Anderson receives Zenger Award—25 years later

Terry Anderson, an adjunct professor at the University of Florida College of Journalism and Communications, received a belated award last week during a trip to Arizona. In 1990 while still a captive in Beirut, the University of Arizona awarded Anderson the John Peter and Anna Catherine Zenger Award. Last week in a surprise ceremony, he finally received the award.

Anderson was in Arizona to speak on a panel for Arizona Public Media’s “AZ Week.”  He joined the parents of slain freelancer James Foley to discuss “American Journalists Abroad Face Increasing Peril.”

Anderson, a former AP reporter who was held hostage in Beirut from 1985-91 and chronicled his days of captivity in the book “Den of Lions,” is teaching international journalism in the College.

Since 1954, the University of Arizona journalism program has awarded the John Peter and Anna Catherine Zenger Award to a journalist who fights for freedom of the press and the people’s right to know.

It is named for a husband and wife team of pioneering journalists. John Peter Zenger was editor of the New York Weekly Journal in 1734 when he was jailed by British colonial authorities on charges of seditious libel. He had criticized the corrupt administration of New York’s governor, William Cosby. While Zenger was imprisoned, his wife, Anna Catherine Zenger, continued to publish the newspaper. Zenger’s subsequent trial and acquittal is considered a landmark case in the history of freedom of the press, helping to lay the foundation for the First Amendment.  Past Zenger Award winners include Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, Walter Cronkite and Bill Moyers.

To view the panel discussion Anderson participated in, visit: https://originals.azpm.org/azweek/.

Posted: March 4, 2015
Category: College News
Tagged as: Award, Terry Anderson