Dawn Porter's "TRAPPED" Wins Peabody Award

The esteemed Peabody Awards represent the most compelling and empowering stories released in electronic media in the past year. Tuesday, the Peabody Awards Board of Jurors announced the 12 winners in the Documentary category for 2016, and one of those awarded is the ITVS-funded Independent Lens film TRAPPED, by Dawn Porter. 

"We are extremely pleased that Dawn Porter and the TRAPPED team have been honored with a Peabody Award," said Lois Vossen, Executive Producer of Independent Lens. "The film is a formidable and compelling look at one aspect of women’s health care, using personal stories to capture the toll that political debates have on the lives of everyday Americans. We are proud to have had this film be a part of the past Independent Lens season."

Trapped also won a Documentary Special Jury Award for For Social Impact Filmmaking at the Sundance Film Festival. You can read more about the case at the center of TRAPPED here.  Director Porter previously made the acclaimed film Spies of Mississippi, which also aired on Independent Lens. 

Four more ITVS-funded films were among the 60 Peabody finalists this year: The Return, by Kelly Duane de la Vega and Kelly Galloway (POV); Beth Murphy's What Tomorrow Brings (POV); The Armor of Light, by Abigail Disney and Kathleen Hughes (Independent Lens); and the Emmy-nominated The Black Panthers: Vanguard of the Revolution by Stanley Nelson (Independent Lens). Last year, Nelson was awarded DOC NYC's Lifetime Achievement Award & was selected as The National Academy of Television Arts & Sciences 2016 News & Documentary Emmy Award honoree for Lifetime Achievement.

The Peabody Awards are based at the Grady College of Journalism and Mass Communication at the University of Georgia, and winners will be honored in a gala program to be held Saturday, May 20 at Cipriani in New York. The event will be taped for a television special to air on both PBS and FUSION networks on Friday, June 2 (9 p.m. ET/PT).

Other Documentary Peabody winners this year include two FRONTLINE episodes, "Exodus” and "Confronting ISIS," the POV film Hooligan Sparrow (by Nanfu Wang, whose film I Am Another You will air on Independent Lens next season), PBS's Great Performances: Hamilton’s America, and Ava DuVernay's Oscar-nominated Netflix documentary 13th. Congratulations to all the Peabody-winning documentaries.