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…
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…
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…
In some 380 interviews since Sept. 11, 2001, Michael Kirk’s “Frontline” documentary team had been hearing tidbits about Vice President Dick Cheney. Finally, they decided it was time to add them all up in what became “Cheney’s Law,” a film…
The 26-year-old PBS series “Nature” won its first Peabody Award two decades ago for a program on the drying up of an African watering hole. But it hasn’t been resting on its laurels since: It won its second two years…
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”…
Hilla Medalia was a first-time filmmaker, looking for a topic to fulfill her master’s degree requirements, when she set out to make what ultimately became “To Die in Jerusalem.” Getting the film on the air took five years, as Ms….
WTAE-TV’s “The Fight for Open Records” is all about how one good story leads to another, according to investigative reporter Jim Parsons. The Pittsburgh Hearst-Argyle station produced a story on loafing employees of the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation (known as…