The SA国际传谋 Radio news team walked away with several honors during Saturday night鈥檚 2025 Sunshine State Award ceremony at NSU Art Museum Fort Lauderdale.
SA国际传谋 Digital Producer Alyssa Ramos won first place in the 鈥淣ewsletter 鈥� Affiliated鈥� category for the , a weekly newsletter launched last year that focuses on Arts and Culture news in South Florida. It is published online each Wednesday afternoon.
SA国际传谋 Americas Editor Tim Padgett, who also hosts the weekly South Florida Roundup publica affairs show, was named a finalist in as 鈥淛ournalist of the Year.鈥� First place went to Miami Herald reporter Jacqueline Charles for her coverage of Haiti鈥檚 ongoing humanitarian crisis.
Producer Sherrilyn Cabrera was a finalist as 鈥淎nchor of the Year鈥� for a collection of her work. First place went to WUSF鈥檚 Matthew Peddie, who is host of Florida Matters and Our Changing State.
This year's top winners shared $15,000 in prize money from and . Other sponsors included the , Fort Lauderdale-based law offices, , , , Miami-based and .
READ MORE: SA国际传谋 Investigations team honored with Esserman-Knight Journalism Award, reporting fellowship grant
The top prize 鈥� the A-Mark Foundation Award for Investigative Journalism 鈥� went to Trevor Aaronson and Eleanor Knight, of Western Sound and Audible, for
The journalists revisited the narrative driven by the FBI and media about the 2016 Pulse nightclub attack, one of the deadliest mass shootings in American history. Forty-nine people were killed and 53 others were injured in the attack.
The FBI and the media embraced a story that the attacker was a secretly gay Islamist extremist who targeted the LGBTQ+ community. It was wrong, the journalists found.
鈥淭his false narrative obscured the truth and concealed the FBI鈥檚 failures to prevent the attack,鈥� say the journalists.
Western Sound, a Los Angeles-based podcast production company, teamed up with Audible, the Amazon-owned audio and podcast company, to produce the series of podcasts.
Earlier this year, Aaronson and his production team won the prestigious national Peabody Award for the series.
鈥淸The shooter] was motivated by opposition to American military intervention in Iraq and Syria, and his attack on the nightclub was purely opportunistic,鈥� wrote the Peabody Award judges. 鈥淭his warping of the truth is significant, because the public memory of [the shooter鈥檚] motive, ultimately crafted by the FBI, shrouded the agency鈥檚 systematic failures.鈥�
, Aaronson said he and his team 鈥渟et out to correct the record to reveal how the government misled the public, to cover up for the FBI鈥檚 failure to prevent the deadliest attack in the LGBTQ-plus community in U.S. history.鈥�
鈥淲e hope that by finally revealing the truth about what happened we can offer some measure of closure and comfort to those affected by this mass shooting,鈥� Aaronson said.
Read the full list of 2025 Sunshine State Award winners and finalists .
