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NCPR in Canton honored for coverage of breaking news

Posted 4/27/18

CANTON -- North Country Public Radio (NCPR) has received a regional Edward R. Murrow Award and a national Society of Professional Journalists Sigma Delta Chi Award for its breaking news coverage, …

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NCPR in Canton honored for coverage of breaking news

Posted

CANTON -- North Country Public Radio (NCPR) has received a regional Edward R. Murrow Award and a national Society of Professional Journalists Sigma Delta Chi Award for its breaking news coverage, Shooting Near Ft. Drum Raises Questions About Army Recruitment. Lead reporter Lauren Rosenthal was cited, as were NCPR’s news director Martha Foley and Adirondack bureau chief Brian Mann.

The station’s website, www.ncpr.org, received a regional Edward R. Murrow Award for overall excellence —content and presentation. The digital team, led by Bill Haenel and Dale Hobson, and the station’s news department, are all responsible for the caliber of the station’s digital presence.

The breaking news coverage story on the shooting near Ft. Drum, was described as follows in the contest submission:

A double murder near Ft. Drum, NY on a Sunday last summer shocked the military and civilian community alike. Justin Walters, an Army sergeant still on active duty, allegedly shot and killed both his wife and a NYS Trooper who was responding to a domestic violence call at the Walters’ home.

On paper, Walters had been a successful soldier, earning multiple medals for combat service in Afghanistan over a decade-long military career. But by the day of the shooting, that career may have been on shaky footing. As our reporter would find out, social media posts showed that Walters was bound for a Warrior Transition Unit, where troubled soldiers are directed to get help with PTSD and other service-related problems -- or "transition" out of the military and into civilian life if they're no longer fit for duty.

By the time the state trooper and the young wife and mother were laid to rest, just seven days after the shooting, we had tracked Walters’ history back to a Columbine-inspired death threat at his high school, and a record of other troubling behavior as a young man and more recently, as a combat veteran. Questions remain about of how Army recruitment passed over Walters’ background in the first place, whether it put him at increased risk of developing combat-related PTSD, and how many other recruits and soldiers have similar warning signs in their background