Mary McNamara

After avoiding the subject for much of its lifetime, television has begun featuring stories that include rape. And many people are not happy about it. Whether we like it or not, brutal and precisely detailed violence is being used to explore the human condition on television. Demanding an exemption for rape turns rape into something other than a violent crime and undermines all the work activists have done for years.

Mary McNamara was honored for her “savvy criticism that uses shrewdness, humor and an insider’s view to show how both subtle and seismic shifts in the cultural landscape affect television.”