Broadcasters Win Peabodys for Local News


ATHENS, GA.: Four local TV stations ruled the news category in this year’s Peabody Awards. WTHR-TV, a Dispatch-owned NBC affiliate in Indianapolis; KSTP-TV, the ABC affiliate in St. Paul/Minneapolis, owned by Hubbard; WFAA-TV, Belo’s ABC affiliate in Dallas, and WILL-TV, a PBS member station in Champaign, Ill., were among the winners announced today.

WTHR won for “Reality Check: Where Are the Jobs,” an investigation into overstated job-creation claims by the Indiana Economic Development Corp., and companies given tax incentives to create jobs when they actually cut them by the hundreds.

KSTP won for an investigation of a Minnesota’s sailor’s accidental electrocution in Iraq in a piece entitled, “Who Killed Doc?” Dallas’s WFAA won for “Bitter Lessons,” an expose about abuses by government-funded career schools that sink students into debt. WILL won for “The Lord is Not On Trial Here Today,” a documentary on the First Amendment case that established the separation of church and state in public schools.

Other broadcast TV winners included CBS for “The Good Wife,” PBS for “Frontline: The Wounded Platoon,” “POV: The Most Dangerous Man in America,” “William Kentridge: Anything is Possible,” and “Elia Kazan: A Letter to Elia,” “American Experience: My Lai,” among others.

-- Television Broadcast