Bill Whitaker To Receive Paul White Award

The Radio Television Digital News Association today named Bill Whitaker as the winner of the 2018 Paul White Award. Named for the first news director of CBS, the Paul White Award is RTDNA’s highest honor and recognizes a lifetime of achievement and service to the profession of broadcast and digital journalism.

Whitaker is a correspondent on the CBS News program 60 Minutes and has covered major news stories domestically and across the globe for CBS News in his long, stellar career as a journalist.

“Bill Whitaker has been an outstanding broadcast journalist for almost 40 years,” said Vincent Duffy, chair of the Radio Television Digital News Foundation. “From his start at KQED in San Francisco, to his work today on ‘60 Minutes,’ Bill has covered presidents, the OJ Simpson trial, and important stories all over the globe. Throughout his career, he has brought important stories to light, brought concern and smiles to our faces, and showed a generation of journalists how the job should be done.”

Since joining 60 Minutes in 2014, Whitaker’s reporting has taken him to Asia, Africa, Europe, Mexico and the Middle East, including a timely investigation of the vetting process Syrian refugees undergo before coming to the U.S. and an interview with the highest ranking North Korean official to defect in decades.

Domestically, his award-winning stories have provided keen insights into the hot-button issue of race and policing in America with his reports from Cleveland, Chicago and most recently, Tulsa, Okla., where he got the news-making first interview with the city police officer accused of manslaughter for shooting an unarmed black man. He has chronicled the epic battle to capture and hold Mexico’s infamous drug lord Joaquin “el Chapo” Guzman, and has also drawn attention to death penalty issues and America’s heroin epidemic.

In 2017, Whitaker received the Leonard Zeidenberg First Amendment Award from the RTDNF. He will be presented with this year’s Paul White Award on Friday, Sept. 28, at Excellence in Journalism 2018 in Baltimore.