Nick Paton Walsh (left) and Arwa Damon
Best TV or video spot news reporting from abroad
AWARD DATE: 2017
AWARD NAME: 07 The David Kaplan Award
AWARD RECIPIENT: Nick Paton Walsh and Arwa Damon
AWARD RECIPIENT AFFILIATION: CNN
AWARD HONORED WORK: “Fall of ISIS”
AWARD SPONSOR: ABC News
CNN’s Nick Paton Walsh and Arwa Damon brought viewers directly into the final fight to push the ISIS terrorists out of their strongholds in Iraq and Syria while at the same time revealing its terrible human cost. Paton Walsh and his team witnessed the fight for the Al-Nuri mosque in Mosul and the closing hours of the battle when ISIS fighters emerged from the ruins and gave themselves up. Damon’s reporting and particularly poignant narrative on the dead and injured is so strong it is hard to watch. An Arabic speaker, Arwa encouraged survivors of a U.S. bombing that killed over 100 people in Mosul to talk about the agony and death that surrounded them. Judges felt the complementary stories by Paton Walsh and Damon were extraordinary examples of the psychological cost to the victims of prolonged ISIS rule and the fighting that brought it to an end.
Citation Recipients: Ian Pannell, Matt McGarry, Rym Momtaz, Nicky DeBlois and Jenna Millman
Affiliation: ABC News
Honored Work: “The War Against ISIS”