Age in the Bronx'' * 2006: Anthony Shadid, for ''Night Draws Near: Iraq's People in the Shadow of America's War'' * 2007:

Rajiv Chandrasekaran Rajiv Chandrasekaran is an American journalist. He is a senior correspondent and associate editor at ''The Washington Post'', where he has worked since 1994. Life He grew up mostly in the San Francisco Bay area. He attended Stanford University, w ...

, for '' Imperial Life in the Emerald City: Inside Iraq's Green Zone,'' * 2008:

James Scurlock James Duncan Scurlock (born September 15, 1971) is an American director, producer, writer and financial adviser. He is probably best known for his documentary '' Maxed Out: Hard Times, Easy Credit and the Era of Predatory Lenders'' and his boo ...

, for ''Maxed Out: Hard Times in the Age of Easy Credit'' * 2009:

Jane Mayer Jane Meredith Mayer (born 1955) is an American investigative journalist who has been a staff writer for ''The New Yorker'' since 1995. She has written for the publication about money in politics; government prosecution of whistleblowers; the Uni ...

, for '' The Dark Side: The Inside Story of How the War on Terror Turned Into A War on American Ideals'' * 2010: Joe Sacco, for ''

Footnotes in Gaza ''Footnotes in Gaza'' is a journalistic graphic narrative by Joe Sacco about bloody incidents between Israelis and Paletinians in Gaza during the Suez Crisis. It was published in 2009 by Henry Holt and Company in the U.S. and Jonathan Cape in ...

'' * 2011: Wendell Potter, for ''Deadly Spin: An Insurance Company Insider Speaks Out on How Corporate PR is Killing Healthcare and Deceiving Americans'' * 2012:

Ali H. Soufan Ali H. Soufan (born 1971) is a Lebanese-American former FBI agent who was involved in a number of high-profile anti-terrorism cases both in the United States and around the world. A 2006 ''New Yorker'' article described Soufan as coming closer ...

, for ''The Black Banners: The Inside Story of 9/11 and the War Against al‐Qaeda'' * 2013:

Seth Rosenfeld Seth Rosenfeld (born 1956) is an American journalist. He is the author of ''Subversives: The FBI's War on Student Radicals, and Reagan's Rise to Power'', published in hardback in 2012 by Farrar, Straus and Giroux, and in paperback in 2013 by Picado ...

, for ''Subversives: The FBI's War on Student Radicals, and Reagan's Rise to Power'' * 2014:

Sheri Fink Sheri Fink is an American journalist who writes about health, medicine and science. She received the 2010 Pulitzer Prize for Investigative Reporting "for a story that chronicles the urgent life-and-death decisions made by one hospital’s exhaus ...

, for '' Five Days at Memorial: Life and Death in a Storm-Ravaged Hospital'' * 2015:

Anand Gopal Anand Gopal is a writer for The New Yorker magazine and author of ''No Good Men Among the Living: America, the Taliban and the War Through Afghan Eyes'', which describes the travails of three Afghans caught in the war on terror. It was a finalist f ...

, for ''No Good Men Among the Living: America, the Taliban, and the War Through Afghan Eyes'' * 2016:

Jill Leovy Jill Leovy is an American journalist and nonfiction writer. She is best known for the non-fiction book ''Ghettoside: A True Story of Murder in America'', her 2015 New York Times best-seller about homicide in Los Angeles. Leovy argues in ''Ghettosi ...

, for ''Ghettoside: A True Story of Murder in America'' * 2017:

Heather Ann Thompson Heather Ann Thompson is an American historian, author, activist, professor, and speaker from Detroit, Michigan. Thompson won the 2017 Pulitzer Prize for History, the 2016 Bancroft Prize, and other awards for her work '' Blood in the Water: The A ...

, for '' Blood in the Water: The Attica Prison Uprising of 1971 and Its Legacy'' * 2018: Lauren Markham, for ''The Far Away Brothers: Two Young Migrants and the Making of an American Life'' * 2019:

Eliza Griswold Eliza Griswold (born February 9, 1973) is a Pulitzer Prize-winning American journalist and poet. Griswold is currently a contributing writer to ''The New Yorker'' and a Distinguished Writer in Residence at New York University. She is the author of ...

, for ''Amity and Prosperity: One Family and the Fracturing of America'' * 2020:

Chanel Miller Chanel Elisabeth Miller (born June 12, 1992) is an American writer and artist based in San Francisco, California and New York City. She was known anonymously after she was sexually assaulted on the campus of Stanford University in 2015 by Broc ...

for '' Know My Name: A Memoir'' * 2021:

Claudio Saunt Claudio Saunt (born 1967) is a professor, author, and historian of early America, the U.S. South, and Native American studies."Claudio Saunt." ''Gale Literature: Contemporary Authors''. Farmington Hills, MI: Gale, 2015. Retrieved vie ''Gale In Co ...

for '' Unworthy Republic: The dispossession of Native Americans and the road to Indian Territory''

The Ridenhour Truth-Telling Prize

* 2004: Joseph Wilson * 2005:

Kristen Breitweiser The Jersey Girls or Jersey Widows refers to four American women who lost their husbands in the September 11 attacks. All four—Kristen Breitweiser, Patty Casazza, Lorie Van Auken, and Mindy Kleinberg—were residents of New Jersey, and helped l ...

* 2006: Rick S. Piltz * 2007:

Donald Vance Donald Vance (born c. 1976) is an American Navy veteran who was held in detention at Camp Cropper, the United States military's maximum-security detention site in Baghdad for 97 days beginning in April 2006. On December 18, 2006, Vance filed suit a ...

* 2008:

Matthew Diaz Matthew Mark Diaz is a former active-duty Lieutenant Commander (LCDR) and Judge Advocate General's Corps (JAGC) officer in the United States Navy. In mid-to-late 2004, Diaz served a six-month tour of duty in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba as deputy dire ...

* 2009:

Thomas Tamm Thomas Tamm (born 1952) is a public defender in Washington County, Maryland. He formerly worked as an attorney in the United States Department of Justice (USDOJ) Office of Intelligence Policy and Review during 2004 when senior Justice officials res ...

* 2010: Matthew Hoh * 2011:

Thomas Andrews Drake Thomas Andrews Drake (born 1957) is a former senior executive of the National Security Agency (NSA), a decorated United States Air Force and United States Navy veteran, and a whistleblower. In 2010, the government alleged that Drake mishandled doc ...

* 2012:

Eileen Foster Eileen foster was the executive vice president of Fraud Risk Management at Countrywide, and later senior vice president of the Mortgage Fraud Investigations Division at Bank of America (when the two merged), until she blew the whistle on massive an ...

and Daniel Davis * 2013: Jose Antonio Vargas * 2014:

Edward Snowden Edward Joseph Snowden (born June 21, 1983) is an American and naturalized Russian former computer intelligence consultant who leaked highly classified information from the National Security Agency (NSA) in 2013, when he was an employee and su ...

and

Laura Poitras Laura Poitras (; born February 2, 1964) is an American director and producer of documentary films. Poitras has received numerous awards for her work, including the 2015 Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature for ''Citizenfour'', about Edwa ...

* 2015: Aicha Elbasri * 2016: Mona Hanna-Attisha * 2017: Daniela Vargas * 2018:

Carmen Yulín Cruz Soto ''Carmen'' () is an opera in four acts by the French composer Georges Bizet. The libretto was written by Henri Meilhac and Ludovic Halévy, based on the Carmen (novella), novella of the same title by Prosper Mérimée. The opera was first perfo ...

* 2019: Dr. Scott Allen, Dr. Pamela McPherson, and Scott Shuchart * 2020: Dr.

Rick A. Bright Rick Arthur Bright is an American immunologist, vaccine researcher, and public health official. He was the director of the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (BARDA) from 2016 to 2020. In May 2020, he filed a whistleblower ...

* 2021:

Cariol Horne Cariol Holloman-Horne (previously known as Cariol Horne) is an American former police officer who was fired from the Buffalo Police Department and lost her pension after she physically stopped a fellow officer from chokeholding a handcuffed susp ...

The Ridenhour Documentary Film Prize

* 2011:

Julia Bacha Julia Bacha (born 1980) is a Brazilian documentary filmmaker. She has filmed under-documented stories from the Middle East including issues related to Palestine. Her 2021 film, ''Boycott'', explores anti-boycott legislation and related freedom of ...

Ronit Avni Ronit Avni is a Canadian entrepreneur, tech founder, human rights advocate, and Peabody Award-winning film director and producer. Early life and education Avni was born and raised in Canada. She graduated with honors with a B.A. in political ...

and Rula Salameh, for ''

Budrus Budrus ( ar, بٌدرُس) is a Palestinian village in the Ramallah and al-Bireh Governorate, located 31 kilometers northwest of Ramallah in the northern West Bank. According to the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics (PCBS), the village had a ...

'' * 2012: Rachel Libert and Tony Hardmon, for '' Semper Fi: Always Faithful'' * 2013: Kirby Dick and

Amy Ziering Amy Ziering (born 1962 in Massachusetts) is an American film producer and director. Mostly known for her work in documentary films, she is a regular collaborator of director Kirby Dick; they co-directed 2002's ''Derrida'' and 2020's '' On the Re ...

, for ''

The Invisible War ''The Invisible War'' is a 2012 American documentary film written and directed by Kirby Dick and produced by Amy Ziering and Tanner King Barklow about sexual assault in the United States military. It premiered at the 2012 Sundance Film Festival, w ...

'' * 2014: Dawn Porter, for ''

Gideon's Army ''Gideon's Army'' is a 2013 American documentary film about three public defenders in the Southern United States. The movie is directed by Dawn Porter. Its title comes from ''Gideon v. Wainwright'', which required that indigent criminal defendants ...

'' * 2015:

, for ''

Citizenfour ''Citizenfour'' is a 2014 documentary film directed by Laura Poitras, concerning Edward Snowden and the NSA spying scandal. The film had its US premiere on October 10, 2014, at the New York Film Festival and its UK premiere on October 17, 2014, ...

'' * 2016: Joshua Oppenheimer, for ''

The Look of Silence ''The Look of Silence'' (, "Silence") is a 2014 internationally co-produced documentary film directed by Joshua Oppenheimer about the Indonesian mass killings of 1965–66. The film is a companion piece to his 2012 documentary ''The Act of Kill ...

'' * 2017: Sonia Kennebeck, for ''

National Bird This is a list of national birds, including official birds of overseas territories and other states described as nations. Most species in the list are officially designated. Some species hold only an "unofficial" status. National birds See al ...

'' * 2018: Joe Piscatella, for '' Joshua: Teenager vs. Superpower'' * 2019:

Alexandria Bombach Alexandria Bombach is an American filmmaker. Career Bombach is from Santa Fe, New Mexico. She graduated from Fort Lewis College in Durango, Colorado. In 2009, she founded the production company, Red Reel. Her first film, ''23 Feet'' (2011), "captu ...

, for ''

On Her Shoulders ''On Her Shoulders'' is a 2018 American documentary film. It was directed by Alexandria Bombach and produced by Hayley Pappas, Brock Williams and Elizabeth Schaeffer Brown under the banner of RYOT Films. The film follows Iraqi Yazidi human right ...

'' * 2020:

Nanfu Wang Nanfu Wang (born 1985) is a Chinese-born American filmmaker. Her debut film ''Hooligan Sparrow'' premiered at the 2016 Sundance Film Festival and was shortlisted for the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature in 2017. Her second film, ''I Am ...

and Jialing Zhang, for '' One Child Nation'' * 2021: Ramona Diaz, for '' A Thousand Cuts'' * 2022:

Stanley Nelson Jr. Stanley Earl Nelson Jr. (born June 7, 1951) is an American documentary filmmaker and a MacArthur Fellow known as a director, writer and producer of documentaries examining African-American history and experiences. He is a recipient of the 2013 N ...

and Traci A. Curry, for ''

Attica Attica ( el, Αττική, Ancient Greek ''Attikḗ'' or , or ), or the Attic Peninsula, is a historical region that encompasses the city of Athens, the capital of Greece and its countryside. It is a peninsula projecting into the Aegean Se ...

Special Ridenhour Prize for Reportorial Distinction

* 2009: Nick Turse

References

External links

The Ridenhour Prizes official site

{{DEFAULTSORT:Ridenhour Prizes Humanitarian and service awards Awards established in 2004 Whistleblowing American non-fiction literary awards American documentary film awards 2004 establishments in the United States Awards established in 2011 2011 establishments in the United States