AWARD DATE: 1968
AWARD NAME: Best TV Reporting From Abroad
AWARD RECIPIENT: Liz Trotta
AWARD RECIPIENT AFFILIATION: NBC News
AWARD HONORED WORK: Reports on the Vietnam War
Animation is an outstanding characteristic of Liz Trotta of NBC News, honored for 1968 reports on the war in Vietnam, on her initial foreign assignment. She has moved fast and far since receiving her M.S.
from Columbia Graduate School of Journalism in 1961 — where she held three paying jobs while
completing her studies. She taught journalism at Yeshiva University, wrote for the Inter-Catholic Press Agency, and worked on the sports desk of the Long Island Daily Press.
Cherishing visions of the Hecht-MacArthur type of journalism, she went to Chicago and a reporting job on the Chicago Tribune, but found that that era had passed and that suburban coverage of “births, deaths, marriages and zoning complaints wasn’t what I wanted”. Miami and an interval on the AP staff
followed, and in 1963 she returned to New York as a city reporter for Newsday. She joined NBC News in 1965, to cover the New York City scene for “Sixth Hour News” on WNBC-TV. Having a preference for political stories, she was particularly pleased that one of her earliest interviewees was the then Mayor-elect John V. Lindsay. For six weeks during the recent Presidential campaign, she was part of a team of five sent by NBC News to trail Senator Eugene McCarthy on Ms tour across the country. Her reports were visible and audible frequently on the “Today” program and on the “Frank McGee Saturday Report”.
Her memories of off-beat assignments include the launching of a ·balloon for testing air pollution, on which there was one hitch: the balloon wouldn’t rise. Her first question to the man who cut the ropes at the ceremony was, “That’s not the direction it was supposed to take, is it?”
Citation for Excellence: Morley Safer, CBS News, for reporting with Nigerian Government troops in their war with Biafra.