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The Society of Professional Journalists and its Utah chapter are not the only groups using "awards" to spotlight agencies that withhold information from the public.
Investigative Reporters and Editors has created a "Golden Padlock" award to highlight government agencies and officials that stymie efforts at open government and transparency.
IRE, a nonprofit organization dedicated to improving investigative journalism, awarded the first Golden Padlock to the U.S. Border Patrol, for holding back details on shootings involving its agents along the border with Mexico that resulted in several deaths.
"The U.S. Border Patrol's resounding silence on fatal shootings involving its agents epitomizes the kind of intransigence for which this award was created," IRE President David Cay Johnston said in a statement issued by the group. "Accountability is an essential element of any public agency, but all the more so when its agents are empowered to fire weapons that kill. The Border Agency appears to have forgotten that duty."
Other nominees for the award included the New Jersey Transit Authority for giving reporters a completely blacked-out copy of its hurricane-response plan; and the national Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which took five years to produce a requested document on Lyme disease.
IRE also added the U.S. Justice Department and Attorney General Eric Holder for revelations that the department was monitoring journalists' phone records.