The Radio-Television Digital News Association today nominated Alabama Public Radio for four of its national Edward R. Murrow Awards. APR won regional Murrows for Overall Excellence, Best Documentary, Best Series, and best Newscast. The news team competes in region 9, which includes Alabama, Louisiana, Mississippi, and Arkansas. Regional winners will be judged for the national Murrow awards, which will be announced over the summer.
APR’s investigative effort on justice reform and prison reform won for both best documentary and best series. The team examined Alabama’s wrongful incarceration act, which is supposed to compensate people imprisoned for crimes they didn’t commit. In the fifteen years since the enactment of the law, only one person has been paid. APR also reported on Alabama’s policy on allowing judges to overturn the life sentencing recommendations of juries, in favor of the death penalty. The team also examined the on-going lawsuit over inadequate medical and mental health treatment, how Alabama is being criticized for not doing more to prepare former inmates for life on the outside, as well as former governor Robert Bentley’s $800 prison construction plan.
“I’m very proud of the news team’s effort on the prison project,” says news director Pat Duggins. “Since the airing of our stories, the legislature has overturned the judicial override law, and the mental health lawsuit was granted class action status. Everyone in the newsroom really worked hard on this project.”
Overall Excellence reflects APR’s complete body of work during 2016. The team’s coverage included the trials of former Alabama Chief Justice Roy Moore, House Speaker Mike Hubbard, the indictment of former Astronaut James Halsell for the deaths of two young girls following an early morning traffic crash, the fifth anniversary of the Tuscaloosa tornado on April 27, 2011 and the prison/justice reform series, among other stories. APR won the national Overall Excellence Murrow in 2012.
APR’s Alex AuBuchon hosted the regional Murrow award-winning newscast which featured campaign visits by Presidential hopefuls Donald Trump, Hilary Clinton, and Marco Rubio, as well as a candlelight vigil to remember the late writer Harper Lee in her hometown in Monroeville.
