Charlie Savage, Washington correspondent for The Boston Globe has won the twentieth annual Gerald R. Ford Prize for Distinguished Reporting on the Presidency. The $5,000 award recognizes journalists whose high standards for accuracy and substance help foster a better public understanding of the Presidency. This year, the award will be presented by Jack Ford, son of President Ford and chairman of the Gerald R. Ford Foundation, at a National Press Club luncheon on June 11th.

In selecting Charlie Savage for the Gerald R. Ford Prize for Distinguished Reporting on the Presidency in 2006, the judges issued the following statement.

"As White House reporter for The Boston Globe, Charlie Savage exposed a persistent and unprecedented expansion of Presidential authority that infringed on the separation of powers imbedded in the Constitution. Compiling the record of President Bush's actions on new legislation, Savage recognized and reported a clear pattern: In public ceremonies the President would sign bills passed by Congress, then quietly add signing statements asserting the right to ignore provisions with which he disagreed. In six years as President, Savage reported, President Bush challenged some 750 statutes, far more than all previous Presidents combined. Broadening the impact of his articles, Savage quoted legal scholars on how the President's practice of approving bills only to defy them diminished the rule of law. Members of Congress, alerted by Savage's reporting, moved to counter the President's reach for greater power by demanding that the President execute all statutes duly debated and legislated into law.