For the British prize for political writing, see Orwell Prize.
The NCTE George Orwell Award for Distinguished Contribution to Honesty and Clarity in Public Language (the Orwell Award for short) is an award given since 1975 by the Public Language Award Committee of the National Council of Teachers of English. It is awarded annually to "writers who have made outstanding contributions to the critical analysis of public discourse."[1]
Its negative counterpart, awarded by the same body, is the Doublespeak Award, "an ironic tribute to public speakers who have perpetuated language that is grossly deceptive, evasive, euphemistic, confusing, or self-centered."[2]
1976: Hugh Rank for the "Intensify/Downplay" schema for analyzing communication, persuasion, and propaganda
1977: Walter Pincus, reporter for The Washington Post—"A patient, methodical journalist who knew his job and who knew the jargon of Washington. Mr. Pincus was the man responsible for bringing to public attention, and thus to a debate in the Senate, the appropriations funding for the neutron bomb."—Hugh Rank, chair, NCTE Committee on Public Doublespeak
1984: Ted Koppel, moderator of Nightline—"...a model of intelligence, informed interest, social awareness, verbal fluency, fair and rigorous questioning of controversial figures... [who has sought] honesty and openness, clarity and coherence, to raise the level of public discourse."—William Lutz, chair, NCTE Committee on Public Doublespeak
1985: Torben Vestergaard and Kim Schroder for The Language of Advertising
1990: Charlotte Baecher of the Consumers Union for Selling America's Kids: Commercial Pressures on Kids of the 90s
1991: David Aaron Kessler—"Under the leadership of Commissioner Kessler, the FDA has begun seizing products with misleading labels, developing new guidelines for clarity and accuracy in food labels, and exposing false, misleading, and deceptive health claims on food labels and in food advertising."—William Lutz
1992: Donald Barlett and James SteeleofThe Philadelphia Inquirer for the series America: What Went Wrong?
1993: Eric Alterman for the book Sound and Fury: The Washington Punditocracy and the Collapse of American Politics
1994: Garry Trudeau, creator of the cartoon strip Doonesbury, was cited for consistently attacking doublespeak in all aspects of American life and from all parts of the cultural and political spectrum.
1995: Lies of Our Times was published between January 1990 and December 1994. It served not only as a general media critic but as a watchdog of The New York Times, which the magazine referred to as "the most cited news medium in the U.S., our paper of record."
1996: William D. Lutz for The New Doublespeak: Why No One Knows What Anyone's Saying Anymore
2011: F.S. Michaels, author of Monoculture: How One Story Is Changing Everything
2012: Peter Zuckerman and Amanda Padoan, authors of Buried in the Sky
2013: Paul L. Thomas whose publications include "Ignoring Poverty in the U.S.: The corporate takeover of public education" (2012) and "Challenging Genres: Comic books and graphic novels" (2010). Dr. Thomas has also edited a recently published volume titled Becoming and Being a Teacher: Confronting Traditional Norms to Create New Democratic Realities (2013).
2014 The Onion for its satire and "treatment of dramatically sensitive issues that plague our culture", in particular U.S. gun culture.
2015: Anthony Cody for The Educator and the Oligarch
2016: David Greenberg for Republic of Spin: An Inside History of the American Presidency
2017: Richard Sobel for Citizenship as Foundation of Rights: Meaning for America
2018: Katie Watson for Scarlet A
2019: Michael P. Lynch for Know-It-All-Society: Truth and Arrogance in Political Culture
