For elite journalists, being compared to Walter Cronkite is considered a great honor, so when the Norman Lear Center at the USC Annenberg School for Communications and Journalism announced their 2025 Walter Cronkite Awards for excellence in political journalism on Wednesday, it gave insight into who the industry views as the best of the best. For everybody else, the 2025 winners were a reminder that for those journalists, fighting President Trump is the best way to get street cred.
The first winner was NBC White House correspondent Peter Alexander for “holding the powerful accountable.”
According to the judges, “Alexander’s live reporting and interviewing ‘meets the challenge of fearlessly engaging’ with the U.S. President and his staff in the Oval Office and White House Press Room. Noting his ‘deep commitment to the pursuit of truth,’ they praised his ‘vital work to correct false narratives’ … he remains composed under pressure, persevering and prepared with the facts.’”
Speaking of fraud and false narratives, Alexander recently suggested Trump’s comments about Somalis were related to impending ICE operations and not the welfare fraud scandal.
Another award winner was CBS’s 60 Minutes correspondent Scott Pelley, executive producer Bill Owens, and producer Maria Gavrilovic for a “story about executive orders targeting law firms that the president treats as political enemies ‘an excellent and shocking look at the context and the breadth of the threat’ of wielding power against the judicial system.”
They were also praised for airing that “a week after the program’s executive producer resigned after 24 years with the show, prompted by increased corporate supervision of its news content in the face of a $20 billion lawsuit from President Trump and the pending FCC approval required for CBS owner Paramount Global’s merger with Skydance Media. ‘This skillful examination stands up for the Fourth Estate’s responsibility to not fold under pressure’”
Next were PBS News Hour anchors Amna Nawaz and Geoff Bennett for their “On Democracy” series. “Judges called this ‘brilliant concept’ for a series of interviews with experts, scholars and activists ‘the very best that news can do.’ … it delivered diverse viewpoints that “cut through the noise.”
In reality, News Hour featured 98 liberal guests from July 18 to September 18, but only 21 conservatives.
MS NOW’s Rachel Maddow was also honored for being “the first and only national television program to cover the Hands Off protest movement on April 7 as ‘a valuable contribution to the historic record of this presidency,’ hailing the ‘engaging and informative’ episode reporting on 1,400 peaceful demonstrations as a ’strong use of the medium’ showing viewers they’re not alone in dissent.”
Back on CBS, Evening News anchor John Dickerson’s pretentious end-of-show monologues were praised for “defending civil service and risks to healthcare, to the DOJ, DOGE and DEI. Dickerson does a journalist’s job of ‘bravely’ calling out false narratives ‘with humanizing detail and precision.’ His ‘clear explanations’ tell us how and why it matters that democratic values are under assault, and his ‘historical grounding’ presents facts with ‘calm and rational delivery,’ making his writing even more ‘powerful and effective.’”
The Daily Show’s Jon Stewart was recognized for “continuing a comedic tradition in American journalism” and being “a master of his class,’ as shown in the entry’s analysis of DOGE, Stewart exposes how its chainsaw approach eroded safeguards that protect democracy instead of actually cutting fat.”
It’s ironic that Stewart was the first comedy host to be recognized by the award given that he spent part of Monday’s show mocking Trump for winning the first-ever FIFA Peace Prize, which he claimed was just a way for FIFA to appease Trump.
Also receiving an award was Noticias Telemundo anchor Julio Vaqueiro for “exploring the massive changes enacted, from immigration to tariffs,” and KFOR Oklahoma City for “this ‘stunning’ three-part series about a U.S. citizen and her daughters detained and humiliated by Homeland Security agents ‘a poignant example of finding an important local story that illustrates a national one and digging deep into it and not letting go.’”
Not only was there no award given to anyone who investigated the left, but there was also no award given to anyone who did something non-Trump related. The 2025 Walter Cronkite Awards ended up being just another instance of journalists patting themselves on the back for allegedly keeping democracy alive.
