2022 Alfred I. duPont-Columbia Award Winners Announced
New York, N.Y., February 8, 2022 — Columbia Journalism School announced the 16 winners of the 2022 Alfred I. duPont-Columbia University Awards during a special virtual presentation highlighting outstanding reporting in the public interest. Hosted by CNN Chief Medical Correspondent Dr. Sanjay Gupta and Judy Woodruff, Anchor and Managing Editor of PBS NewsHour, the hour-long special presentation was hosted on the Award’s site, and is available to watch now.
The 2022 duPont-winning public service reporting appeared across platforms and featured ongoing critical coverage of the coronavirus pandemic, the January 6th attack on the Capitol, policing in America, and racial inequities, among other topics.
"This ceremony is happening as we head into year three of a global pandemic. With the evolving challenges we are all facing, it only serves as a reminder about how important our work as journalists really is to inform the public and hold the powerful accountable,” said Gupta during the show’s opening remarks.
Woodruff remarked, "We've continued to be tested in ways we never expected by this pandemic that has upended lives, touched every corner of human existence and forced us to reorder priorities and rethink the way we do our work. Despite it all, we continue to witness great reporting being done -- profound and consequential investigative work and storytelling that transports us to places that would otherwise have gone unseen. I've never been more proud to be a journalist than I am at the start of this new year."
PBS led the evening with four wins— Independent Lens won for its eight-part epic look into the first term of Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner. POV won for its powerful coverage of the Kenyan political activist Softie, and for its inspirational documentary Through the Night—while FRONTLINE, with NPR and Planet Money, won for Waste Land, an in-depth audio investigation into the oil industry and plastic recycling. CBS News and Norah O’Donnell were honored for intrepid reporting exposing sexual assault in the U.S. military. The New York Times won a baton for its powerfully chilling documentary film investigation into the January 6th Capitol insurrection.
The duPont-Columbia Awards recognized two streaming services this year — Apple TV+ and Amazon Studios, both first time winners. Apple TV+, in partnership with Alex Gibney’s Jigsaw Productions, won for The Line, a six-part audio documentary examining the moral ambiguities of modern warfare. Amazon Studios was honored for My Name is Pauli Murray, a visual portrait capturing the life of the non-binary Black lawyer and activist Pauli Murray directed by Julie Cohen and Betsy West, who won a 2019 duPont for RBG. HBO Documentary Films won for Nanfu Wang’s In the Same Breath, recounting the parallel misinformation campaigns of the Chinese and the U.S. leadership at the outset of the Coronavirus pandemic which led to the loss of lives globally.
Four local television stations, KNXV (ABC-15 Phoenix, AZ), KXTV (ABC-10 Sacramento, CA), KARE (NBC-11 Minneapolis, MN), and KNTV(NBC-11 Bay Area) won for fearless coverage exposing widespread housing inequities, government and corporate corruption in their communities. Two podcasts won prizes, including Blindspot: Tulsa Burning, a co-production of WNYC and The History Channel, and Stitcher Media’s According to Need, a two-year investigation into the issue of homelessness in America. VICE News won for The Shockwave, an in-depth look at the 2020 Beirut port explosion, as recounted by the doctors and nurses who struggled to save lives that day at the city’s oldest hospital.
“Under these extraordinary circumstances, with reporters working remotely due to covid-related risks and restrictions, the 2022 winning stories are especially deserving of the recognition a coveted duPont Silver Baton brings,'' said duPont Director Lisa R. Cohen.
Founded in 1942, the duPont-Columbia Awards uphold the highest standards in journalism by honoring winners annually, informing the public about those journalists' contributions, and supporting journalism education and innovation. The awards have honored, for 80 years, many of the most important stories of our time from the Civil Rights era and Vietnam to today’s racial reckoning and local accountability reporting. Since 1968, the Awards have been administered by Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism. A jury made up of industry leaders selected 30 finalists and 16 winners from a pool of entries from traditional national and local news outlets across the country as well as streaming and entertainment outlets that have recently embraced in-depth public service reporting.
The 2022 duPont-Columbia Jurors are: Mark Whitaker, (Jury Chair), Nina Alvarez, David Bauder, Andy Bowers, Ann Cooper, Pam Hogan, Lee Kamlet, Shelagh Leahy, and Geraldine Moriba.
The 2022 duPont-Columbia Award winners are:
99% Invisible | Stitcher Media | PRX
According to Need
This insightful podcast series and reporter Katie Mingle gave listeners intimate access to the homeless and to the bureaucracy intended to help them, revealing a frustrating system with complex rules, inadequate resources, and little agreement about how to identify those most in need.
The HISTORY Channel | WNYC Studios | KOSU
Blindspot: Tulsa Burning
An immersive, deeply reported six-part podcast series hosted by KalaLea that depicted the biggest race massacre since the Civil War placed powerful eyewitness voices at the heart of a century-old narrative, and posed an urgent question: What would it take for history to stop repeating itself?
The New York Times
Day of Rage: How Trump Supporters Took the U.S. Capitol
By gathering hundreds of audio and video files recording the January 6th attack on the Capitol from every conceivable angle, a forensics team from The New York Times meticulously recreated the definitive story of how the riot unfolded.
KXTV Sacramento & Brandon Rittiman
FIRE - POWER - MONEY: Holding PG&E Accountable
A powerful series of stories from reporter Brandon Rittiman sought to force accountability by California utility monopoly PG&E, and played an integral part in the company pleading guilty to 84 counts of manslaughter for its role in the devastating 2018 Camp Fire.
HBO Documentary Films
In The Same Breath
Director Nanfu Wang traced the Covid pandemic’s origin and spread from its outbreak in Wuhan to its rampage across the United States in a meditative and incisive inquiry that also questioned the pandemic of disinformation, authoritarian tendencies and agendas.
KARE11 Minneapolis/St. Paul & A.J. Lagoe
Cruel & Unusual
2020-2021
Reporter A.J. Lagoe’s investigative series revealed how cost cutting in Minnesota prisons’ medical and mental health care resulted in a culture of neglect and dehumanization, and a shocking uptick in jailhouse deaths.
CBS News
Military Sexual Assault: Norah O’Donnell Investigates
This sustained investigative series by CBS News that included interviews with nearly two dozen survivors of sexual assault, whistleblowers and families of suicide victims revealed that despite the Pentagon’s pledge of zero tolerance ten years ago, the military’s sexual assault crisis is worse than ever.
Amazon Studios | Participant Media | Storyville Films
My Name Is Pauli Murray
So far ahead of their time, activist, lawyer, priest and author Pauli Murray comes to life through their own writing and audio diaries in this feature length documentary, as they put forth ideas too revolutionary for even the most forward thinking during the civil rights era.
PBS | Independent Lens | Topic
Philly D.A.
This riveting eight-part documentary series embedded viewers inside the long shot election and tumultuous first term of Larry Krasner, Philadelphia's unapologetically progressive district attorney, and his experiment to upend the criminal justice system from the inside out.
KNXV Phoenix & Dave Biscobing
Full Disclosure & Politically Charged
Reporter Dave Biscobing’s investigations of the Phoenix Police Department relentlessly connected the dots to depict a police force operating like a police state, simmering with racist and political resentment, and rife with malfeasance.
POV on PBS| American Documentary, Inc | LBx Africa
Softie
2020-2021
This inspiring and compelling documentary from Director Sam Soko profiled a young activist turned political candidate who put country above family and his life on the line in his determination to change the corrupt political system in Kenya.
Apple | Jigsaw Productions
The Line
2020-2021
The Line, hosted by Dan Taberski, is a fascinating, deeply reported podcast series that offered a reassessment of the events surrounding the war crimes trial of Navy SEAL Eddie Gallagher, as well as a window into the secretive culture of the SEALs and similar elite military units.
NBC Bay Area (KNTV)
The Moms of Magnolia Street
2020-2021
This longform series explored contemporary redlining by following a group of unhoused working mothers as they took over a vacant property on Oakland’s Magnolia Street, demanded housing as a human right, and took a stand against one of the nation’s largest real estate speculators.
VICE NEWS
The Shockwave
Through brilliant use of CCTV footage, this harrowing and deeply moving documentary followed the devastating August 2020 explosion in the Port of Beirut from the vantage point of nearby Saint George’s Hospital, where doctors and nurses struggled to save lives amidst the rubble.
POV on PBS | American Documentary, Inc | Third Shift Media
Through the Night
Director Loira Limbal’s film is as intimate and gentle as a lullaby, even as it exposes serious societal flaws by immersing viewers in a family-run day care operation that is the only safety net in a community where women work multiple jobs, often overnight, to survive.
NPR | Planet Money | FRONTLINE on PBS & Laura Sullivan
Waste Land
In this revelatory podcast episode, reporter Laura Sullivan tracked down retired industry lobbyists to expose a decades-long marketing scam that convinced consumers that plastic products are far more recyclable than they really are.