Bee Metro Staff
Published Thursday, May 4, 2006
"The Pineros: Men of the Pines," a Sacramento Bee series about the misuse and abuse of Latino migrants working in America's public and private forests, was honored Wednesday with the 2006 Taylor Family Award for Fairness in Newspapers.
The Taylor award judges praised the stories, by reporter Tom Knudson and photographer Hector Amezcua, "for including all the groups affected by this timely issue" and for "the way the pictures and stories gave a voice to people who are rarely heard."
In the first of the three stories, published Nov. 13, pinero Odilio Castro describes himself and his fellow workers: "Somos los desconocidos" - we are the unknown ones, said Castro, who was injured by a falling tree on a job in the Sequoia National Forest. "When you tell somebody you work in the woods, they have no idea what you do."
Finding out what pineros do took Knudson and Hector Amezcua nine months and included travel from federal forests in California and the Pacific Northwest to impoverished villages in Guatemala and Mexico.
Through interviews, documents and databases they uncovered stories of unsafe and unfair work practices on the thinning, pruning and planting jobs - often financed by federal dollars and frequently involving legal guest workers.
After the series ran, the head of the U.S. Forest Service vowed to put a stop to the mistreatment by strengthening his employees' oversight of the jobs. Congressional hearings also were held.
The $10,000 award, administered by the Nieman Foundation at Harvard, was started by the Taylor family, former publishers of the Boston Globe. Its stated purpose is "to encourage fairness in news coverage by America's daily newspapers."
The series, additional material such as documents, photos and interactive graphics, and follow-up coverage are at www.sacbee.com/pineros.