Rufus Friday named 2026 James Madison Award honoree

Rufus Friday

In a widely published January/February 2026 op-ed, Rufus Friday warned against efforts to “turn Stars and Stripes into a vehicle for official messaging rather than an independent news organization.” He pointed to the five values displayed on the newspaper’s newsroom wall — “Credibility. Impartiality. Truth-telling. Balanced. Accountable.” — and explained why they matter particularly to a newspaper serving American military personnel.

LEXINGTON, Ky. — The 2026 James Madison Award recipient for service to the First Amendment is Rufus Friday, executive director of the Center for Integrity in News Reporting. The School of Journalism and Media in the University of Kentucky College of Communication and Information and its Scripps Howard First Amendment Center present the award annually.

Friday also serves as chairman of the Stars and Stripes publisher’s national advisory board, where he has emerged as a leading voice in defending the First Amendment and press freedom nationwide. Prior to this role, as president and publisher of the Lexington Herald-Leader, Friday was “a consistent and unwavering supporter of the newsroom’s independence, including at times when doing so meant taking serious political heat himself,” according to his nomination by Peter Baniak, the inaugural Al Cross Faculty Fellow and Visiting Professional in Public Affairs Journalism in the UK School of Journalism and Media. “He understood that a publisher’s responsibility is not to protect a newspaper from criticism, but to protect its journalists’ ability to report independently, fairly and honestly.”

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