When Christiane Amanpour was asked by her CNN bosses in late 2006 to tackle the tough topic of fundamentalism across three religions, she had a twinge of doubt: “I wasn’t 100% sure people would watch six hours,” she said. But…
Kimberly Dozier was about to conduct an interview when she learned she had won a Peabody Award for “The Way Home,” an 11-minute piece that aired on “CBS News Sunday Morning.” She quickly dashed off an e-mail to her producer,…
PBS’ “Nova” tackled the subject of evolution in an eight-part series of the same name that aired in the fall of 2001. But Paula Apsell, “Nova’s” senior executive producer, nonetheless watched closely in September 2005 when the trial of Kitzmiller…
For ABC News anchor Bob Woodruff, the Peabody Award he is taking home is exceptionally personal, because unlike most of the work that is being honored, his involves his own traumatic personal story. In January 2006, just over a month…
Dallas ABC affiliate WFAA-TV is being honored with a “compilation” award for four notable investigative series in 2007. “We try to pick stories with systemic issues that need to be looked at long-term,” said investigative producer Mark Smith. “There are…
Sometimes, even the smallest of stories can convey bigger truths, as with “White Horse Village,” an ongoing series on “BBC World News America” about a Chinese farming hamlet so obscure many Chinese haven’t heard of it. Carrie Gracie, a Mandarin-speaking…
Breaking news at the local TV station usually translates to discrete events: a fire, a car chase, a robbery. But on April 16, 2007, NBC affiliate WSLS-TV in Roanoke, Va., was faced with covering the worst mass shooting in United…
Filmmaker Brett Morgen (“The Kid Stays in the Picture”) went to the town of Watersmeet, Mich.—population 1,400—in 2004 to film three commercials for ESPN (tagline: “Without sports, who would root for the Nimrods?”) and essentially never left. No small-towner himself…
Like “Nimrod Nation,” another Peabody Award winner for 2007, “The Colbert Report” started as a series of commercials. But unlike that series—or any other series, for that matter—the ads were fake and the show didn’t even exist. Once a few…
The stories of abuse—a prepubescent girl raped and an even younger one beaten with a coat hanger—are hard to hear in “Sisters in Law,” a documentary produced by Vixen Films and the U.K.’s Film Four, acquired for PBS’ “Independent Lens”…