iMediaEthics' editor-in-chief and publisher Rhonda Roland Shearer accepting the Mirror Award. (Credit: Sydney Smith/iMediaEthics)

iMediaEthics’ Dec. 27, 2011 story  “Troubling Double Standard, American photojournalism’s different treatment of foreign victims” was awarded the Mirror Award for  “Best Single Article, Digital Media.”

Today was the sixth annual Mirror Awards ceremony, held at the Plaza Hotel and emceed by CNN‘s Anderson Cooper.  The awards, given by Syracuse University’s Newhouse School of Public Communications, single out journalists “who hold a mirror to their own industry for the public’s benefit.”

Anderson Cooper emceed the Mirror Awards today. (Credit: Sydney Smith/iMediaEthics)

iMediaEthics’ story, by publisher and editor-in-chief Rhonda Roland Shearer and Pakistani correspondent Malik Ayub Sumbal, reported on the “troubling double standard” in photojournalism, where American media will publish graphic photos of dead or injured foreigners, but not similar photos of Americans.  The report was the first in our special investigation series on the media’s coverage of the 2007 assassination of former Pakistani prime minister Benazir Bhutto.

We also tracked down an iconic figure from the footage and images of the Bhutto murder scene — an unnamed man wearing a brown jacket who was pictured grieving and in shock countless times.  Brown Jacket Man, who iMediaEthics found, was identified as Muhammad Yaseen Khan and interviewed. Though he was shown in countless photos taken at the Bhutto murder scene, Muhammad Yaseen Khan was never named or interviewed.  Instead, media outlets like the Associated Press guessed to describe him in their photo captions.  iMediaEthics’ exclusive interview with Yaseen revealed that he didn’t know at the time he was being photographed and that he was a close aide to Mrs. Bhutto.  (Read iMediaEthics’ winning story in full here.)

Stonybrook University assistant professor Wasim Ahmad kindly nominated iMediaEthics for this award.

Other finalists in this category were Columbia Journalism Review’s Lauren Kirchner, Nieman Journalism Lab’s Joshua Benton, New York Magazine’s Paul Ford and Poynter‘s Mallary Jean Tenore.

Other winners at the Mirror Awards today were: Adam Lashinsky, Ken Auletta, Joe Pompeo, Anna Holmes, Rebecca Traister, and Peter Maass. See here the Mirror Awards’ announcement of its winners.

(Credit: Sydney Smith/iMediaEthics)