THE Social Affairs Correspondent of The Irish Times, Padraig O'Morain, has won this year's ESB National Media Award for supreme contribution to Irish journalism.
He won the award for an interview with the mother of the woman in the "right to die" case which was described by the judging panel as "one of the most important and one of the most harrowing stories of the year".
The panel praised "the extraordinary delicacy, trust and sensitivity" of his treatment of the right to die story, and the medical and ethical issues involved. The President, Mrs Robinson, presented him with a cheque for £2,000 at a ceremony in Dublin yesterday.
The award for outstanding work in Irish print journalism was won by John Walshe, Education Editor of the Irish Independent. Anne Daly of Esperanza Productions won the corresponding award in the television category for a documentary on families who have members with a mental disability. The documentary, When Happiness is a Place for your Child, is being repeated on RTE 1 tonight.
The joint winners for outstanding work in radio broadcasting were Frances Shanahan and Colin Morrison of RTE radio for their documentary, The Vanished and the Banished, which dealt with people forced out of Northern Ireland by paramilitaries.
Tom Humphries of The Irish Times won the award for outstanding work in sports journalism for the second time in three years.
Mr O Morain said he had asked the mother if she would like him to make any point in accepting the award. "She said that what had stayed with her in reflecting on this case was the absence of courage on the part of a medical profession which, for two decades, refused to allow a woman to die whose life had effectively ended years earlier, who had no awareness, whose physical state was pitiful and who caught infection after infection as if nature or God was trying to take her.
"Yet doctors gave her hundreds of treatments of antibiotics as if determined to frustrate what nature or God intended. Nobody had the courage to stop and to let her go. That she is now at rest is due, not to institutions which put themselves forward as caring and compassionate, but to the courts to which the family had to bring its case.
Paying tribute to the winners, the President said that in an era when information was instantly available to the media, it was important not to be "blinded" by the new technologies. There would always be a need for probing, honest, fair journalism.
Mrs Robinson said the "terrible potential tragedy" unfolding in Zaire, Rwanda and Burundi posed a special challenge to journalists. There had not been the consistent probing and continuity of journalism through the various news media that would give readers and viewers a context for the present crisis.
"There must be a more thorough coverage of a situation before it becomes a humanitarian disaster. Unless more is done to provide coverage in a structured and informed way, then what coverage there is will tend to distance people from the events. And if we, distance, we tend to dehumanise."
The President paid special tribute to Veronica Guerin, who was murdered last June. Ms Guerin, a former award winner, had shown "commitment, professionalism and, above all, passion" in her work, she said.
The chairman of the judging panel, Mr Michael Mills, also paid tribute to Ms Guerin, and called a minute's silence.
The other award winners included Paul Williams of the Sunday World, for campaigning and social issues; Caroline O'Doherty of the Wicklow People in the provincial journalism section; and Tony Clayton Lea for outstanding coverage of the arts in The Irish Times and Cara magazine.
Fergal Bowers of the Irish Medical News won the analysis or comment award, while Gail Seekamp of the Sunday Business Post picked up the business and financial journalism award. Liam Fay of Hot Press was judged best in the colour/sketch writing category, and Tom Shiel and Teresa O'Malley of Mid and North West Radio received the award for outstanding local broadcasting.
