Los Angeles Burning

The 2025 wildfires in Southern California redefined the terrain of an American city, upending untold numbers of families’ lives, and serving as grim warning of what climate change might bring with increasing frequency. In this, the fires were both a local and national story, and ABC News leveraged its reporting team at every level to cover it with the gravity that the story, and the victims at its center, deserved. ABC’s flagship properties Good Morning America and World News Tonight brought their resources to bear on the unfolding crisis and, especially, its aftermath, as Angelenos wondered whether rebuilding would even be possible. But their partners at local affiliate KABC were there from the fire’s first moments, demonstrating grit, tenacity, and true humanity. Indeed, KABC showed the continued utility of television in moments of emergency, sharing vital information about the inferno’s spread and a deep and abiding interest in how neighbors were making it through. For courage in the most challenging of reporting circumstances, and for an insistence on honoring the community interest over the sensational, ABC News and KABC win a Peabody Award.