Recognizing the best in the business, journalists gathered for the annual Mirror Awards, which honors the best reporting on the media industry.

“I think it’s important that the media covers the media and covers the media with some degree of scrutiny, and I think it’s great to have a room full of people that recognizes the need to kind of self-govern and self-police and do journalism about journalists,” said Tim Alberta, the chief political correspondent for Politico Magazine.

Some big names in media turned out for the annual event, which was established by the Newhouse School of Public Communications at Syracuse University 13 years ago.

“If you’ve seen the Newhouse School, it says the First Amendment and it’s scripted in three foot high letters across the building, so it’s definitely what we believe in and I think that’s why we want to keep these awards going,” said Amy Falkner, the acting dean of Syracuse’s  Newhouse School.

The awards were handed out to winners in 6 categories.  Jeff Zucker, the president of CNN Worldwide, received the Fred Dressler leadership award, named after a longtime Time-Warner Cable executive.

“Fred Dressler was a true champion in the media business and I am just honored to receive an award in his name,” said Zucker.

Investigative reporter Ronan Farrow was honored for his story in the New Yorker “Trouble at the Top," which detailed claims of sexual harassment against Les Moonves when he headed CBS.

“The CBS story was important and hard and for all of us in the media policing ourselves and being honest about ourselves is one of the most important things we can do,” Farrow said.

When asked if he had anything big he was working on at the moment, Farrow revealed that he actually was.

“I knew you weren’t going to let me off the hook for that. I am working on something and it is big and thank you in advance for that support when that fire storm hits,” Farrow said.

And while there were quite a few journalism heavyweights in the room, there were also a lot of students looking to learn from them and possibly follow in their footsteps.

I’m still figuring things out, but you know you see names like Zucker and Zaslav and it just was great,” said Sean Dorcellus, a journalism student.