Nate Thayer–Awards and Honors

Nate Thayer–Awards and Honors

Thayer’s reporting has earned him The World Press Award, the British Press Awards Scoop of the Year Award, and the Francis Frost Wood Award for Courage in Journalism, given to a journalist “judged to best exemplify physical or moral courage in the practice of his or her craft.”

He was the recipient of the Center for Public Integrity International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) Award for Outstanding International Investigative Reporting of the Year “Upon awarding Thayer the ICIJ Award, the judges noted: :”He illuminated a page of history that would have been lost to the world had he not spent years in the Cambodian jungle, in a truly extraordinary quest for first-hand knowledge of the Khmer Rouge and their murderous leader. His investigations of the Cambodian political world required not only great risk and physical hardship but also mastery of an ever-changing cast of Political faction characters.”

Thayer was given a prestigious Peabody Award, broadcast journalism’s highest honor, and was the first person in 57 years to turn it down because of unethical practices of the American broadcast industry,  saying:”I in no way want my name associated with such egregious violations of journalistic and professional ethics.”

Thayer is also the recipient of The Overseas Press Club of America Award and the Asian Society of Publishers and Editors Award for “Excellence in Reporting,”

Thayer was also honored with the SAIS-Novartis “Award for Excellence in International Reporting.”

He was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize by The Wall Street Journal.

He was a visiting scholar at the Paul H Nitze School of Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins University

According to the BBC “Many of the regions greatest names in reporting made their mark in the pages of the Far Eastern Economic Review from the legendary Richard Hughes of Korean War fame, to Nate Thayer, the journalist who found Cambodia’s Khmer Rouge leader Pol Pot.”

In 1999 the Nate Thayer Scholarship was established at Hofstra University, Department of Journalism and Mass Media Studies, School of Communication given annually to “a qualified student with the best foreign story idea. Winners are selected on the basis of scholastic achievement or potential as well as economic need.”