ABC’s Diane Sawyer is among the honorees of the 2016 Alfred I. duPont-Columbia University Awards. Sawyer is being honored for her interview with Bruce Jenner, as he was transitioning to Caitlyn Jenner. The judges determined Sawyer and her team, “crafted a thoughtful, sensitive, illuminating two hour special… making the best use of a critical opportunity to disseminate nuanced, myth-busting information to change the public conversation..”
The special drew more than 20 million viewers giving ABC its most-watched non-sports Friday night in more than 10 years.
CBS’s 60 Minutes is also being honored for Scott Pelley‘s story A Crime Against Humanity. “Pelley and his producing team spent months researching before they traveled to refugee camps near the Syrian border. Both there and back in the U.S. they managed to track down survivors of the August 2013 Sarin gas attacks in Damascus, Syria that killed almost 1500 civilians,” the judges said.
VICE News and Al Jazeera America and Cronkite News/Arizona PBS will all be honored with their first duPont Award. AJAM won for its 6-part documentary series Hard Earned. “The series uses innovative graphics and character driven storytelling to allow individual stories to speak for a larger group.” VICE News won for its story Selfie Soldiers which tracked Russian soldiers in Ukraine using their social media accounts. And Cronkite News wins for a student-professional partnership.
Other honorees include PBS’s Frontline and HBO, which will each take home two awards.
NBC’s Tom Brokaw and ABC’s Juju Chang will co-host the duPont Awards ceremony Tuesday, Jan. 19, 2016, at Columbia University’s Low Memorial Library.