The award and lecture, organised by the British Journalism Review to mark its 20th anniversary, will be made annually in memory of the distinguished broadcaster, Charles Wheeler, who died last year.
The Newsnight presenter received the prize from Lady Wheeler, the late journalist's widow. Before presenting the award, she emotionally remembered her husband as a wonderful human being, as well as a talented journalist.
Paxman, damning an age in which British newspapers' comment rather than find things out and television 'succumbs to triviality', said that Wheeler 'remained a model to us all' and 'stayed true to the moral duties of our trade'.
Wheeler found things out and caused trouble, Paxman said. "He never succumbed to pomposity; he never succumbed to self-importance; and he never succumbed to managerialism.
"He never softened; he never gave in; he kept going. He remained to the end a straightforward, charming, upright, honorable and awkward bugger."
Mark Thompson, delivering the inaugural Charles Wheeler lecture, said he believed 'Charles Wheeler was the finest reporter the BBC ever had'.
Describing NUJ meetings at the BBC Lime Grove studios in 1975, in which then director-general, John Birt, met with disgruntled staff objecting to changes at the corporation, Thompson said Wheeler had been a 'very well-spoken but also persistent voice' in the corner.
Wheeler took issue with Birt's more 'cerebral, more programmatic' approach and introduction of new systems, he said.
"If John Birt was a Roundhead's Roundhead, Charles came across at the table as a kind of cavalier hero - passionately committed to the primacy of the individual correspondent, to witness and judgment, deeply suspicious of any attempt to hedge that autonomy and personal responsibility around, with systems or checks and balances," said Thompson.
"Among his many great qualities of journalism, Charles lacked the gene, which regrettably Jeremy lacks - the embarrassment gene - from pressing on with that supplementary second or third question."
Related links:
- John Mair: 'Why Jeremy Paxman is the new Charles Wheeler' (Journalism.co.uk Editors' Blog)
- John Mair's tribute to Charles Wheeler (January 2009 - Journalism.co.uk Editors' Blog)
More coverage of Journalism in Crisis 2009 to follow from Journalism.co.uk.Follow @journalism_live on Twitter. A livestream can be viewed at this link.
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