The winners of the 70th Annual Peabody Awards were announced this morning, named the best in television and radio over the past year. Award winners ranged from ongoing series like FX’s Justified and CBS’ The Good Wife, to documentaries on My Lai and New Orleans five years after Katrina. A complete list of winners follows the jump.
COMPLETE LIST OF RECIPIENTS OF THE 70th ANNUAL PEABODY AWARDS
Justified (FX)
FX Productions and Sony Pictures Television
Part morality play, part character study, this engrossing modern-day Western drama sets
its showdowns in the wild, wild east of Appalachian Kentucky.
Great Performances: Macbeth (PBS)
THIRTEEN for WNET.ORG, Illuminations Television Ltd.
Director Rupert Goold takes Shakespeare’s bloody tragedy on location to the countryside
and the trenches to riveting effect.
Coverage of the Gulf Oil Spill (CNN)
CNN
The science, the economics, the politics, the toll on human livelihoods and animal lives –
CNN’s coverage of the Deepwater Horizon disaster defined comprehensive.
Radiolab (WNYC-FM)
WNYC
Immersive and boundlessly imaginative, the series uses pithy prose and state-of-the-art
sound to illuminate complicated scientific and philosophical subjects.
The Pacific (HBO)
A Playtone and Dreamworks Production in association with HBO Miniseries
The Pacific theater of World War II proves to be gripping theater indeed in this richly
detailed miniseries.
Sherlock: A Study in Pink (PBS)
A Hartswood Films Production for BBC CYMRU Wales, Co-produced with
Masterpiece
The venerable Victorian sleuth is audaciously updated for our high-tech times, and the
game is afoot all the quicker.
Lucia’s Letter (WGCU-FM)
WGCU Public Media
A literal cautionary tale, the harrowing “letter” is a composite of several young
Guatemalan women’s enslavement by “coyotes” hired to smuggle them into the United
States.
LennoNYC (PBS)
THIRTEEN’S America Masters, Two Lefts Don’t Make a Right, Dakota Group
A portrait of John Lennon’s life and work, after he chose to make New York his home,
it’s beautifully composed and lovingly rendered but not blind to his imperfections.
Burma VJ (HBO)
Magic Hour Films in co-production with WG Film, Mediamente, Kamoli Films, The
Danish Film Institute and DR TV in association with HBO Documentary Films
The documentary chronicles the heroic ingenuity of underground video journalists (VJs)
who captured the 2007 Burmese human-rights protests – and the brutal government
retaliation – on handy cams and smuggled the video out to the web and the world.
Men of a Certain Age (TNT)
TNT Originals
A series about three longtime pals, “regular” guys, navigating middle age, it’s comical,
poignant and harrowing, sometimes all at once.
Bitter Lessons (WFAA-TV)
WFAA, Dallas
The Dallas station’s investigation exposed abuses by government-funded “career”
schools that provide poor training and sometimes leave desperate students deeper in debt
than they started.
Trafficked: A Youth Radio Investigation (NPR/All Things Considered)
Youth Radio, National Public Radio’s All Things Considered, Huffington Post
online
A wide-ranging expose of America’s child-sex trade, it was made especially powerful by
first-person accounts by teen victims.
Independent Lens: Reel Injun: On the Trail of the Hollywood Indian (PBS)
Rezolution Pictures, National Film Board of Canada, CBS News Network, ARTE
Germany, Documentary Channel Canada, Radio Canada, ARTV, Knowledge
Network, APTN, AVRO, Independent Television Service (ITVS)
A Cree filmmaker takes an affectionate but nonetheless pointed look at how movies have
portrayed and misrepresented Native Americans over many decades.
The Promised Land with Host Majora Carter (American Public Media Stations)
Launch Minneapolis, American Public Media
If there’s such a thing as eye-opening radio, Carter’s series, devoted to helping her
audience envision a more just, sustainable world, is it.
Magic & Bird: A Courtship of Rivals (HBO)
HBO Sports
Not your average sports biography by a long jump shot, it examines the different cultures
from whence these NBA legends sprang, their unusually long rivalry and their unlikely
friendship.
Covering Pakistan: War, Flood and Social Issues (NPR )
NPR
Islamabad-based correspondent Julie McCarthy goes beyond the headline disasters,
making the country vividly individual with reports on topics like child labor, blasphemy
laws and the plight of war widows.
Wonders of the Solar System with Brian Cox (Science Channel)
Science Channel, BBC
In this amazing, simulated travelogue, the boyish physicist flies us to the moon and lets
us play among the stars. And gawk.
Seeking Justice for Campus Rapes (NPR and npr.org)
NPR
With first-person interviews and computer-assisted records checks, an NPR investigative
unit documented how perpetrators of sexual assaults on college campuses often face few
or no consequences.
Degrassi: My Body Is a Cage (TeenNick)
TeenNick/Ncredible productions
True to its history, the durable high-school serial’s two-parter about a transgender teen
neither trivializes nor overdramatizes its subject.
C-SPAN Video Library (cspan.org/videolibrary)
C-SPAN
Every program C-SPAN has shown since 1987, from State of the Union addresses to
budget hearings, is now available and searchable online – for free.
My Lai (PBS)
American Experience
The worst atrocity in American military history is given new meaning and significance in
the documentary enriched by fresh interviews and never-before-heard audio made by the
original Pentagon investigators.
The Moth Radio Hour (Public Radio Stations)
The Moth, Public Radio Exchange, Atlantic Public Media
Storytelling, likely the oldest art, is revered and reinvigorated by this weekly hour for
everyday raconteurs.
For Neda (HBO)
Mentorn in association with Antony Thomas Productions for HBO Documentary
Films
A powerful portrait of Neda Agha-Soltan, martyr, and the larger Iranian struggle for
freedom, this documentary was filmed on the sly and at great risk in Tehran.
Behind the Bail Bond System (NPR/All Things Considered and Morning)
NPR
Changes in the bail bond system are already underway as a result of this three-part
expose of inequities and conflicts that penalize its poorest clients.
12th & Delaware (HBO)
A Loki Films Production for HBO Documentary Films
A street corner in Ft. Pierce, Florida, where an abortion clinic and a pro-life center face
each other, embodies the ongoing clash over reproductive rights in this thoughtful, fair
documentary.
Elia Kazan: A Letter to Elia (PBS)
Sikelia Productions, Far Hills Pictures in association with America Masters
Director Martin Scorcese reflects on the nature of art’s influence on artists and how the
brilliant but controversial Kazan continues to inspire him.
If God Is Willing and da Creek Don’t Rise (HBO)
40 Acres and a Mule Filmworks for HBO Documentary Films
Spike Lee’s team checks up on New Orleans five years after Katrina hit and the levees
broke and documents the city’s successes and failures in a video patchwork by turns
beautiful, depressing and optimistic.
Zimbabwe’s Forgotten Children (BBC Four)
True Vision
Filming undercover with great ingenuity and courage, Xoliswa Sithole and Jezza
Newman documented the horrible conditions, especially for the young, in Zimbabwe.
William Kentridge: Anything Is Possible (PBS)
Art21, Inc.
The multi-faceted Kentridge is creativity personified, a one-man seminar, and he gave
filmmakers from ART21 a veritable all-access pass to his mind and work process.
30 for 30 (ESPN)
ESPN
Commissioned for the sports channel’s 30th anniversary, these 30 diverse documentaries
about sports in America, well, they shoot, they score.
POV: The Most Dangerous Man in America: Daniel Ellsberg and the Pentagon
Papers (PBS)
American Documentary, POV, ITVS
A fascinating true-life political thriller, Ellsberg’s remembrance of his historic actions is
made even more compelling by the inventive presentation.
Report on a New Generation of Migrant Workers in China (Phoenix InfoNews
Channel)
Phoenix Satellite Television Co. Ltd.
The report by Hong Kong’s Phoenix Satellite Television poses hard questions about the
ramifications of China’s continuing urban migration.
Reality Check: Where Are the Jobs? (WTHR-TV)
WTHR, Indianapolis
The Indianapolis station’s digging revealed the Indiana Economic Development
Corporation’s job-creation claims were grossly overstated and that companies given tax
incentive to create employment had actually axed workers by the hundreds.
Temple Grandin (HBO)
A Ruby Films, Gerson Saines Production in association with HBO Films
Claire Danes is remarkable as the autistic animal-expert and author, and the biography is
further enriched by visual creativity that lets viewer occasional glimpse the world as
Grandin experiences it.
The Lord Is Not On Trial Here Today (WILL-TV)
Jay Rosenstein Productions
A beautifully researched documentary by a Champaign, Illinois, station, it examines a
First Amendment case critical to the establishment of separation of church and state in
public schools.
The Cost of War: Traumatic Brain Injury; Coming Home a Different Person
(www.washingtonpost.com)
A fascinating, poignant multimedia report, it details the experiences of five different
wounded soldiers and the science behind their medical treatment.
Who Killed Doc? (KSTP-TV)
KSTP, St. Paul
The St. Paul-Minneapolis station’s investigation of a Minnesota sailor’s ill-explained
death in Iraq has the Armed Forces reexamining everything from shower safety to how
families of the fallen are notified.
The Wounded Platoon (PBS)
FRONTLINE, Mongoose Pictures
The documentary is a dark, troubling tale of a military health system overwhelmed by
psychiatric casualties and of one platoon’s post-traumatic nightmare.
The Good Wife (CBS)
Scott Free Productions, King Size Productions, Small Wishes, CBS Productions
In this densely layered dramatic series, the dutiful wife of a disgraced politician resumes
her legal career and finds satisfaction, self-worth and moral quandaries of her own.