60 Minutes reporting on border crisis wins Columbia Journalism duPont Award
60 Minutes coverage of the crisis at the U.S. Mexico border has earned the CBS News magazine its 20th duPont-Columbia University Journalism Award. The prestigious awards honoring electronic journalism were announced today by The Columbia School of Journalism, which will host the ceremony on Jan. 21, 2020.
The award to the CBS News magazine was the only one garnered by a broadcast television network.
The two segments appeared on 60 Minutes last season and were entered as a body of work at a crucial moment in the history of immigration. The first, by correspondent Scott Pelley, was broadcast in November 2018 and focused on the controversial policy of separating families that resulted in incidents of toddlers rejecting their mothers. The next story was reported by correspondent Sharyn Alfonsi in April 2019. It captured the chaos at the border created by overwhelming crowds of migrants seeking entry to the U.S. that an official tells Alfonsi had become "a national security and humanitarian crisis."
Both reports were produced by Michael Rey and Oriana Zill de Granados with associate producer Emily Gordon; they were edited by Jorge J. Garcia, Sean Kelly and Michael Mongulla. The team spent months filing Freedom of Information Act requests, reading countless Government Accountability Office and internal government reports and speaking to insiders and whistleblowers at the Department of Homeland Security. Among the details uncovered was the number of children who were separated was nearly double what the government was reporting.
Bill Owens is the executive producer of 60 Minutes.
