John Greenman (l), Carter Professor of Journalism, talks with slain journalist Chauncey Bailey's sister, Lorelei Waqia. Greenman oversees the McGill Medal for Journalistic Courage, which was awarded Wednesday to a team of four journalists who produced The Chauncey Bailey Project.
On Aug. 2, 2007, Chauncey Bailey was shot down while walking home from his job at the Oakland Post, in Oakland, California. A little over two years later, four of the reporters that finished the story he had been writing sat around the conference table describing their experiences with the Chauncey Bailey Project in the Drewry Reading Room of UGA’s Grady College of Journalism and Mass Communication. The Project received the McGill Medal for Journalist Courage on March 23 from the McGill Fellows. These journalists were selected because of their involvement with research that exposed the corruption in the Oakland Police Department and the Your Black Muslim Bakery, the organization connected with Bailey’s murder.
The project started a couple weeks after Bailey’s death with the help of about three-dozen volunteer reporters, editors and community members who’s goal it was to finish what Bailey started and to prove the project’s mantra, “You can’t kill a story by killing a Journalist”. The dozens of volunteers spent about two years in all, pouring through police reports, public documents and talking to sources. During this time, they wrote over a 100 stories about the murder, Bailey’s assassin and the police department’s failure to pursue the case. The four reporters, Thomas Peele, Josh Richman, Mary Fricker and Bob Butler, stressed that the key to their reporting was their use of public documents. Through these documents, they found mountains of evidence and verified information from sources. The documents, mostly untouched by local police detectives, revealed multiple types of fraud, the use of child labor and polygamy.
The four also emphasized that courage is necessary to reporting, not just for instances like the Chauncey Bailey Project, but for pursuing any difficult lead in a story. Mike Oliver, another project member, summed up their opinion. “A good journalist is one that won’t be intimidated, that won’t take no when they believe that the information should be made public.” They discussed how, without courage, they would not have been able to pursue leads with members of Your Black Muslim Bakery, and police department. This courage opened the doors for the Bakery and its members to be convicted of their crimes and the Oakland Police Department to reform their homicide department.
Although they never expected their work to last more than eight months, the journalists also never expected to discover the numerous stories they did. They took the years of dedication and the long hours the project required in stride and believe that it was the only way to honor Bailey’s life and work. “We simply did what we had to do after a friend and colleague was slain for his work. If a story dies along with the journalist, the journalist died in vain; letting that happen was never an option.” Richman said according to the Chauncey Bailey Project website. The journalists succeeded at just that, the memory of Bailey’s courage never died, it lives still today in the stories and hearts he impacted.
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