Best Radio Documentary on Foreign Affairs
AWARD YEAR: 1972
AWARD NAME: Best Radio Documentary on Foreign Affairs 1972
RECIPIENT: ABC Radio News
AFFILIATION: ABC Radio News
HONORED WORK: P.O.W. Special, featuring Ramsey Clark tapes made in North Vietnam.
The subject was a two-hour meeting on August 16, 1972, between former U.S. Attorney General Ramey Clark and a group of 10 P.O.W.’s in North Vietnam. There have been numerous interviews with American prisoners of war, on both radio and TV, but rarely have they involved a discussion as natural-and as newsworthy-as this documentary report. The interviews showed the men to be unusually articulate, animated, and astonishingly aware of the military and political situation, both in Vietnam and in the United States. They expressed their surprise at the kind of treatment received at the time of their capture-and since. (Excellent, particularly the medical care).
They talked of the mail situation (good as far as packages, poor for letters). They discussed the books they read ; the exercise they got, and their sports and leisure time activities. Then the P.O.W.’s
reversed the roles, and interviewees questioned the interviewer. About the bombing, the morale back home, the health of Governor George Wallace, the Eagleton affair, and about what their position
would be, once they were released. Commentators characterized the episode as ~in example of perceptive programming, and a terse-and timely-24 minutes with the least-forgotten prisoners of war in history.
Citation
PACIFICA-WBAl
For: A Month of Bloody Sundays.
Citation
FREDERICK KENNEDY /Group W, Westinghouse Broadcasting.
For: Unreal City.
(Both citations for programs on the fighting in Northern Ireland.)
Judges/ Russell C. Tornabene, Charles Eldridge, Henry Schnaue, Richard Rosse,
Mike Stein, Peter Wells