(WASHINGTON, D.C. – May 1, 2019) – The White House News Photographers Association® has announced that David Greene, award-winning journalist and New York Times best-selling author and host of NPR’s Morning Edition, will be the host and emcee of the 98th WHNPA’s 2019 ‘Eyes of History®’ awards gala to be held on June 15, 2019, at Washington’s Ritz Carlton Hotel.
The top winners of the still, video, multimedia and student contests will be honored at the annual black-tie gala which celebrates all the winning photojournalists and the President of the United States. Guests, including government dignitaries and industry celebrities, attend. Another highlight of the evening will be presenting Margaret Thomas, Ph.D., of The Washington Post the Lifetime Achievement Award.
Greene joined NPR in 2005 and prior to taking on his current role in 2012, Greene was an NPR foreign correspondent based in Moscow covering the region from Ukraine and the Baltics east to Siberia, bringing listeners stories as wide-ranging as Chernobyl 25 years later and Beatles-singing Russian Babushkas. His book, Midnight in Siberia, captured Russian life on a journey across the Trans-Siberian Railway.
WHNPA President Whitney Shefte said, “The WHNPA is elated that David Greene will host this year’s ‘Eyes of History’ gala. Greene is a remarkable journalist and we’re lucky to have him. The fact that he was a friend and colleague of David Gilkey, our 2011 Photographer of the Year who was killed while on assignment in Afghanistan in 2016, makes having him all the more special.”
Greene is a recipient of the Edward R. Murrow Award for his interview with two young men badly beaten by authorities in the Russian republic of Chechnya as part of a campaign to target gay men. In 2011, Greene was honored with the Daniel Schorr Journalism Prize from WBUR and Boston University for his coverage of the Arab Spring. Greene’s voice became familiar to NPR listeners during his four years covering the White House reporting on the second term of former President George W. Bush. During the days following Hurricane Katrina, Greene was aboard Air Force One when President Bush flew low over the Gulf Coast and caught his first glimpse of the storm’s destruction.
Greene was an integral part of NPR’s coverage of the historic 2008 election, reporting on Hillary Clinton’s campaign from start to finish, and also focusing on how racial attitudes were playing into voters’ decisions. Greene received the 2008 Merriman Smith Award for deadline coverage of the presidency from the White House Correspondents’ Association for his report on a speech by then-candidate Barack Obama addressing the nation’s racial divide.
After President Barack Obama took office, Greene kept one eye trained on the White House and the other eye on the road. He spent three months driving across America – with a recorder, camera, and lots of caffeine – to learn how the recession was touching Americans during President Obama’s first 100 days in office. The series was called “100 Days: On the Road in Troubled Times.”
