HOW A FREE PRESS DEFENDS DEMOCRACY

A free press has the capacity to bolster the norms and practices that give rise to democracy, like pluralism, evidence-based debate, the rule of law and trustworthy institutions.

The 2025 Walter Cronkite Awards competition invites entries that investigate threats that democracy now faces and that provide exemplary coverage of efforts to protect the U.S. Constitution, defend the rule of law and hold power accountable.

​Winning submissions will demonstrate how a trustworthy press can bolster the norms and practices that foster resilient democratic institutions and provide Americans the evidence-based reporting they need to be informed and empowered citizens.
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The biennial Cronkite Awards competition is administered bythe Norman Lear Centerat theUSC AnnenbergSchool for Communication and Journalism.
 
USC Annenberg also partners with theAnnenberg Public Policy Center at the University of Pennsylvania to present the Brooks Jackson Prize for Fact-Checking. The prize is named for the founding director of FactCheck.org.
2025 Press Release
2023 Awards Show
Brooks Jackson Prize
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The Brooks Jackson Prize is administered by
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Every weeknight for 19 years, up to 30 million Americans watched Walter Cronkite anchor the CBS Evening News. A poll named him “the most trusted man in America.” When he went to Vietnam in 1968, he used his journalistic authority not to amplify the official narrative about how well the war was going, nor to report, with magisterial impartiality, that there were dueling narratives about the U.S. winning the war. Instead, he told Americans the truth: "The only way out will be to negotiate not as victors, but as an honorable people who lived up to their pledge to defend democracy and did the best they could." 

Some of the winners from two
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decades of the Cronkite Awards

The Walter Cronkite Awards competition is administered by the USC Annenberg Norman Lear Center; the Brooks Jackson Prize is administered by theAnnenberg Public Policy Center.
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