78th Annual Peabody Awards will be held on May 18, 2019. Ronan Farrow will host the ceremony. The Peabody Awards Board of Jurors selected thirty winners from 1,200 entries from television, radio/podcasts, and the web in entertainment, news, documentary, children’s and public service programming.
The 2018 Peabody Awards winners in the News and Radio/Podcast categories have been announced.
The 2018 Radio/Podcast Winners are:
Believed – Michigan Radio (NPR)
A searing account of how Larry Nassar got away with abusing hundreds of women and girls for more than two decades, this podcast is also an amazing exploration of the cultures that enabled this abuse. Reporters Kate Wells and Lindsay Smith peel away the successive layers of the case, starting with Nassar’s veneer of being a “good guy” to the many institutions that failed the survivors. Using numerous interviews and primary source materials, they carefully piece together the survivors’ collective story while zeroing in on key issues the story brings to light. The result is a laudable balance between revealing the victimization perpetrated by Nassar with a determination to give the survivors agency, strength, and a right to tell their stories.
Buried Truths – WABE (WABE)
Journalist Hank Kilbanoff and his Emory University students investigate the death of Isaiah Nixon, a black man gunned down outside his South Georgia home in 1948 for exercising his right to vote. With intensive research of FBI documents, microfilm of archival newspapers, medical records, NAACP reports, and primary evidence held in private collections, the podcast has the appeal of the “true crime” genre but constantly strives for deeper historical understanding. The largely forgotten incident gains new immediacy when read alongside Georgia’s more recent struggles over voter suppression, helping us understand how the past touches the present.
Caliphate – The New York Times (The New York Times)
When the tanks rolled out of towns and cities liberated from ISIS control, Rukmini Callimachi moved in, searching for diaries, receipts, computer files, anything that would help her answer the key question of this gripping podcast: why did people join ISIS? Callimachi and audio producer Andy Mills present their answers in absorbing style, wedding storytelling, reports from Iraq, and interviews with a wide range of subjects – from Abu Huzafah to a Yazidi girl tortured by ISIS troops – to produce a wonderful example of what longform audio reporting can and should sound like.
Kept Out – Reveal from The Center for Investigative Reporting, PRX, PBS Newshour, and the Associated Press (Public radio stations nationwide)
Although some might assume redlining – the practice of discouraging non-white people from living in certain neighborhoods by manipulating rentals and homebuying – a thing of the past, this report found people of color are still far more likely than whites to see mortgage applications denied in 61metro areas across the country. The review of 31 million records also unearthed redlining in ethnically and racially diverse areas. The series prompted investigations in several states, inspired the establishment of a $100 million affordable housing fund in Philadelphia, and forced banks to open branches in underserved areas.
Monumental Lies – Type Investigations and Reveal from The Center for Investigative Reporting and PRX (Public radio stations nationwide)
Exploring the contested history surrounding monuments in the South and the Southwest, this nuanced report adds depth to current debates about how the public should mark troubling chapters of our history. The investigative teams explore how “Lost Cause ideology” often substitutes for historical accuracy by sending black and white reporters, individually, into Beauvoir, a Mississippi site dedicated to Confederate president Jefferson Davis. Listeners hear what “truths” each get told. The series also addresses how monuments to racist pasts is a national, rather than regional problem, as Southwestern states memorialize monuments of settlement and colonization.
