Lisa Desjardins Named Honorable Mention Awardee for the Medill Medal

Arlington, VA (June 6, 2022)–Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism today announced that PBS NewsHour’s Capitol Hill correspondent Lisa Desjardins (MSJ97) was named the Honorable Mention Awardee for the James Foley Medill Medal for Courage in Journalism for her reporting during the January 6th U.S. Capitol insurrection. Medill describes the award and honorable mention as given to individual journalists or teams who “best displayed moral, physical, ethical, financial or political courage in the pursuit of a story or series of stories”.

The award honors the memory of Medill alumni, James Foley, who was captured while reporting in Syria in 2012 and killed by ISIS extremists in 2014.

On January 6th, Desjardins was the only journalist outside of lockdown reporting live on television from the halls of the Capitol, during which she relayed the news as insurrectionists streamed into the building and interviewed one of them live during NewsHour’s special on PBS (Video Link 1 and Video Link 2).

Her reporting of January 6th extended well beyond NewsHour’s special broadcast that day, including as a video podcast anchored by Judy Woodruff and alongside her fellow NewsHour correspondents, Amna Nawaz and Yamiche Alcindor, who that day were outside the Capitol where the mob was gathering and at the White House, respectively. Desjardins is a veteran congressional reporter, having covered Capitol Hill for the past 16 years, and for NewsHour since 2014.

“Lisa Desjardins provided Americans with a real-time look inside the Jan. 6 insurrection, showing the real danger the insurrectionists posed to all of those inside the Capitol who were attempting to do their jobs. Her ability to keep telling the story, showing viewers the shocking rampage even as she was in jeopardy herself, was a true act of journalistic courage,” said judge and professor and co-director of the Medill National Security Journalism Initiative, Ellen Shearer.

“What a great honor for Lisa’s courage and commitment to accurate reporting to receive this recognition, especially in the memory of James Foley. Thank you to the Medill School and the judges for this honor,” said NewsHour’s senior executive producer Sara Just.

Press Contact: Courtney Haywood, chaywood (at) newshour (dot) org