United States Agency for Global Media

RFE/RL wins Edward R. Murrow award

June 19, 2019

Washington, D.C. — Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL) has been awarded a 2019 Edward R. Murrow Award for Multimedia in the Television Network category by the Radio Television Digital News Association (RTDNA), for “demonstrat[ing] the spirit of excellence that Murrow set” as a standard in electronic journalism.

RFE/RL Acting President Daisy Sindelar welcomed the National Murrow Award “as a testament to the excellence of RFE/RL’s broadcast and digital journalists working in some of the world’s most fraught and fascinating countries.” Sindelar said, “We are honored to receive this recognition for providing our audiences with unique stories, powerfully told, on the most influential formats in our coverage area.”

This is the first time RFE/RL has won a Murrow Award, presented by the RTDNA since 1971. Winning the award, as explained by RTDNA Executive Director Dan Shelley, “means that a news organization has provided exemplary public service to its viewers, listeners and readers.”

Eleven examples of exceptional RFE/RL news reporting and journalistic skill were reviewed by RTDNA judges.

• Catch Carlos If You Can — RFE/RL enterprise editor Carl Schreck’s collaborative investigation with Romanian investigators at the RISE Project into a mysterious Twitter persona linked to pro-Moscow narratives of the MH17 airline crash.
• ​Caught Up In A Revolution — RFE/RL photojournalist Amos Chapple’s visual story about reporting the Armenian Revolution in April 2018.
• ​Forest Reclaiming Abkhaz Ghost Town — a video project by RFE/RL multimedia editor Stuart Greer, originally produced for the Russian-language Current Time TV network by reporter Aleksei Aleksandrov and camera operator Nikita Borisov, about how the forest has slowly taken over a former mining town.
• Leningrad’s Lost Photographer — a photo gallery by RFE/RL photojournalist Amos Chapple that weaves together the remarkable story and images of Masha Ivashintsova (1942-2000), whose work was discovered in an attic in 2017 by a relative who stumbled upon dusty boxes of negatives and undeveloped film.
• ​#MeToo In Belarus: Ex-Teammates Bolster Korbut’s Sexual-Assault Charges Against Coach — originally written for RFE/RL’s Belarus Service by Alyaksandra Dynko, and versioned into English by RFE/RL editor Pete Baumgartner, the article features exclusive RFE/RL interviews with former teammates of legendary Soviet gymnast Olga Korbut, who says she was sexually abused by her longtime coach, Renald Knysh.
• Pipeline From Hell? Nord Stream 2 And Why It’s So Contentious — an interactive project created by RFE/RL digital team members Carlos Coelho, Wojtek Grojec, and Coilin O’Connor that presents a complete picture of what the Nord Stream 2 pipeline project is and why it’s a hot political issue.
• Putin’s ‘State Of The Nation’ Speech: Annotated — An examination by RFE/RL senior correspondent Rob Coalson and enterprise editor Carl Schreck of the substance of Putin’s annual address, with fact-checking and analysis in both English and Russian for the Current Time TV network (visualized by by digital editor Wojtek Grojec, edited by news editor Andy Heil).
• The Remains Of Stalin’s Dead Road – A photo story by RFE/RL photojournalist Amos Chapple of Russia’s arctic wilderness and what remains of one of the Soviet Union’s most tragic gulag projects.
• Russian Arms Deals — an infographic by RFE/RL data journalist Carlos Coelho that neatly lays out who the biggest buyers were of Russian weapons between 2016 and 2017.
• Tragedy On Sunshine Street: One Ukrainian Family’s Fight For Justice — a report by RFE/RL correspondent Chris Miller (visualized by digital editor Wojtek Grojec, edited by news editor Andy Heil) of Ukrainian lawyer Iryna Nozdrovska, who fought to keep her sister’s killer behind bars only to have her own life end in what appears to have been a targeted killing.
• ​Uzbekistan’s Forbidden Art Treasures — a video project by RFE/RL photojournalist Amos Chapple and multimedia editor Margot Buff that journeys into the Uzbek desert, where a collection of art once banned by Soviet authorities found refuge.

The Current Time digital and TV network is led by RFE/RL in cooperation with the Voice of America.

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