2022 duPont-Columbia Award Winners
In a special program hosted by Judy Woodruff and Dr. Sanjay Gupta, the duPont-Columbia University Awards announced the 16 winners of this year's duPont Awards. The duPont jury selected the very best in audio and video reporting from 30 finalists.
According to Need - 99% Invisible | Stitcher Media | PRX
This podcast series gave listeners intimate access to the homeless and to the bureaucracy intended to help them, revealing a frustrating system with complex rules, inadequate resources, and little agreement about how to identify those most in need.
Blindspot: Tulsa Burning - The HISTORY Channel | WNYC Studios | KOSU |
This immersive, deeply reported series depicting the biggest race massacre since the Civil War placed powerful eyewitness voices at the heart of a century-old narrative, and posed an urgent question: What would it take for history to stop repeating itself?
KARE11 Investigates: Cruel & Unusual - KARE11 Minneapolis/St. Paul & A.J. Lagoe
Reporters A.J. Lagoe and Brandon Stahl’s investigative series revealed how cost cutting in Minnesota prisons’ medical and mental health care resulted in a culture of neglect and dehumanization, and a shocking uptick in jailhouse death.
Day of Rage: How Trump Supporters Took the U.S. Capitol - The New York Times
By gathering hundreds of audio and video files recording the January 6th attack on the Capitol from every conceivable angle, a forensics team from The New York Times meticulously recreated the definitive story of how the riot unfolded.
FIRE - POWER - MONEY: Holding PG&E Accountable - KXTV Sacramento & Brandon Rittiman
A powerful series of stories from reporter Brandon Rittiman sought to force accountability by California utility monopoly PG&E, and played an integral part in the company pleading guilty to 84 counts of manslaughter for its role in the devastating 2018 Camp Fire.
Full Disclosure & Politically Charged - KNXV Phoenix and Dave Biscobing
Reporter Dave Biscobing’s investigations of the Phoenix Police Department relentlessly connected the dots to depict a police force operating like a police state, simmering with racist and political resentment, and rife with malfeasance.
In the Same Breath | HBO Documentary Films
Nanfu Wang traced the Covid pandemic’s origin and spread from its Wuhan outbreak to its rampage across the United States in a meditative and incisive inquiry that also questioned the pandemic of authoritarian tendencies and agendas.
Military Sexual Assault: Norah O’Donnell Investigates - CBS News
A sustained investigative series by CBS News that included interviews with nearly two dozen survivors of sexual assault, whistleblowers and families of suicide victims revealed that despite the Pentagon’s pledge of zero tolerance ten years ago, the military’s sexual assault crisis is worse than ever.
The Moms of Magnolia Street - NBC Bay Area (KNTV)
This longform series explored contemporary redlining by following a group of unhoused working mothers as they took over a vacant property on Oakland’s Magnolia Street, demanded housing as a human right, and took a stand against one of the nation’s largest real estate speculators.
My Name is Pauli Murray - Amazon Studios Participant Media | Storyville Films
So far ahead of their time, activist, lawyer, priest and author Pauli Murray comes to life in their own writing and audio diaries in this feature length documentary, as they put forth ideas too revolutionary for even the most forward thinking during the civil rights era.
Philly D.A. - PBS | Independent Lens | TOPIC
This groundbreaking documentary series embedded viewers inside the long shot election and tumultuous first term of Larry Krasner, Philadelphia's unapologetically progressive district attorney, and his experiment to upend the criminal justice system from the inside out.
Softie - PBS | POV | American Documentary | LBx Africa
This inspiring and compelling documentary profiled a young activist who put country above family and his life on the line in his determination to change the corrupt political system in Kenya.
The Line - Apple | Jigsaw Productions
The Line is a fascinating, deeply reported podcast series that offered a reassessment of the events surrounding the war crimes trial of Navy SEAL Eddie Gallagher as well as a window into secretive culture of the SEALs and similar elite military units.
The Shockwave - VICE News
Through brilliant use of CCTV footage, this harrowing and deeply moving documentary followed the devastating August 2020 explosion in the Port of Beirut from the vantage point of nearby Saint George’s Hospital, where doctors and nurses tried to save lives amidst the rubble.
Through the Night - POV on PBS | American Documentary | Third Shift Media
Loira Limbal’s film is as intimate and gentle as a lullaby, even as it exposes serious societal flaws by immersing viewers in a family-run day care operation that is the only safety net in a community where women of color work multiple jobs, often overnight, to survive.
Waste Land - NPR | Planet Money | Frontline on PBS & Laura Sullivan
In this podcast reporter Laura Sullivan tracked down retired industry lobbyists to expose a decades-long marketing scam to convince consumers that plastic products are far more recyclable than they really are.
2022 duPont-Columbia Award Finalists
American Insurrection
FRONTLINE on PBS | ProPublica | Berkeley Journalism
On the trail of white supremacist groups since Charlottesville, reporter A.C. Thompson and his colleagues uncovered the shifts in ideology, tactics and communications that led to the January 6th attack on Capitol Hill.
COVID's Hidden Toll
FRONTLINE on PBS
FRONTLINE director/correspondent Daffodil Altan and director/producer Andrés Cediel examined how the absence of workplace protections for essential agricultural workers fueled COVID infections among a vulnerable workforce as cases among Latinos and African Americans were surging across the U.S.
Crack: Cocaine, Corruption & Conspiracy
Netflix | Firelight Films
Weaving archival video, a hip hop soundtrack and poignant testimony from former dealers and users, director Stanley Nelson documented the tragic toll of the “crack epidemic,” the “war on drugs,” and the era of mass incarceration they spawned.
How the Police Killed Breonna Taylor - A Visual Investigation
The New York Times
This concise, compelling piece of forensic journalism from The New York Times Visual Investigations team relied on a wide variety of resources to reconstruct the raid on Taylor's home and challenge the Kentucky attorney general's conclusion that the police use of force was justified.
Human Nature
Nova | The Wonder Collaborative
This science documentary skillfully explained in layman's terms the CRISPR technology that is allowing scientists to alter DNA, using real-world examples that showed the vexing moral issues raised when humans become capable of changing what nature intended.
Hunger Ward
MTV Documentary Films | Spin Film | RYOT | Vulcan Productions | XTR
This unflinching documentary about famine and childhood hunger in Yemen is a heartbreaking showcase of human loss in an absence of intervention, medical supplies and humanitarian support.
Immigration Nation
Netflix | Reel Peak Films
With stunning access to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, this artfully crafted documentary series chronicled the first three years of President Trump’s hardline immigration policies and their impact on not only migrants, but the men and women who carried out the new orders.
Inspecting the Inspectors
WVUE-TV New Orleans & Lee Zurik
After a hotel building under construction collapsed, reporter Lee Zurik used GPS data mapping, FOIA applications, and good old fashioned shoe leather to show how safety inspectors failed to inspect the site prior to a building collapse which killed three construction workers.
Meltdown in Dixie
America ReFramed on WORLD Channel | American Documentary | Lynnwood Pictures | TOPIC
With unusual access to both sides of the fight, this documentary used the angst of one small town grappling with its Confederate legacy to viscerally evoke the complexity of confronting 400 years of white supremacy.
My Name is Anjanette Young
CBS 2 Chicago
A relentless years-long investigation by Chicago WBBM-TV reporter Dave Savini and his team into botched police raids targeting communities of color exposed deep flaws in the city’s policing, belying repeated pledges to reform..
Nice White Parents
The New York Times | Serial Productions
Through the prism of one school in Brooklyn, this podcast series made the case that progressive, well-meaning white parents play a critical role in perpetuating the lack of racial equity in New York City’s public schools.
Prone
KUSA 9News Denver & Chris Vanderveen with A.J. Lagoe
Predating the George Floyd case, this series from Investigative reporter Chris Vanderveen probed into cases where people died in police custody after they were kept too long in the prone position, contrary to law enforcement training.
The Heist
Center for Public Integrity
A forensic review of the 2017 Tax bill, The Heist managed to be both an informative and wildly entertaining podcast series, navigating Republican donor shakedowns; high wire Congressional deal making; Steve Mnuchin, trickle-down-economics, and airline industry bailouts.
Why Police Reform Fails
Reveal from the CIR | PRX | Missouri Independent | St. Louis American
In a lesson for the #BlackLivesMatter movement across the country, this podcast followed a Ferguson, Missouri activist who discovered that the real key to reforming the police is to help change who has political power over them.