Why I’ve given back my EY awards – and the $2000 cash

The EY business journalism awards have been particularly kind to me.

In their first and second years, I won the radio section and was awarded prize money of $1000 each time.

Last year, I was surprised but delighted to again be named a finalist (although there was no longer a separate radio section).

I wasn’t surprised that I didn’t make the cut this year – you can’t win them all – but I wasn’t in the least deterred from planning to enter again next year.

The two awards were for work I’d done while at Radio New Zealand and were particularly sweet.

My two years at Radio New Zealand were easily the worst of my career.

It’s fair to say I wasn’t well-regarded by Radio New Zealand’s management, who judged my work mediocre.

So to have an independent third party judge otherwise, and particularly for work done while I was at Radio New Zealand, was balm for the soul.

RELATED VIDEO: EY Business Awards judging panel member Rebecca Macfie on why she resigned in protest over Karyn Scherer's disqualification. Other NBR journalists withdrew in support of Ms Scherer. NZME, RNZ, Fairfax, Interest, RNZ and TVNZ also pulled entries.

Thankfully, by the time the second prize was awarded, I was already in a much happier place, having joined NBR two months earlier.

So I felt sick last Thursday when I learned EY had disqualified the work of my colleague, Karyn Scherer, on printing company Fuji Xerox New Zealand and its questionable sales tactics and dodgy accounting.

The pride I’d taken in receiving my awards evaporated when I learned the reason for that disqualification was that Fuji Xerox was an audit client of EY’s.

Worse than no awards
The EY awards, excluding stories on EY audit clients, are worse than no awards at all.

This has particular resonance for me.

Since May, I’ve been working on one of the biggest series of stories of my more than 30-year career as a journalist.

That’s the worsening news from Fletcher Building’s construction division and the seeming inaction – until last month – of its board.

Now guess who Fletcher Building’s auditor is? No prizes for guessing it’s EY.

EY’s stance has also destroyed the value of the awards I’d already won.

Good journalism has always been about telling truth to power without fear or favour.

When I graduated as a journalist many long years ago, my father gave me a framed placard he’d made himself which still hangs on my wall.

“News is something someone wants suppressed; everything else is advertising,” the placard reads and attributes the quote to famed US newspaper publisher Randolf Hearst, though other sources attribute it to the British publisher Lord Northcliffe.

The prize money was always of less importance to me than winning the awards themselves but, the longer I thought about it, the more the money felt tainted.

So, on Friday afternoon I posted the framed certificate from the second award and wrote a cheque for $2000 and sent them back to EY (I couldn’t find the first certificate – possibly left behind at Radio New Zealand – or I would have sent that too.)