"NBC Nightly News with Brian Williams" and "Dateline NBC" won a prestigious Alfred I. duPont-Columbia University Award for breaking news and sustained coverage of Hurricane Katrina and the impact of the storm. NBC News was the only network news department to win a 2007 duPont Award. The winners were announced January 13 by Columbia University.
"NBC Nightly News" has also received numerous accolades for its coverage of Hurricane Katrina including a George Foster Peabody award, a News and Documentary Emmy award, several National Headliner awards, a Sigma Delta Chi award and three Edward R. Murrow awards.
Description of the winning entry:
"NBC Nightly News with Brian Williams" and "Dateline NBC" for Breaking news and sustained coverage of the causes, results, and impact of Hurricane Katrina.
By the weekend of August 27, 2005, it was clear that a catastrophic hurricane was headed straight for New Orleans. "NBC Nightly News" Anchor & Managing Editor Brian Williams and a team of reporters and producers from NBC News headed to the Gulf Coast to cover the storm and its effects. On August 29, 2005, the day Hurricane Katrina struck, Brian Williams was the sole network anchor on the scene reporting from New Orleans. The initial coverage included reports on the thousands of evacuees at the Superdome and the first interview with then FEMA Director Michael Brown. Williams reported on the impact of Hurricane Katrina the entire first week following the storm, including two special one-hour broadcasts. In the nine months following Katrina, Williams and the "NBC Nightly News" team made nine trips back to the Gulf region, anchoring and reporting for a total of 21 days from Louisiana and Mississippi. The coverage included countless stories of dislocated lives and total devastation and investigations into what went wrong in flood prevention and recovery efforts.
During a 10-day period following the storm, "Dateline NBC" produced seven one-hour specials that covered every aspect of the tragedy. In each hour, "Dateline" presented viewers with a news-of-the-day analysis that gave way to individual single-issue reports that examined the changing facts as they developed on the ground. "Dateline's" team of reporters and camera operators played a crucial role in finding the people and the stories. Stone Phillips, Ann Curry and Brian Williams anchored "Dateline's" coverage with provocative interviews and cross talks, and just ten days after the New Orleans levees broke, Stone Phillips reported the first hour-long analysis among the networks investigating what went wrong with the nation's prevention and recovery efforts.
The entire editorial and production staffs of "NBC Nightly News" and "Dateline NBC" were honored with the duPont Award.
John Reiss is the executive producer of "NBC Nightly News with Brian Williams." David Corvo is the executive producer of "Dateline NBC."