RTS television awards hat-trick for Channel 4 News
Channel 4 News scoops three awards from the Royal Television Society, including recognition for the documentary Sri Lanka’s Killing Fields made by ITN Productions.
Jamal Osman (pictured) won the independent award for his poignant film Somali Olympic Dreams (ITN/Channel 4 News).
He beat Al Jazeera English’s People and Power: Seeds of Change and the BBC’s FIFA’s Dirty Secrets.
Osman travelled to Mogadishu for Channel 4 News to meet the athletes who run daily along the “road of death” through the city, aware that at any time they could be shot by rebel gunmen or nervous security forces.
The film Sri Lanka’s Killing Fields (ITN for Channel 4), presented by Jon Snow, beat off tough competition from Al Jazeera English’s Bahrain: Shouting in the Dark and the BBC’s This World: Spain’s Stolen Babies to win in the current affairs international category.
The harrowing film, which depicted devastating new evidence of alleged war crimes in Sri Lanka, was screened at the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva and led to David Cameron to call for an investigation into the allegations.
Click here to view: Sri Lanka's Killing Fields
And Stuart Webb was named camera operator of the year ahead of BBC News’s Darren ‘DC’ Conway and APTN’s Raul Gallego Abellan.
Webb was given the award for his stunning and moving camerawork across the world, but perhaps his crowning moments came in Japan filming the devastation caused by the tsunami (see below).
Other Channel 4 News nominees included Jon Snow (presenter of the year), Faisal Islam (specialist journalist of the year), Alex Thomson (television journalist of the year), Tim Lawton (young journalist of the year), coverage of the disaster in Japan (news coverage – international), coverage of the summer riots (news coverage – home) and the 7pm bulletin for “programme of the year”.
Where have all the women gone? Read Jon Snow's blog from the RTS awards