Three Belo televisions stations earned the 2008 Alfred I. duPont-Columbia Award for excellence in television journalism.  Thirteen organizations won the prestigious award from a field of 510 television and radio news entries. 

WFAA -TV, Dallas for Television Justice

A series of reports on how the local police in Murphy, Tx., collaborated in the sting operations of NBC’s Dateline: To Catch A Predator program

These three intriguing reports explore the intersection of media and justice. WFAA-TV’s investigative reporter Byron Harris and his team broke this story about how the Murphy, Texas, police department commingled law enforcement with television production for the NBC Dateline reality television series To Catch a Predator. The station started this series after a local Texas district attorney committed suicide. The investigation turned up problems of entrapment, police cooperation with the Predator crew in scouting locations of possible Internet sex predators, law enforcement professionals wearing television cameras for the Predator crew, and many prosecutions stemming from the reality series that never resulted in convictions. This is an old-fashioned gum-shoe investigation in the era of Internet sex and reality television, conducted with restraint and methodical reporting.

Byron Harris, reporter; Mark Smith, producer; Kraig Kirchem, photographer and editor; Dave Arnold, additional photography; Michael Valentine, news director

KHOU -TV, Houston for Rules of the Game

One brief investigative report on an unusual aspect of Texas law that allows prosecutors to withhold evidence from the defense before trial

This powerful six-minute report is a model of investigative reporting by a local station. It reveals a local loop-hole in one of the  basic principles of American justice — the right of defendants to all evidence against them before trial. Reporter Jeremy Rogalski details how the law in some Texas counties, unlike most places in the U.S., allows prosecutors to withhold pre-trial evidence from the defense. The story builds steadily, making a persuasive case about how damaging, uneven and unfair this common and perfectly legal practice is. The report reveals how prosecutors withhold evidence in police, eyewitness and lab reports, sometimes resulting in wrongful convictions and long prison terms. 

Jeremy Rogalski, reporter; Chris Henao, producer; Keith Tomshe, photojournalist and editor; David Raziq, executive producer for investigative reporting; Keith Connors, news director

KMOV -TV, St. Louis for Left Behind: The Failure of East St. Louis Schools

A series of reports examining the chronic failure of schools in East St. Louis, Ill., to educate children with special needs

Through the relentless reporting of Craig Cheatham, KMOV-TV covers many aspects of the chronic problems in East St. Louis schools, especially the system’s failure to provide special education services. Through more than a dozen stories and one special program, the series demonstrates how a local station can thoroughly and persistently cover the most downtrodden parts of its community, giving voice to the voiceless.

Craig Cheatham, reporter; Gary Womack, photographer and editor; Genie Garner, acting news director

The stories aired between July 1, 2006 and June 30, 2007.  The award-winning journalists will be presented the DuPont silver bataon on January 16, 2008 at Columbia University.

CNN's Christian Amanpour, a former duPont awardee, will interview several of the duPont winners in the PBS special program Telling the Truth: The Best in Broadcast Journalism, premiering Jan. 28. This program, an annual feature on public television stations, will include excerpts of the winning programs and explore how journalists outsmart the blizzard of spin, the limitations of newsroom budgets, and the logistics of travel to dangerous locations. The program is produced by Martin Smith and Margarita Dragon of RAINmedia.

“It is our privilege for Columbia to be the home of the duPont Awards and celebrate each year the award-winning coverage of outstanding journalists. Their work plays a pivotal role in our democracy, and they are an inspiration to our students,” said Nicholas Lemann, dean of the Journalism School at Columbia.

Ann Cooper, coordinator of the broadcast department at the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism and a former duPont winner as a foreign correspondent for NPR, chairs the duPont Jury. She said, “This year’s duPont winners are testimony to the continuing strength of intelligent reporting and investigative journalism throughout American broadcast media. They represent the very finest, most informative work from small local stations to national networks.”

The Alfred I. duPont-Columbia University Awards honoring overall excellence in broadcast journalism were established in 1942 by Jessie Ball duPont in memory of her husband, Alfred I. duPont. With his cousins, Mr. duPont transformed their gunpowder company into the chemical company E.I. duPont de Nemours. He later created a successful financial institution in Florida and was owner of a chain of small-town newspapers in Delaware. The duPont Awards, administered since 1968 by Columbia University's Graduate School of Journalism, are considered the broadcast equivalent of the Pulitzer Prizes, which are also administered at the Journalism School.

Award winners receive 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." (Excerpted from Murrow’s address to the Radio and Television News Directors Association, Chicago, Oct. 15, 1958.)

In 2005, reporter Brett Shipp, producer Mark Smith, photographer/editor Kraig Kirchem of WFAA-TV earned a duPont award for their 13-part investigation “State of Denial” focusing on Texas’ Workmen’s Compensation Commission.

Information from a Columbia News press release contributed to this report.