2015 Peabody Award Winners
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Beasts of No Nation (Netflix)A superbly acted, strikingly photographed film about an African warlord training an orphan child to join his guerrilla army, it never loses sight of their humanity, brutal acts notwithstanding.
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A bright, boisterous, big-hearted comedy about an affluent African American family working overtime to keep it real, black-ish doesn’t let jokes get in the way of insights about race, class, guns, and other hot-button topics that most popular entertainment shows scarcely mention.
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Burning Questions: WTAE Investigates Fire Response Times (WTAE-TV)
WTAE reporter Paul Van Osdol provided a four-alarm public service when he doggedly investigated the wildly varying response times of Pennsylvania’s volunteer fire departments and found a chronically inefficient system that hadn’t changed substantially since the days of horse-drawn trucks and bucket brigades. His sleuthing prompted legislative hearings and the passage of bills aimed at quickening response and saving lives, as well as public questioning of the dependence on volunteers instead of professional municipal services.
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Desperate Journey (PBS NewsHour)
Reporting on the men, women and children fleeing Syria and other Middle Eastern war zones, NewsHour‘s Desperate Journey series captured the life and breath of the worst displaced person crisis since World War II: the initial, inspirational hospitality of European hosts, the eventual resistance as the waves of humanity became overwhelming, and the hopes and horrors experienced by the refugees themselves.
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A suspenseful, well-acted spy drama that takes place a few years before the Soviet bloc cracked and told from the perspective of East Germans and West Germans, it reheats Cold War conflicts in surprising ways.
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Do Not Track (donottrack-doc.com)
Visiting Do Not Track may leave you feeling like a moth in a spider web. Focused on internet economics and privacy issues, the website’s personalized episodes provides a wealth of provocative information about the science of cookies, tracking and who is profiting from your social media participation. The user is shocked at the breadth of information he or she regularly gives up in the course of routine and mundane activities across digital and mobile platforms.
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The BBC reminded us why it’s the gold standard of electronic-media news with its wide-ranging, richly detailed, deeply humane television and radio reporting about the reality and ramifications of the surge of millions of Middle Eastern refugees into Europe.
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Going Clear: Scientology and The Prison of Belief (HBO)
More than an exposé, more like a demolition, Alex Gibney’s film about the history and hardball tactics of the Church of Scientology draws its persuasive power from letters and documents contradicting the fabrications of its late founder, L. Ron Hubbard, and from blistering testimonials by prominent ex-Church officials and former members about abuse and corruption.
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Filmmaker Alexandra Shiva focuses on three young women in Columbus, Ohio, who are living with autism and facing the daunting prospect of their first spring formal. The power and beauty of this closely observed, intimate documentary is that it doesn’t patronize its subjects or its viewer with easy sentimentality.
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Independent Lens: India’s Daughter (PBS)
The internationally infamous 2012 gang rape and murder of Jyoti Singh, a 23-year-old medical student, in Delhi is the impetus for this unflinching, deeply unflattering examination of the misogyny embedded in Indian society.
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Individual Award: David Letterman
With a gap-toothed grin and a mind full of mischief, David Letterman sauntered onto the late-night TV landscape in 1982, ripped it up and remodeled it in the image we see now on every network and in every late-night host. Letterman’s irreverence, his outlandish gags and his prickly personality all resonated with wary, post-modern viewers. But if he was a brat in the hilarious early years, he literally grew up on the air, maturing into a late-night statesman as comfortable with a sincere commentary as a stupid pet trick. He came to us an enfant terrible, he retired a legend.
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Individual Award: Stanley Nelson
A prolific documentary filmmaker, a seeker of truth and justice, Stanley Nelson has examined the history and experience of African-Americans in a powerful, revelatory body of work that includes three Peabody winners–“The Murder of Emmet Till,” “Freedom Summer” and “Freedom Riders” —and ranges from “Jonestown: The Life and Death of Peoples Temple” to “Sweet Honey in the Rock: Raise Your Voice.” A MacArthur “Genius” Fellow, Nelson is also co-founder of Firelight Media, a nonprofit organization dedicated to developing young documentary filmmakers who advance underrepresented stories.
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Institutional Award: The Daily Show with Jon Stewart
For decades there had been programs on television that spoofed newsmakers and current events, but “The Daily Show with Jon Stewart” was something different, transformative. In an era of politicized, echo-chamber news channels and traditional-journalism timidity, Stewart and a cohort of talented farceurs, several of whom have also become household names, didn’t just make jokes about news, they became a crucial source of news for citizens united in their disappointment and disgust with politics and cable news. While “The Daily Show” is a program that existed before and after Jon Stewart’s tenure, there is little doubt that Stewart and his team, over the course of 17 years, made a lasting impact on political satire, television comedy and even politics itself.
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ISIS in Afghanistan (PBS/WGBH)
Making the most of a difficult, dangerous assignment, Afghani journalist Najibullah Quraishi and his producing team got deep into ISIS-held territory to document its growing power and appeal in Afghanistan, its conflict with the Taliban and, most unnerving, its indoctrination and weapons training of children as young as five.
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Mairi Hedderwick’s popular books about a feisty, wee, red-headed girl (the splendid Cherry Campbell) and the Scottish island community she’s growing up in are exquisitely realized in this series. Timeless, perhaps old-fashioned, but never precious or blindly idyllic, Katie Morag deals honestly and gracefully with death, loss, rivalry and other serious themes.
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Listen to Me Marlon (Showtime)
Thanks to an imaginative director, a collection of audio tapes that Marlon Brando recorded over the years and a voice-synched, holograph-like image of the late, great “method” actor, we get to hear Brando share deeply personal thoughts about how he became the man and artist he was. It’s strange and wonderful, like a CGI resurrection.
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Marvel’s Jessica Jones (Netflix)
This one part superhero saga, one part neo-noir program asks unpopular questions about power and consent, while constructing vivid and compelling characters. Krysten Ritter helps us to discover the strengths and vulnerability of Jessica, a hard-boiled private detective who has rejected the role of superhero but must still figure out how to overcome the evil that threatens her, her friends and her community.
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By turns profound and mundane, ridiculous and deadly serious, this imaginative, shape-shifting comedy chronicles the misadventures of Dev (series creator Aziz Ansari), a 30-year-old Indian-American who’s still trying to figure out what to do with his life. To say it resonates with young-adult viewers is an understatement.
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Fascinating, intelligent, enlightening podcasts devoted to the work of current classical composers. The show integrates music with thoughtful conversation about it without distracting from either.
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A riddle wrapped in a mystery shrouded in a hoody, MR. ROBOT‘s hero, Elliot, is a tormented, anti-social cyber-security whiz caught up in techno-anarchy conspiracy. The series’ twisting, turning, Rubik plot is almost as startling as its overtly anti-corporate stance. Occupy Prime Time?
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Night Will Fall deftly weaves two stories into one documentary tale – one about the atrocities of the Nazi concentration camps, the other about the changing policies of postwar reconstruction that pulled atrocity images in and out of public view. The film artfully shows us an obscure moment in Holocaust history that attests to the enduring power of visual documentation.
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911: Lost on the Line (WXIA-TV)
Inspired by a single 911 call for help that failed fatally, WXIA reporter Brendan Keefe launched an ambitious, enterprising multi-media probe that revealed government oversights and technical shortcomings in supposedly smart iPhones and in telecommunications infrastructure that were causing needless deaths across the country.
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POV: Don’t Tell Anyone (No Le Digas a Nadie) (PBS)
An activist on behalf of young, undocumented immigrants like herself, 24-year-old Angy Rivera, a New York City resident since she was four, is the eloquent focus of this documentary. What makes it even more memorable is how filmmaker Mikaela Shwer uses River’s story to illuminate the plight of untold numbers of immigrants living in secrecy and fear.
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Real Sports with Bryant Gumbel: The Killing Fields (HBO)
Reporting from Congo, Tanzania and Kenya, Real Sports documented the billion-dollar, criminal enterprise that is the ivory trade, the sickening slaughter of elephants that fuels it, the devotion and bravery of rangers trying to protect them, and the delusion of trophy hunters who insist the money they bring to Africa somehow slows the decimation.
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Secret Mustard Gas Experiments (NPR News)
Horrifying and infuriating although, alas, not surprising, this unforgettable report documented the U.S. Army’s testing of an abominable chemical weapon on some 60,000 of our own World War II soldiers, most of whom were black.
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The Case for School Desegregation Today (This American Life)
In a collection of powerful, personal stories about the nexus of education and race, “This American Life” weighs the statistical benefits of desegregation against the pressure, even humiliation, that many minority students experience. The broadcast is a bold, honest examination of what can happen when social engineering meets reality.
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The Jinx: The Life and Deaths of Robert Durst (HBO)
Andrew Jarecki’s seductive true-crime documentary takes viewers through a dark looking glass, down a rabbit hole and into the mind of Robert Durst, a real-estate tycoon’s heir and an elusive suspect in three murders, who tells a self-serving tale but then, stunningly, offhandedly and on-microphone, confesses.
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The Laquan McDonald Investigation (WMAQ-TV)
Launching its probe six months before a Chicago police officer was charged with firs