WFAA, WTHR, KSTP Snag Peabody Awards

The accidental death of a local sailor in Iraq, inflated job statistics from a state agency and career schools that produce more debt than jobs — investigative reports on these topics earned 2011 Peabody Awards for three commercial TV stations.

The three  — WFAA Dallas, WTHR Indianapolis and KSTP Minneapolis — were among 39 winners of the prestigious award announced this morning via a webcast from the University of Georgia, which administers the awards.

The 70-year-old prizes for excellence in electronic media will be presented on May 23 at a luncheon at New York City’s Waldorf-Astoria Hotel.

Despite a record number of Peabody winners this year, the news departments of the broadcast networks were shut out. In fact, the broadcast networks managed just one award, for CBS’s primetime drama The Good Wife.

Public TV and radio in the U.S, whose federal funding is being targeted by conservative lawmakers, earned 18 of the 39 awards. National Public Radio, which has taken the brunt of conservative ire for a perceived liberal bias, won four.

The Public Broadcasting Service copped the most awards with nine, seven for documentaries and two for dramas. HBO placed with seven awards, five for documentaries and two for dramas.

In addition to Good Wife, the winning dramas include Justified, a contemporary take on the western lawman on FX; The Pacific, HBO’s limited series of WWII’s other theater of war; Men of a Certain Age, male menopause on TNT; Sherlock: A Study in Pick and Great Performances: MacBeth on PBS; and Temple Grandin, a made-for-HBO movie.

ESPN was honored for 30 for 30, a celebration of its 30^th anniversary with 30 documentaries by top filmmakers.

CNN won for its extensive coverage of the Gulf oil spill, one of the biggest stories of 2010.

The awards for the three commercial stations were all for investigative reporting.

WFAA, a Belo-owned ABC affiliate, was recognized for “Bitter Lessons,” a probe into government-funded, for-profit career schools that often leave students without jobs and deep in debt. WFAA’s winning team: Byron Harris, Mike Valentine, Mark Smith, Billy Bryant.

Dispatch Broadcast Group’s NBC affiliate WTHR won for “Reality Check: Where Are the Jobs,” which found that the state’s Indiana Economic Development Corp. was grossly inflating job-creation statistics for political ends. The series also revealed that companies that had been given tax incentives to create jobs had actually laid off hundreds. WTHR’s winning team: Bob Segall, Cyndee Hebert, Bill Ditton and Jim Hall.

KSTP, an ABC affiliate owned by Hubbard Broadcasting, was honored for “Who Killed Doc?” an investigation that questioned the circumstances surrounding the accidental electrocution of a local sailor in Iraq and changed the way the Armed Forces notify families of such deaths. KSTP’s winning team: Mark Albert, Lindsay Radford, John Mason, Mike Maybay, Jim O’Connell and Jared Bergerson.

A fourth TV station — the University of Illinois’ noncommercial WILL Champaign-Springfield-Decatur — won for its presentation of a Jay Rosenstein documentary, The Lord Is Not On Trial Here Today. It tells the story of a Campaign woman who in the 1940s challenged the teaching of religion in public schools and eventually prevailed in the Supreme Court.

A complete listing of the winners with the Peabody short citations:

Justified (FX)

FX Productions and Sony Pictures Television

Part morality play, part character study, this engrossing modern-day Western drama sets its showdowns in the wild, wild east of Appalachian Kentucky.

Great Performances: Macbeth (PBS)

THIRTEEN for WNET.ORG, Illuminations Television Ltd.

Director Rupert Goold takes Shakespeare’s bloody tragedy on location to the countryside and the trenches to riveting effect. 

Coverage of the Gulf Oil Spill (CNN)

CNN

The science, the economics, the politics, the toll on human livelihoods and animal lives – CNN’s coverage of the Deepwater Horizon disaster defined comprehensive.

Radiolab (WNYC-FM)

WNYC

Immersive and boundlessly imaginative, the series uses pithy prose and state-of-the-art sound to illuminate complicated scientific and philosophical subjects.

The Pacific (HBO)

A Playtone and Dreamworks Production in association with HBO Miniseries

The Pacific theater of World War II proves to be gripping theater indeed in this richly detailed miniseries.

Sherlock: A Study in Pink (PBS)

A Hartswood Films Production for BBC CYMRU Wales, Co-produced with Masterpiece

The venerable Victorian sleuth is audaciously updated for our high-tech times, and the game is afoot all the quicker.

Lucia’s Letter (WGCU-FM)

WGCU Public Media

A literal cautionary tale, the harrowing “letter” is a composite of several young Guatemalan women’s enslavement by “coyotes” hired to smuggle them into the United States.

LennonNYC  (PBS)

America Masters: Two Lefts Don’t Make a Right, Dakota Group

A portrait of John Lennon’s life and work, after he chose to make New York his home, it’s beautifully composed and lovingly rendered but not blind to his imperfections.

Burma VJ (HBO)

Magic Hour Films in co-production with WG Film, Mediamente, Kamoli Films, The Danish Film Institute and DR TV in association with HBO Documentary Films

The documentary chronicles the heroic ingenuity of underground video journalists (VJs) who captured the 2007 Burmese human-rights protests – and the brutal government retaliation – on handy cams and smuggled the video out to the web and the world.

Men of a Certain Age (TNT)

TNT Originals

A series about three longtime pals, “regular” guys, navigating middle age, it’s comical, poignant and harrowing, sometimes all at once.

Bitter Lessons (WFAA Dallas)

WFAA, Dallas

The Dallas station’s investigation exposed abuses by government-funded “career” schools that provide poor training and sometimes leave desperate students deeper in debt than they started.

Trafficked: A Youth Radio Investigation (NPR/All Things Considered)

Youth Radio, National Public Radio’s All Things Considered, Huffington Post online

A wide-ranging expose of America’s child-sex trade, it was made especially powerful by first-person accounts by teen victims.

Independent Lens: Reel Injun: On the Trail of the Hollywood Indian (PBS)

Rezolution Pictures, National Film Board of Canada,  CBC News Network,  ARTE Germany, Documentary Channel Canada, Radio Canada, ARTV, Knowledge Network, APTN, AVRO, Independent Television Service (ITVS)

A Cree filmmaker takes an affectionate but nonetheless pointed look at how movies have portrayed and misrepresented Native Americans over many decades.

The Promised Land with Host Majora Carter (American Public Media Stations)

Launch Minneapolis, American Public Media

If there’s such a thing as eye-opening radio, Carter’s series, devoted to helping her audience envision a more just, sustainable world, is it.

Magic & Bird: A Courtship of Rivals (HBO)

HBO Sports

Not your average sports biography by a long jump shot, it examines the different cultures from whence these NBA legends sprang, their unusually long rivalry and their unlikely friendship.

Covering Pakistan: War, Flood and Social Issues (NPR )

NPR

Islamabad-based correspondent Julie McCarthy goes beyond the headline disasters, making the country vividly individual with reports on topics like child labor, blasphemy laws and the plight of war widows.

Wonders of the Solar System with Brian Cox (Science Channel)

Science Channel, BBC

In this amazing, simulated travelogue, the boyish physicist flies us to the moon and lets us play among the stars. And gawk.

Seeking Justice for Campus Rapes (NPR and npr.org)

NPR

With first-person interviews and computer-assisted records checks, an NPR investigative unit documented how perpetrators of sexual assaults on college campuses often face few or no consequences.

Degrassi: My Body Is a Cage (TeenNick)

TeenNick/Ncredible productions

True to its history, the durable high-school serial’s two-parter about a transgender teen neither trivializes nor overdramatizes its subject

C-SPAN Video Library (cspan.org/videolibrary)

C-SPAN

Every program C-SPAN has shown since 1987, from State of the Union addresses to budget hearings, is now available and searchable online – for free.

My Lai (PBS)

American Experience

The worst atrocity in American military history is given new meaning and significance in the documentary enriched by fresh interviews and never-before-heard audio made by the original Pentagon investigators.

The Moth Radio Hour (Public Radio Stations)

The Moth, Public Radio Exchange, Atlantic Public Media

Storytelling, likely the oldest art, is revered and reinvigorated by this weekly hour for everyday raconteurs.

For Neda (HBO)

Mentorn in association with Antony Thomas Productions for HBO Documentary Films

A powerful portrait of Neda Agha-Soltan, martyr, and the larger Iranian struggle for freedom, this documentary was filmed on the sly and at great risk in Tehran.

Behind the Bail Bond System (NPR/All Things Considered and Morning)

NPR

Changes in the bail bond system are already underway as a result of this three-part expose of inequities and conflicts that penalize its poorest clients.

12^th & Delaware (HBO)

A Loki Films Production for HBO Documentary Films

A street corner in Ft. Pierce, Florida, where an abortion clinic and a pro-life center face each other, embodies the ongoing clash over reproductive rights in this thoughtful, fair documentary.

Elia Kazan: A Letter to Elia (PBS)

Sikelia Productions, Far Hills Pictures in association with America Masters

Director Martin Scorsese reflects on the nature of art’s influence on artists and how the brilliant but controversial Kazan continues to inspire him.

If God Is Willing and da Creek Don’t Rise (HBO)

40 Acres and a Mule Filmworks for HBO Documentary Films

Spike Lee’s team checks up on New Orleans five years after Katrina hit and the levees broke and documents the city’s successes and failures in a video patchwork by turns beautiful, depressing and optimistic.

Zimbabwe’s Forgotten Children (BBC Four)

True Vision

Filming undercover with great ingenuity and courage, Xoliswa Sithole and Jezza Newman documented the horrible conditions, especially for the young, in Zimbabwe.

William Kentridge: Anything Is Possible (PBS)

Art21,  Inc.

The multi-faceted Kentridge is creativity personified, a one-man seminar, and he gave filmmakers from ART21 a veritable all-access pass to his mind and work process.

30 for 30 (ESPN)

ESPN

Commissioned for the sports channel’s 30^th anniversary, these 30 diverse documentaries about sports in America, well, they shoot, they score.

POV: The Most Dangerous Man in America: Daniel Ellsberg and the Pentagon Papers (PBS)

American Documentary, POV, ITVS

A fascinating true-life political thriller, Ellsberg’s remembrance of his historic actions is made even more compelling by the inventive presentation.

Report on a New Generation of Migrant Workers in China (Phoenix InfoNews Channel)

Phoenix Satellite Television Co. Ltd.

The report by Hong Kong’s Phoenix Satellite Television poses hard questions about the ramifications of China’s continuing urban migration.

Reality Check: Where Are the Jobs? (WTHR-TV)

WTHR, Indianapolis

The Indianapolis station’s digging revealed the Indiana Economic Development Corporation’s job-creation claims were grossly overstated and that companies given tax-incentive to create employment had actually axed workers by the hundreds.

Temple Grandin (HBO)

A Ruby Films, Gerson Saines Production in association with HBO Films

Claire Danes is remarkable as the autistic animal-expert and author, and the biography is further enriched by visual creativity that lets viewer occasional glimpse the world as Grandin experiences it.

The Lord Is Not On Trial Here Today (WILL-TV)

Jay Rosenstein Productions

A beautifully researched documentary by a Champaign, Illinois, station, it examines a First Amendment case critical to the establishment of separation of church and state in public schools.

The Cost of War: Traumatic Brain Injury; Coming Home a Different Person (www.washingtonpost.com)

A fascinating, poignant multimedia report, it details the experiences of five different wounded soldiers and the science behind their medical treatment.

Who Killed Doc? (KSTP-TV)

KSTP, St. Paul

The St. Paul-Minneapolis station’s investigation of a Minnesota sailor’s ill-explained death in Iraq has the Armed Forces reexamining everything from shower safety to how families of the fallen are notified.

The Wounded Patrol (PBS)

FRONTLINE, Mongoose Pictures

The documentary is a dark, troubling tale of a military health system overwhelmed by psychiatric casualties and of one platoon’s post-traumatic nightmare.

The Good Wife (CBS)

Scott Free Productions, King Size Productions, CBS Productions

In this densely layered dramatic series, the dutiful wife of a disgraced politician resumes her legal career and finds satisfaction, self-worth and moral quandaries of her own.