Children of the Taliban wins the Alfred Dupont Award at Columbia University
January 22, 2010
Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism today announced the 2010 winners of the Alfred I. duPont-Columbia University Awards. Pakistani journalist and filmmaker Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy and Director Dan Edge were honored this year.
Selected by the duPont Jury for excellence in broadcast journalism, the award-winning news programs aired in the United States between July 1, 2008 and June 30, 2009. These honorees were presented with silver duPont batons at a ceremony held at Columbia University in New York City on Thursday, January 21, 2010.
* WGBH, Boston, FRONTLINE/World, Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy & Dan Edge
PAKISTAN: Children of the Taliban, on PBS
“This fresh and startling report takes viewers inside the daunting daily lives of children in Pakistan who will influence the destiny of that region and potentially of the world. Dan Edge and Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy penetrated areas we seldom see to bring out the voices of young people caught in the turmoil between the rising militant insurgents and the army. In the turbulent Swat Valley, a mortar falls nearby while young girls give reporter Obaid-Chinoy a tour of their school that had been shut down by the Taliban. The team embedded with the Pakistani military, and a Taliban recruiter explained to them how he lures children to be suicide bombers. This impressive report is a dispassionate eyewitness account of Pakistan today, and part of a new wave of video reporting from the frontlines.
For 40 years, the Alfred I. duPont-Columbia University Awards have recognized excellence in broadcast journalism at Columbia University. Created by Jessie Ball duPont in 1942 as a tribute to the journalistic integrity and public-mindedness of her husband, Alfred I. duPont, these awards are regarded today as the most prestigious prizes in broadcast news, the equivalent of the Pulitzer Prizes, which are also administered at the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.
Winners of the Alfred I. duPont-Columbia University Awards receive gold or silver batons designed by the late American architect Louis I. Kahn. The batons are inscribed with the famous observation about the power of television by the late Edward R. Murrow:
“This instrument can teach, it can illuminate; yes, it can even inspire. But it can do so only to the extent that humans are determined to use it to those ends. Otherwise it is merely wires and lights in a box.” (Address to the Radio and Television News Directors Association, Chicago, October 15, 1958.)
Sharmeen Obaid Chinoy and Dan Edge at the Dupont Awards at Columbia University