Awards & Accolades

Katie Couric has been named one of the 2009 "Giants of Broadcasting" by the Library of American Broadcasting.

The seventh annual Giants awards ceremony is scheduled to be held October 1 in New York, with Charles Osgood as master of ceremonies.

Among the other honorees:
• Outgoing RTNDA president Barbara Cochran
• Documentarian Ken Burns
• Dr. Woo Paik, often called the "Father of HDTV"
• Westwood One founder/chairman Norman J. Pattiz
• Television Bureau of Advertising president Chris Rohrs

Posthumous awards go to Bea Arthur and Ed McMahon. The Library of American Broadcasting website describes LAB as a "national information resource serving the radio and television industries" as well as "academic communities".

60 Minutes was honored with two Gerald Loeb Awards at a New York ceremony earlier this week.

The program won both of the Loeb television prizes:

• The Television Breaking News award was given for a financial story by Steve Kroft, "House of Cards" (L. Franklin Devine and Jennifer MacDonald produced).

• The Television Enterprise Winner prize went to Scott Pelley's "The Wasteland", which looked into the dumping of electronic waste (Solly Granatstein and Nicole Young produced). This is the "fifth major prize awarded to the story since it was broadcast last November," according to a CBS press release.

The awards, presented by the UCLA Anderson School of Management, were established in 1957 by Gerald Loeb, a founding partner of E.F. Hutton.

CNN Senior European Correspondent Jim Bittermann has received France's highest decoration.

In a ceremony last night, the Paris-based Bittermann was made 'Chevalier' (knight) of the National Order of the Legion of Honor. His medal was awarded by French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner.

"For the past 30 years," Bittermann is quoted in a CNN press release, "I've been explaining France and the French to the rest of the world."

"Founded in 1802 by Napoleon Bonaparte to recognize outstanding accomplishment," the press release states, "the chevalier is given annually to around 3,500 Frenchmen and women — but few non-nationals....

"In the field of American television journalism, he joins Pierre Salinger from ABC, who received his honor in 1978. In this year's Honor's list, he is one of only two Americans, and of 13 foreigners, to be so honored."

The internal memo from CNN Worldwide president Jim Walton, after the jump...

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NBC News has earned five national Edward R. Murrow awards, announced today by the RTNDA. In addition to Overall Excellence, NBC News wins for Breaking News for their Hurricane Gustav coverage and for Richard Engel's Tip of the Spear reporting.

CBS News' 60 Minutes was honored in three categories: Hard News Feature, Feature Reporting and Investigative Reporting and, mentioned earlier on TVNewser, the CBS Evening News wins Best Newscast.

For the second year in a row, the CBS Evening News with Katie Couric has won the Edward R. Murrow award for best evening newscast. CBS News submitted the broadcast of Nov. 12, 2008 to the RTNDA judges. The program led with the economic bailout coverage from correspondents Anthony Mason and Sharyl Attkisson. Other reports came from Armen Keteyian, Seth Doane, Mark Strassmann, and Steve Hartman.

Rick Kaplan is the EP of the CBS Evening News. Katie Couric is the managing editor.

CBS News and Sports president Sean McManus says the broadcast, "simply is the best daily news program on television," adding, "once again, the industry experts are giving CBS Evening News the critical acclaim it deserves."

CNN's Christiane Amanpour and Candy Crowley and MSNBC's Rachel Maddow are among the honorees of the Women's Media Center's first annual WMC Media Awards.

The ceremony will be held June 17 at the Sackler Foundation in New York. WMC was founded in 2005 by Gloria Steinem, Jane Fonda and Robin Morgan.

More in the press release after the jump..

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36 awards were handed out today in New York City at the 68th annual Peabody Awards. The master of ceremonies, NBC's Brian Williams (a previous winner himself), said the Peabody is "considered one of the most important awards," and the wide array of winners represented all sectors of entertainment.

In the TV news world, NBC won for "Richard Engel Reports: Tip of the Spear," (pictured, with Nightly News staffers and NBC News president Steve Capus, far right) CBS for the 60 Minutes report, "Lifeline," and ABC for "Hopkins."

"Hopkins" EP Terence Wrong thanked ABC News president David Westin in his speech, for "[believing] documentary still has a role on network news."

The Onion News Network picked up an award, and EP Will Graham thanked the tvnewsers in attendance. "As long as you keep getting more and more ridiculous, we'll keep following in your footsteps," he said.

CNN won a Peabody for its coverage of the Presidential primaries and debates, and PBS for "Washington Week with Gwen Ifill" won as well.

Williams joked with Wolf Blitzer, who accepted the CNN award, dubbing him the "star of Breaking Bad." The show, about a meth cooking-suburban dad, picked up a Peabody earlier in the day. As Blitzer left the stage, following a speech in which he brought up the "Best Political Team on Television," Williams said he "had not heard it prior to this."

We talked to Blitzer after the ceremony about winning for election coverage, being teased by Williams and more. After the jump, our interview with PBS' Ifill:



Click continued to see our interview with Ifill about winning the Peabody, and also her thoughts on President Obama's first 100 days (hint: we have to check back in about 80 days)...

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Fox News anchor Geraldo Rivera will be inducted into the National Association of Hispanic Journalists' (NAHJ) Hall of Fame next month.

Rivera is a founding member of the NAHJ. He was the "first Latino correspondent at a national news network," reporting for ABC's Good Morning America. He joined FNC in 2001.

The awards ceremony takes place June 26 in San Juan.

(via J$)

Wednesday night, PBS newsman Jim Lehrer will receive the WFUV Charles Osgood Lifetime Achievement Award in Journalism.

The award will be presented at WFUV's Spring Gala. Osgood, the CBS Sunday Morning host, will present the award named for him to Lehrer. Osgood started his career at WFUV, one of New York's public radio stations.

Tickets to the Gala at New York's Puck Building are available by sending a request here.

Perceptive Pixel, the company behind CNN's "Magic Wall" and FNC's "Bill Board" has been named the winner of a National Design Award from the Smithsonian Institution's Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum.

The company, founded in 2006 by Jeff Han (co-star of the TVNewser Summit promo video) won an Interaction Design Award for exceptional work using digital technology. The National Design Award is the nation's highest honor for design.

Perceptive Pixel has rapidly proliferated by working with industry leaders to apply these novel interfaces to professional use cases in markets as diverse as business intelligence, medical imaging, energy exploration, industrial design and collaboration. Most recently, Perceptive Pixel became renowned for completely transforming the way television broadcasters including CNN, Fox and ABC covered the historic 2008 Presidential elections.

Somewhere John King is smiling.

• Related: UnBeige has the full list of winners.