The Big One

I’m not a big “awards” guy, although I’ll admit to having a few under my belt. But some awards are better than others… and one award in particular is better than most.

The duPont-Columbia award is the 800 pound gorilla of broadcast journalism awards. According to their web site; “The purpose of the Alfred I. duPont-Columbia University Awards is to bring the best in television and radio journalism to professional and public attention and to honor those who produce it.” Think about that… words like “best”, “attention” and “honor”. It says they not only celebrate great work, but tout it to others so they may follow in the example.

At the risk of sounding a tad bit conceited, I’ll mention that Stuart Watson and I share the DuPont-Columbia award for a series of reports on military medicine in 1999.

Now a couple more folks from the big 5 have a Silver Baton as well. Clay Johnson, Jay Jennings, David Crabtree and Lynda Loveland are accepting the 2007 duPont-Columbia award for their documentary work. Two separate documentaries, “Standards of Living” and “Paper Thin Promise” , were combined into a single entry and impressed the judges.

Recognizing this kind of top-quality work is more important than ever these days. Far too often the TV News Business forgets about the power and effectiveness this media can have on the public. As the great Edward R. Murrow once proclaimed about TV; “This instrument can teach, it can illuminate; yes, it can even inspire. But it can do so only to the extent that humans are determined to use it to those ends. Otherwise it is merely wires and lights in a box."