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WRAL Wins Prestigious National Journalism Award
Alfred I. duPont-Columbia University Award Honors Two Documentaries |
Columbia University has announced that WRAL-TV is among 14 winners of the 2007 Alfred I. duPont-Columbia University Awards for broadcast journalism. The award is for two documentaries in WRAL-TV’s “Focal Point” series, “Standards of Living” and “Paper Thin Promise”.
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a PBS documentary will feature the duPont award winners, including WRAL-TV. Tune in:
Telling the Truth:
The Best in Broadcast Journalism on UNC-TV
Tuesday, January 23rd
10:00pm
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The award is recognized in the industry as broadcasting’s Pulitzer Prize.
Documentary producer and writer Clay Johnson, photographer and editor Jay Jennings, and hosts David Crabtree and Lynda Loveland traveled to New York City to attend the awards presentation at Columbia University on January 17, 2007.
WRAL-TV’s documentary unit will also be featured in a PBS documentary on the duPont winners titled “Telling the Truth: The Best in Broadcast Journalism”. The documentary is hosted by CNN correspondent Christiane Amanpour and will be broadcast on UNC-TV Tuesday January 23 at 10:00pm.
This year’s winners were chosen from a pool of 526 radio and television news entries that aired in the United States between July 1, 2005, and June 30, 2006.
Judges could not decide which of WRAL-TV’s two entries to honor, so it bestowed the award to both of them. “Standards of Living” examined the housing conditions of migrant farm workers in North Carolina and was originally broadcast in August 2005. “Paper Thin Promise” looked at the use of restraining orders in domestic violence cases and was originally broadcast in June 2006. Both programs can be seen on wral.com.
Topics covered by other winners include the Iraq War, the devastation of Hurricane Katrina, and the global AIDS crisis. Other winners include PBS, NBC News, HBO and NPR.
WRAL-TV Documentary Producer Clay Johnson (l to r), former WRAL-TV Doc Researcher Mariana Jacob & WRAL-TV Doc Photographer Jay Jennings with their newly acquired duPont baton. |
The duPont Award winners are presented with silver batons inscribed with the famous observation about the power of television by the late Edward R. Murrow: “This instrument can teach, it can illuminate; yes, it can even inspire. But it can do so only to the extent that humans are determined to use it to those ends. Otherwise it is merely wires and lights in a box.”
Scott Simon, host of Weekend Edition Saturday on NPR and Lisa Myers, senior investigative correspondent, for NBC News hosted the ceremony and presented the awards.
The awards were established in 1942 by Jessie Ball duPont in memory of her late husband, Alfred I. duPont and have been administered by Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism since 1968.
Thanks to WRAL-TV’s Debbie Strange for this capcom story.
