The winners of the prestigious 2016 Alfred I. duPont-Columbia University Awards were announced Tuesday, with four local television stations garnering awards: KAET Phoenix, KMOV St. Louis, WBAL Baltimore and WRAL Raleigh, N.C. All the recipients will be honored at an award ceremony on Jan. 19, 2016 at Columbia University’s Low Memorial Library.
KAET Phoenix, known as Arizona PBS, part of the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism at Arizona State University, examined the lives of heroin users in “Hooked: Tracking Heroin's Hold on Arizona,” a documentary that, through a partnership with the Arizona Broadcasters Association, aired simultaneously commercial-free by all 33 broadcast TV stations and 93 radios in the state.
KMOV, the St. Louis CBS affiliate owned by Meredith Corp., and investigative reporter Craig Cheatham will be honored for “The Injustice System: Cops, Courts and Greedy Politicians,” the station’s commercial-free hour-long documentary investigation on law enforcement in St. Louis County following the shooting death of Michael Brown and events in Ferguson, Mo.
Hearst Television’s NBC affiliate in Baltimore WBAL and its lead investigative reporter Jayne Miller earn the award for their investigation into the events leading up to the death of Freddie Gray in police custody.
In the award-winning documentary “Journey Alone,” WRAL, the Capitol Broadcasting Company-owned CBS affiliate in Raleigh, explored the increase of unaccompanied minors immigrating illegally and their effect on North Carolina.
