Norman Lear to Receive Special Peabody Award

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The Peabody Awards board of jurors has selected Norman Lear to receive an Individual Award and the Independent Television Service (ITVS) an Institutional Award for their contributions to storytelling in television.

Lear’s credits include All in the Family, Sanford and Son, Maude, Good Times and The Jeffersons. His works have featured a collection of characters whose racial and gender diversity was as unprecedented as their biases and brash opinions. They also touched on controversial topics such as racial discrimination, sexism, homosexuality, abortion and rape.

ITVS was conceived by independent filmmakers who saw a paucity of diversity in public media and was formed by Congress in 1988. The organization has seen more than 1,400 films funded, with works that include How to Survive a Plague by David France, Marco Williams and Whitney Dow’s Two Towns of Jasper, Leslee Udwin’s India’s Daughter and The Invisible War by Kirby Dick and Amy Ziering.

Lear and ITVS will be celebrated at a gala event on Saturday, May 20, in New York. The event will be taped for a television special to air on both PBS and Fusion networks on June 2 at 9 p.m. Rashida Jones, a previous Peabody Award winner for Parks and Recreation, will serve as host.