The Missouri Honor Medal

All Winners: Individuals All Winners: Organizations All Winners: By Year

Recent Missouri Medalists

2007 Winners 2006 Winners 2005 Winners 2004 Winners 2003 Winners 2002 Winners 2001 Winners

Photo Gallery Master Classes/Banquet Nov. 1, 2006

Click any image above to read an in-depth profile and/or download audio files. Left to Right: Clifford Christians, Bill Kovach, Tom Rosenstiel, Chuck Curtis, Reza, Karen Brown Dunlap, Zubeida Jaffer and John Seigenthaler.

"Make the world a better place."		Zubeida Jaffer Master Class MP3 File; 6.7MB, 33:14. All 2006 Master Classes & Honor Medal Banquet
Profile in Leadership: Zubeida Jaffer 2006 Missouri Honor Medal Recipient

By Kate Greer

"His heavy, hairy hands hit me across the room into the wall. Shuddering. Shaking. Trembling. Four days and it had not stopped. 'Your heart is going to give in. You haven't slept for three days. Are you a member of the ANC?' Interrogators took shifts preventing me from sleeping. The pains passed across my chest. They were waiting for the drugs to take effect."

Zubeida Jaffer taught a master class for Missouri Journalism students on Nov. 1, the same day that she received the Missouri Honor Medal for Distinguished Service in Journalism.

Front: Karen Brown Dunlap, president of The Poynter Institute in St. Petersburg, Fla.; Bill Kovach, founding director of the Committee of Concerned Journalists; Zubeida Jaffer, an acclaimed South African journalist; and Dean Mills, dean of the School. Back: Elson Floyd, president of the University of Missouri; Clifford Christians, an award-winning media ethics scholar; John Seigenthaler, founder of the Freedom Forum First Amendment Center; Reza, photojournalist; Tom Rosenstiel, vice chairman of CCJ; Chuck Curtis, chairman of Valentine Radford/Square One Advertising, Kansas City; and Brady Deaton, chancellor of MU Columbia campus.

Across the table sits a petite woman on the verge of fifty, whose every move is filled with care and executed with a smile. She is Zubeida Jaffer, the South African journalist and activist who played a key role in the anti-apartheid movement that ended legal racial segregation in South Africa. She was twice imprisoned for protecting her sources during the first year of her career, both times enduring physical and mental torture for her journalistic work. Jaffer is one of several prominent journalists to receive the 2006 Missouri Honor Medal for Distinguished Service in Journalism.

Jaffer's entry into journalism was bumpy from the start. She had to obtain a special pass to study the field at the "white" Rhodes University in Grahamstown because the political policy of apartheid segregated blacks and whites in all areas of life – education, public transportation, housing and more. Then, as a cub reporter and the only black journalist at the Cape Times in Cape Town, Jaffer was asked to write about a police shooting in a "coloured" neighborhood. Her investigation revealed that the police had indiscriminately fired shots at women and children while trying to stop the looters. The story drew considerable attention from the community. As a result the police took Jaffer into custody for months, torturing, interrogating, drugging and beating her until she finally gave them the sources of her information.

Five years later, Jaffer, now pregnant and politically active, was imprisoned again for the same reason, enduring many more months of terrible treatment. She refused to give the security police any information in spite of many death threats to her and her unborn baby.

In the 25 years since, Jaffer has courageously used these experiences to serve the public in some of the most prestigious positions that a black female had ever held in South Africa. In 1994, Jaffer was appointed as a commissioner on the Independent Media Commission during South Africa's first democratic election, resulting in Nelson Mandela's election as president. She worked as the Group Parliamentary Editor for Independent Newspapers, which serves 14 large newspapers throughout South Africa. She has initiated numerous research projects concerning amnesty, reparations and the formation of a working democracy in post-apartheid South Africa, in addition to her numerous educational roles. Jaffer's memoir, "Our Generation," recounts her struggles as a young black journalist leading up to the end of apartheid.

When Jaffer took the stage to accept her Missouri Honor Medal, she gave a message of hope: The path may not always be smooth, but hard work, determination and optimism can make the world a better place.

At what point did you decide to give the police what they wanted?
The first time I gave them not exactly what they wanted, but whatever I could think of saying. It was humiliating as far as I'm concerned. It was just a matter of pure survival; "Am I going to stay alive in this situation?" The first time I was imprisoned, I couldn't think about what was happening. I wanted to focus on the sea and the mountains, and just not think about it because it was too terrifying. The second time I could think more about it, because I knew the routine and the techniques. It is almost like I had a practice round the first time, so I never divulged anything.

But you endured a lot of terrible things before giving in. What was your motivation for holding out as long as you did?
Eventually the thing that humiliated me the most was that I was forced to give me information about a colleague of mine who had written a particular story about the military. The story was written without a byline because we had tried to keep it a secret. So, the last thing on earth I wanted to do was to implicate anyone else. It was my personal integrity on the line, my journalistic integrity, it was what I believed in professionally, and ethically and personally. Yet, in the end, I told them. I had the awful choice of either saving my dad or giving them this information. They say any piece of metal with sufficient pressure is able to bend.

What can be done to ensure that crimes against humanity, such as apartheid, never happen again?
It is the extent to which you create a society that's different. The human condition being what it is, we tend to do the same things over and over again. I don't have the answer. It's being conscious. It is being aware. It is being mindful. As journalists, it is to be continuously focusing attention on these things.

How has journalism changed since when you first got into the business?
Journalists need to be a little detached so they can see the people who are voiceless and not given the opportunity of expressing themselves. I find now that the way journalism is organized is often to express the voice of the powerful; it is reworking press releases that come from those of power. Sometimes those individuals in a newsroom represent a very narrow commercial interest, and they don't rock the boat.

What is your advice for budding journalist in today's world?
One's first responsibility is to learn the skills you need. You can't just decide that you're going to be a carpenter, and you're going to make a beautiful carved chaise without being prepared to first make an ordinary flat table with square legs. To get to the point of making that beautifully carved chaise, you unfortunately have to first make that ugly-looking table and then you've got to learn how to polish it and then make another table. When people complain about where they work, I always say, "By God, it doesn't matter where you work, just learn everything that you can possibly learn because that can't be taken away from you. Tomorrow if there is an earthquake and you lose everything, if you are still alive you still have that ability, that skill." If you find yourself in a job that is not the most exciting, you can still get things from it. You can really learn to get your fingers to do the work that has to be done and to get your brain to do the kind of thinking that has to be done, and that can never be taken away from you.

How do you personally deal with the pressure of being a journalist?
You need to work toward knowing what your goals are and how you see the world and then, live in terms of that. Journalism and the work you do are not separate from the way you live your life. When I was Group Parliamentary Editor at Parliament, I used to make a joke to my immediate superior that the company should pay me more because my social life was completely messed up from this job. Because journalists speak into society, I've always felt that it puts an enormous personal responsibility on them. You have to be careful about your conduct when you want to speak to power, and you have to safeguard your independence.

Related

Sept. 27, 2006: Eight Journalism Leaders to Receive Preeminent Journalism Award Eight outstanding journalists and a leading journalism organization will receive one of the industry's highest awards: the prestigious Missouri Honor Medal for Distinguished Service in Journalism. The School has awarded the medal annually since 1930. Tom Brokaw, Christiane Amanpour of CNN, Sir Winston Churchill, Carol Loomis of Fortune magazine and Gordon Parks are among the distinguished journalists, advertising and public relations practitioners, business people, institutions and media organizations who have been recipients of this influential award. [More]

Kate Greer, of Marshalltown, Iowa, is a senior in the strategic communication emphasis area with a double major in psychology. Kate will graduate in May 2007 and plans to attend law school. She is a member of the University of Missouri's cross country and track team.