When Mary Nissenson of WTVJ-TV, Miami, went to Poland to tape a local documentary about a holocaust victim, she had no idea she would get involved in Poland’s labor crisis. The result, Poland:Changing Nation, was a superb example of television journalism at its best.
Read the full citation: http://www.peabodyawards.com/award-profile/poland-changing-nation
A Peabody Award is presented to Steve Allen, creator of this fascinating show—and a bow to his wife, Jayne Meadows, who often plays historical characters in productions of Meeting of Minds.
Read the full winner’s citation: http://www.peabodyawards.com/award-profile/personal-award-steve-allen-for-meeting-of-minds
Peabody Winner 2012 | Brook Lapping Productions, BBC, National Geographic Channel
In a remarkable four-hour documentary, key portions of the history of the early 21st Century are presented as a fine-grained tapestry. That history could have been told through the intimate personality profiles that emerge here. It could have been examined in the detailed explorations of how these personalities engaged one another across borders, over issues, and in tense negotiations. It could have chronicled major conflicts, defined in part by the events of September 11, 2001. What makes the series most powerful, however, is the constant reminder that none of these things can be best understood without the others, without context, comparison, without the full “back story,” or better yet, the “back stage story.” With footage from every major news organization that covered those years, the series involves all the major “players.” From Yeltsin to Putin to Saakashvili to Medvedev, from Bush to Rice to Powell to Obama, all are present. So too are the oligarchs and the demonstrators, the soldiers and the civilians. With the drive of historical narrative and the pull of international intrigue, we observe constant jockeying for power and influence, for political control and financial gain, for personal power and national pride. Putin, Russia & The West exposes and explains history as process, as something made with choices rather than something to be recalled and described. For this it receives a Peabody Award.
“This is more than a legalization struggle,” Angy Rivera says of the plight of the more than 11 million undocumented people in America today. “But a psychological war that measures character and patience.” The documentary “Don’t Tell Anyone (No Le Digas a Nadie)” follows Rivera’s daily journey out of an environment steeped in fear to becoming an activist for young people like herself. Director/editor/producer Mikaela Shwer’s richly textured portrait evokes millions of similar stories across the country.
In the battered, bombed out Syrian city of Aleppo, thousands of families have fled, persuaded that nothing in a refugee camp could be as terrible as wondering if a rocket will hit your house or a sniper will take you out as you hang laundry to dry. Photojournalist/director Marcel Mettelsiefen focuses on one anti-regime family who have stayed in their home and especially on the children – young sisters Helen, Farah and Sara, their brother Mohammad, and their friend Aboude. Their daily lives are an absurd, heartbreaking co-mingling of the mundane and the terrifying. Hala, the mother, recalls giving the kids “a lot of cough syrup” during the worst shelling. Farah, wearing a T-shirt embossed with a cartoon character’s face, squirms on an easy chair like the antsy eight-year-old she is as she explains how her favorite past time is helping her father, Abu Ali, make bombs. Later we see her pout because dad won’t let her keep stuffed animals she finds in an abandoned apartment. Mettelsiefen films the ruins all around them with the eye of a theatrical cinematographer, but it’s the intimacy of the interviews, some punctuated by the sound of explosions, that give the documentary its greatest power. For capturing snapshots of family life in a war zone and giving us inklings of the psychological damage visited on the young, Children on the Frontline receives a Peabody Award.
“Guess what? Your cell phone can’t always find you in an emergency when you call 911,” is what prompted WXIA’s Brendan Keefe to dig deeper into 911 response times after the tragic death of a suburban Atlanta woman. His investigative report “911: Lost on the Line” led to local and national changes that can potentially save lives.
