'Pay the man,' the judge said, and that's how a career got started

In a series of video snippets, Jon Alpert, winner of the 2009 I.F. Stone Medal for Journalistic Independence, showed Thursday night at American University how a young New York City cab driver with a camera became a documentary film maker reporting on injustice, misery and conflict around the world, often in dangerous situations. Alpert, feeling ill served by his labor union, started doing on-screen interviews with other cab drivers. At one point a manager came at him, threatened to smash his camera, and did. Alpert went to small-claims court, where the manager denied ever having seen him. Alpert said he could show that was a lie but the judge said, "No, you can't; it's one person's word against another's." Whereupon Alpert produced his visual evidence, and the judge said, "Pay the man." That was pretty much how it started.