Note to Correspondents

NEW YORK FESTIVALS/UNITED NATIONS DEPARTMENT OF PUBLIC INFORMATION AWARDS

 

FOR RADIO PROGRAMMING TO BE PRESENTED TODAY

 

Winning Entries Explore Stories on Social Justice, Race, War and Cruelty

Radio programming from the Netherlands and the United States will be honoured on Thursday, 28 June, when the United Nations Department of Public Information awards are presented as part of the New York Festivals Radio Programming and Promotion Awards at Tribeca Rooftop in New York City. 

Raymond Sommereyns, Director of the Department’s Outreach Division, will present the Gold Award to Radio Netherlands for Durga’s Court: Social Justice At Work In India; the Silver Award to WUNC, Chapel Hill, NC, for Ahmed’s Diary; and the Bronze Award to Youth Radio, Berkeley, CA, for Race In Your Face.  

Durga’s Court portrays a rural court in West Bengal, India, where the judging proceedings are held on the veranda of a private house.  The judge, Shabnam Ramaswamy —- a woman untrained in formal law —- makes her rulings by a potent alchemy of mythology, common sense and her compelling presence; she is a source of hope for hundreds of poor people, especially women, who accept her rulings. 

Ahmed’s Diary traces a year in the life of an Iraqi man, Ahmed Abdullah, a sculptor and a professor at the Baghdad School of Fine Arts.  He records his thoughts on the transformation of his hometown into a place of torture and random death. 

Race In Your Face is a set of three stories that explore race and racism in America through the lens of young people.  In the first story, “N-Bomb”, Pendarvis Harshaw explains the set of assumptions and attitudes that come with the use of the word “nigger”.  In “Whiteness”, Clare Robbins explores how individual Caucasians are banding together to teach each other racial sensitivity while reclaiming their own ethnic identity, which has been lost under the label “White”.  In “DNA of the Black Experience”,  King Anyi Howell describes a personal experience of being targeted by police to contend that racial profiling is not only a rite of passage for young Black males, but a part of  Black life in America.

Jointly sponsored by Department of Public Information and New York Festivals, the radio awards were established in 1990 to honour exceptional radio programming that best reflects and exemplifies the values, aims and ideals of the United Nations.  This year’s panel of judges reviewed a range of radio programmes on United Nations-related themes and selected the top three without necessarily endorsing their content as representative of the Organization’s views.

The New York Festivals, founded in 1957, oversees six international awards competitions, in film and video, television programming and promotions, radio programming and promotions, television and radio advertising, design and print advertising and interactive media.

For more information, please contact Joanna Piucci, tel: 212 963 7346, e-mail: piucci@un.org, or visit www.newyorkfestivals.com. 

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For information media • not an official record