AWARD DATE: 1968
AWARD NAME: Best Radio Interpretation of Foreign Affairs
AWARD RECIPIENT: Elie Abel
AWARD RECIPIENT AFFILIATION: NBC News
AWARD HONORED WORK: De Gaulle Faces His Creditors
Add one more to the accolades amassed by Elie Abel, NBC News diplomatic correspondent currently stationed in Washington. His analyses of, and reports on major developments in the formation and execution of American foreign policy are solidly based on his wide-ranging experience through two decades. From 1965 through 1967, he was NBC News bureau chief in London, operating from there all over Europe, the Middle East and the Far East to gather material for his special reports for his network.
For distinguished achievement in radio news during 1967, he was presented with a Peabody Award commending his NBC Radio Network series, “The World and Washington”. And in 1966 he received the Columbia Alumni Award “for distinguished service to journalism”.
Abel has covered many landmark events of the past 20 years. They include the Nuremberg Trials during the several years he spent in Germany; the Geneva Summit Conference of 1955, the Kennedy-Nixon campaign of 1960, the Goldwater-Johnson campaign of 1964, and the funerals of John F. Kennedy, Sir Winston Churchill and Konrad Adenauer.
Born in 1920 in Montreal, Canada, he holds a degree from McGill University as well as from Columbia. He is author of “The Missile Crisis”, and has had the satisfaction of seeing his book translated into French, Italian, German, Danish, Japanese and Hebrew. Before coming to NBC News in 1961, Abel had been a national and foreign correspondent for The New York Times, and later Washington bureau chief for the Detroit News. At present he is host of a weekly series of news interpretation programs which concentrate on contemporary world events and their portent. His winning OPC entry was entiled “De Gaulle Faces His Creditors”.
Citation for Excellence: George Hamilton Combs, Mutual News, for “Outlook for the Paris Talks.”