Victoria Macdonald wins Broadcaster of the Year award
Channel 4 News Health and Social Care correspondent Victoria Macdonald is named Broadcaster of the Year by the Medical Journalists Association (MJA).
Victoria’s win was announced at the MJA’s annual Summer Awards at the Royal Society of Medicine in London last night, where she saw off competition from Mariclare Carey-Jones, ITV Wales, and Matthew Hill from the BBC.
Ben de Pear, Channel 4 News editor, said: “This is the top award for medical journalism so it is a fantastic achievement. Well done to everyone; producers, editors and cameramen who worked with her on the reports.”
The award was given for three of Victoria’s recent reports:
“Breakthrough blood test for ‘mad cow disease'”
“Breakthrough cancer blood test to be made available in the UK”
“Number of children on anti-psychotic drugs doubles”.
Victoria was unable to attend last night’s award ceremony, but sent this message:
“I just want to say thank you to the judges. It means so much more when it comes from your peers and I feel honoured to be given this award. Nothing in television is done in isolation. It always take a team and I need to mention producer, Philip Carter, for all the work he did on the film on children and anti-psychotics.
“The stories I did on variant CJD and the cancer blood test I was especially proud of, though. Sometimes, my job can feel like it is full of doom and gloom but these two stories were about progress and hope in the battle against both these diseases. And they were good old-fashioned scoops which gives any journalist, as you all know, an enormous amount of satisfaction.”
The awards were judged by Connie St Louis, Senior Lecturer and Director MA Science Journalism at City University London, and Claudia Hammond, author and broadcast journalist, presenter of BBC Radio 4’s All in the Mind, and Health Check on the World Service.
Read more of Victoria’s blogs on medical issues.
Follow @vsmacdonald on Twitter.