Walkley Awards 2019: winners

Seven News team, Sydney.

ABC, Seven, SBS, Nine and Al Jazeera were amongst TV winners at the Walkley Awards last night in Sydney.

Seven News won two awards for their “Sydney Stabbing” reportage, while Four Corners also won two awards.

The Feed‘s Jan Fran defeated Waleed Aly for a Commentary award, and Leigh Sales won the Book Award.

Al Jazeera’s How to Sell a Massacre took out the Scoop of the Year.

Former Four Corners executive producer Sue Spencer was awarded the Most Outstanding Contribution to Journalism while the Herald Sun’s Anthony Dowsley and Patrick Carlyon jointly won the Gold Walkley for their entry, “Lawyer X Informer Scandal.”  The story also won the Investigative Journalism and Coverage of a Major News Event or Issue categories.

Seven Network Director of News and Public Affairs, Craig McPherson said: “To be nominated twice in this key television category is indicative of the consistency and strength of 7NEWS. Being Australia’s number one news service can only be achieved by having high quality people in front and behind the camera. The Sydney stabbing was a moment in time, as terrible as it was, that unfolded in front of cameraman Paul Walker and reporter Andrew Denney’s eyes. To be eyewitnesses to this harrowing crime and to then capture the chaos all on camera, expertly reporting the rampage was a masterly piece of television journalism.”

Darren Wick, Nine National Director of News and Current Affairs, said: “Congratulations to the 60 Minutes team whose outstanding work was recognised by the Walkley Awards. It is an honour to be nominated and we’re proud that Nine’s quality journalism has been acknowledged by the Walkleys – and it is even more special to have our first joint-investigation with the Herald and The Age recognised, it highlights the real opportunity we have to work together in the public interest. Thank you to our fabulous teams for their consistently superb work.”

The topic of press freedoms featured heavily across the night. Walkleys Chair Kerry O’Brien also called on the government to help bring Julian Assange home.

Kerry O'Brien out here calling on the government to bring Julian Assange home #walkleyawards #walkleys pic.twitter.com/x1XhQp7mAZ

— Fergus Halliday (@Cvamped) November 28, 2019

TV and related categories (winners in bold):

TELEVISION/VIDEO: CAMERAWORK
Louie Eroglu, Four Corners, ABC, “Proud Country”
Tom Hancock, 7pm News and 7.30, ABC, “On the frontline: the final days of Islamic State’s ‘caliphate’”
Paul Walker, Seven News, Seven Network, “Sydney Stabbing”

TELEVISION/VIDEO: NEWS REPORTING
Seven News Brisbane Team, Seven News Brisbane, “North Queensland Flood Coverage”
Seven News Sydney Team, Seven News Sydney, “Sydney Stabbing Rampage”
Hannah Sinclair, Nine News, “Christchurch gunman’s family breaks silence”

TELEVISION/VIDEO CURRENT AFFAIRS SHORT (LESS THAN 20 MINUTES)
Paul Farrell and Alex McDonald, 7.30, ABC, “Robodebt revelations”
Ali Rae, Al Jazeera English “All Hail The Algorithm”
Emily Verdouw, BuzzFeed, “Here’s What Refugee Kids Suffering From A Rare Syndrome In Sweden Can Tell Us About Australia’s Offshore Detention Centres”

TELEVISION/VIDEO CURRENT AFFAIRS LONG (MORE THAN 20 MINUTES)
Anne Connolly, Mary Fallon and Patricia Drum, Four Corners, ABC TV, “Who Cares?”
Suzanne Dredge, Dylan Welch, David Maguire and Janine Cohen, Four Corners, ABC TV, “Orphans of ISIS”
Nick McKenzie, Grace Tobin and Nick Toscano, 60 Minutes, Nine, “Crown Unmasked”

PUBLIC SERVICE JOURNALISM
Anne Connolly, Mary Fallon and Patricia Drum, Four Corners, ABC TV and ABC Digital, “Who Cares?”
Louise Milligan and the Four Corners Team, Four Corners, ABC TV and ABC News Online, “Guilty: An investigation into George Pell”
Mark Willacy, Peter Cronau, Louie Eroglu and Naomi Selvaratnam, Four Corners, ABC TV, “Inside the Watch House”

INNOVATION
Mark Doman and ABC News Digital Team, abc.net.au, “Satellite storytelling”
Kylie Boltin, Matt Smith, Tamara Dean and Debra Shulkes, SBS, “Missing: The Story of Abducted School Girl Wendy Pfeiffer and the Pitjantjatjara Trackers who searched for her”
Caro Meldrum-Hanna, Exposed & ABC Digital Team, ABC, “EXPOSED: The Case of Keli Lane”

COVERAGE OF INDIGENOUS AFFAIRS
Lorena Allam, Guardian Australia Team and the University of Newcastle’s Colonial Frontier Massacres Project, Guardian Australia, “The Killing Times”
Andy Burns and Geoff Thompson, 7.30, ABC, “Standing Tall”
Amy McQuire, Griffith Review 65: Crimes and Punishments, “White justice, black suffering: Extracting false confessions”

SPORTS JOURNALISM
Malcolm Knox and Nigel Gladstone, The Sun-Herald, “Caught Out: Cricket’s Inflated Player Numbers Revealed”
Samantha Lane, The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age, “Adam Goodes: My love for the game died inside me”
Catherine Marciniak, Compass, ABC TV, ABC iView and ABC Australia YouTube channel, “Leagueability”

PRODUCTION
Fadzil Hamzah, The Daily Telegraph and The Sunday Telegraph, “The Ibrahim Tapes”
Caro Meldrum-Hanna, Exposed & ABC Digital Team, ABC, “EXPOSED: The Case of Keli Lane”
Ali Rae, Al Jazeera English, “All Hail The Algorithm”

COMMENTARY, ANALYSIS, OPINION AND CRITIQUE
Waleed Aly, The Age, The Sydney Morning Herald and The Project, Network Ten, “Rage and Restraint”
Paul Daley, The Guardian, “Interrogating the Past”
Jan Fran, The Feed, SBS VICELAND and associated social media channels, “The Frant”

BUSINESS JOURNALISM
Adele Ferguson, The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age, “Secret interviews reveal risky business for NAB’s top executives”
Angus Grigg, Lisa Murray and Jonathan Shapiro, The Australian Financial Review, “The UBS loan scandal”
Nick McKenzie, Nick Toscano and Grace Tobin, The Age, The Sydney Morning Herald and 60 Minutes, Nine, “Crown Unmasked”

WALKLEY DOCUMENTARY AWARD SHORTLIST
Aftermath: Beyond Black Saturday, Joe Connor, Ken Connor and Lucy Maclaren, Renegade Films and ABC
The Australian Dream, Stan Grant, GoodThing Productions, Passion Pictures UK and ABC
The Final Quarter, Ian Darling, Sally Fryer and Mary Macrae, Shark Island Productions

SCOOP OF THE YEAR
Al Jazeera Investigations Unit, Al Jazeera Media Network, “How to Sell a Massacre”
Josh Gerstein and Zoya Sheftalovich, POLITICO, “‘That’s just insane’: Australia’s secret deal with the U.S.”
Sophie McNeill and The Four Corners Team, Four Corners, ABC, “Escape from Saudi”

COVERAGE OF A MAJOR NEWS EVENT OR ISSUE
Melissa Davey and Guardian Australia Team, Guardian Australia, “Coverage of George Pell verdict”
Anthony Dowsley and Patrick Carlyon, Herald Sun, “Lawyer X Informer Scandal”
Adam Harvey, Tom Hancock and Suzanne Dredge, 7.30 and 7pm News, ABC TV, “Fall of the Caliphate”