1973 duPont-Columbia Award Winners
In a special program, the duPont-Columbia University Awards announced 9 winners.
Outstanding Reporting: 60 Minutes CBS News
Of Mike Wallace, a veteran of more than 25 years in news broadcasting, the jurors commented: “His continuing series of dialogues with Americans who had something to hide and who, willing or not, found they were exposing themselves to Wallace in front of millions of Americans demonstrated that his historic interviews with Mylai veterans Private Paul Meadlo and Captain Ernest Medina were not just happenstance. In addition to virtuoso encounters with writer Cliffard Irving and lobbyist Dita Beard, Wallace displayed his agile footwork in a number of ’60 Minutes’ report.”
CBS Reports: ...But What If the Dream Comes True? - CBS News
Robert Markowitz’s “… but what if the Dream comes true?” involved spending four months with one well-to-do Michigan family. The resulting CBS Report narrated by Charles Kuralt, according to the DuPont-Columbia jurors, “had to be one of the most depressing, and provocative, shows of the year… without one drop of blood being shed, without the whine of siren or a flashing red light, a garbage-strewn gutter, a smoggy sky, or any other obvious sign of tribulation most Americans are becoming accustomed to.”
The Search for Quality Education - Group W
Of Group W’s “ The Search for Quality Education,” a series of three one-hour programs, the jurors said: “A great many broadcasters handled the busing issue as it affected the nation and their own communities. Perhaps the most effective treatment of an infinitely complex and prickly subject was ‘Busing, Some Voices from the South,’ done by a unit which was neither strictly local nor national in character – the Group W Urban Affairs Unit – which for four years had taken major issues and presented them series, “Class… and the Classroom” and “A Chance for a Lifetime,” according to the jurors, shows, nothing was simplified, and yet, thanks to the deep humanity of the approach, nothing seemed hopeless.”
Outstanding Coverage of the 1972 Political Campaigns - KERA-TV, Dallas
KERA-TV Dallas, cited in the Survey for its thorough coverage of the desegregation story, also was chosen by the jurors for outstanding coverage of the 1972 political campaigns, particularly the primaries. In 14 prime-time programs during a single month, the station managed to present more than 200 candidates running for major telecast which brought together all Democratic and Republican candidates for the first and only time.
White Paper: The Blue Collar Trap - NBC News
“The Blue Collar Trap,” a 60-minute “white paper” on the new breed of assembly line workers, was produced by Fred Freed for NBC news. According to the DuPont-Columbia jurors, “The Blue Collar Trap” was “probably the year’s most notable example of the new generation’s coolness towards the medium. If there were occasional flickers of self-consciousness, Freed’s camera obviously turned no one off. The four subjects said things about themselves and their lives which their parents would have hesitated to tell their doctor or their priest… Revealing humanity, without shame or reticence, was perhaps the most frequent achievement of television this year.”
Like It Is: Attica - the Unanswered Questions - WABC-TV
Richard Thurston Watkins’s 90-minute examination on WABC-TV’s “Like It Is” of “Attica – The Unanswered Questions” was described as taking “an unabashedly minority view of what, after all, was an affair of prime concern to blacks and Puerto Ricans… Although sometimes bitter outspoken, it made its points indelibly.”
The 51st State: Youth Gangs in the South Bronx - WNET-TV, New York
Tony Batten’s “Youth Gangs in the South Bronx,” done for WNET/13’s “The 51st State,” prompted the jurors to comment: “One of the year’s most effective examples of local TV journalism… By the end of the hour the attentive listener had an insight into a world which, although a short subway wide from his home, usually was as invisible to him as the far side of the moon.”
Towers of Frustration: Assignment: New Jersey - WNJT-TV, Trenton, New Jersey
Concerning John Drimmer’s “Towers of Frustration,” the jurors commented: “Experiment and Controversy on the nation’s public TV stations was at an all-time low because of short funds and sagging morale… There were exceptions. WNJT, the public station in Trenton, N.J., put together a half hour documentary, ‘Towers of Frustration,’ that any network could have been proud of. The problems of the Stella Wright housing project in Newark were indeed national in application, shared as they were by dozens of instant high-rise slums coast to coast… If anyone in Washington wanted proof of a local public TV operation doing top-quality work worthy of network distribution, this well edited, thoroughly reported half hour was it.”
The Swift Justice of Europe and A Seed of Hope - WTVJ-TV, Miami
WTVJ’s “A Seed of Hope,” the jurors said, was “an original and encouraging” documentary on drug addiction among the middle-class young which “managed to combine shock, sentiment and uplift in its report on a drug program in Fort Lauderdale which has claimed more than 1700 cures in less than two years.” Another WTVJ production, “The Swift Justice in Britain and France meant to raise provocative comparisons to procedures at home… It succeeded in every department – script, photography, editing – and became one of the few examples of the sort of serious journalistic excursion which many prosperous local stations could afford to send their newsmen on but seldom risk.”