Marty Baron
BOSTON — February 10, Martin Baron, editor of The Boston Globe, stood before a crowd of 230 journalists, lawyers, publishers, writers, students and others to receive the second annual Stephen Hamblett First Amendment Award. His leadership of The Globe and The Miami Herald had already earned him two “Editor of the Year” awards first by Editor & Publisher in April of 2001 and second by the National Press Foundation in 2004. His message to the crowd was simple: “be courageous,” he said. He began by quoting a 1927 dissent in a Supreme Court case by Justice Brandeis. “Those who won our independence, Brandeis wrote, ‘believed liberty to be the secret of happiness and courage to be the secret of liberty.’” At the end of his comments he urged the crowd “When we leave this ceremony, we owe the founders and our own community an equal measure of courage. Courage to pursue and tell the truth. That requires being accurate and fair and responsible and honorable, of course. But it also means having the guts to lay out the facts — honestly, forthrightly, fearlessly. If we do not ask the hard questions, who will? And if won’t tell the plain truth, what good are we?” Full text of Martin Baron speech
