Four local stations — WBZ in Boston, KING in Seattle, WVUE in New Orleans and WTVF in Nashville — have won George Foster Peabody Awards. The winners were unveiled today on “CBS This Morning.”
CBS-owned WBZ was honored for its “wide-ranging, enterprising, non-sensational” coverage of the Boston Marathon bombings. The station was praised for becoming “crucial sources not just to their city but to a stunned nation.”
NBC affiliate KING won for its investigation of a leaking nuclear-waste storage tank in Washington, exposing “mismanagement, deception and waste of tax dollars.” The report resulted in a U.S. Department of Energy review of the Hanford nuclear reservation and several resignations at the company that manages the site.
CBS affiliate WTVF was honored for a series of reports, capped off by a primetime special, called “Questions of Influence.” The reports revealed sweetheart deals, no-bid contracts and ethical lapses in state government.
Fox affiliate WVUE won for an investigative report produced jointly with The Times-Picayune about campaign financing. The end result “provided TV-news operations around the country a template for ambitious digging.”