British Docs Land International Emmy Wins

The International Emmy Awards for news and current affairs were presented to Sky News’ Rohingya Crisis and ITV’s White Right: Meeting the Enemy, respectively, at a ceremony in New York last night.

The awards were presented as part of the 39th Annual News & Documentary Emmy Awards, where PBS dominated with nine wins, followed by HBO and CBS with six each. Best documentary went to A&E’s Life, Animated. Outstanding current-affairs doc went to PBS’s POV: Last Men in Aleppo. HBO’s Solitary: Inside Red Onion State Prison won the investigative doc category, while PBS’s Independent Lens: Tower took the historical docs crown. The Farthest-Voyager in Space from PBS was named outstanding science and technology documentary. Netflix landed a win in the outstanding nature documentary category with Chasing Coral.

Paula S. Apsell, senior executive producer for NOVA at PBS, received the Lifetime Achievement Award for her four decades in science journalism.

Current affairs winner White Right: Meeting the Enemy is an in-depth report by Muslim filmmaker Deeyah Khan as she meets American neo-Nazis and white nationalists. Khan previously won this category with Banaz: An Honour Killing in 2013.Rohingya Crisis, which won the International Emmy for news, covers the dire conditions and the suffering of the stranded Rohingya people, exposing what the Myanmar government has denied.

Bruce Paisner, president and CEO of the International Academy of Television Arts & Sciences, said the “winning programs illustrate once again the absolute urgency and necessity of free and unrestricted reporting. We congratulate the winning reporters and crews behind these outstanding reports for having the courage to shine their lens on horrific human tragedy and violent extremism at the risk of their own safety.”