The National Academy of Television Arts & Sciences announced Thursday that three ProPublica projects have been nominated for six News & Documentary Emmy Awards.
“The Night Doctrine” — an animated documentary, directed by ProPublica’s Mauricio Rodríguez Pons and Almudena Toral in partnership with The New Yorker, that premiered at the 2023 Tribeca Film Festival — is nominated for three Emmys in the categories of Outstanding News Discussion & Analysis: Editorial and Opinion, Outstanding Graphic Design: News and Outstanding Music Composition: News. It follows the story of Lynzy Billing, a young Afghan-Pakistani journalist who embarks on a journey to find out who killed her family 30 years earlier, only to discover hundreds of civilians had been killed in a secretive American-backed program in Afghanistan. Billing’s quest takes her through the streets of Kabul and Nangarhar province as she uncovers the truth about the Zero Units, squads of Afghan commandos funded, trained and directed by the CIA to go after threats to the United States. The film is a continuation of Billing’s reporting in “The Night Raids,” a gripping and powerful investigation published in 2022.
“Inside the Uvalde Response,” an investigative documentary by ProPublica, FRONTLINE and The Texas Tribune, is nominated for two Emmys in the categories of Outstanding Investigative News Coverage: Long Form and Outstanding Research: News. The documentary and accompanying investigation provided a detailed and exhaustive analysis of the deeply flawed law enforcement response to the mass shooting at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas. It identified critical missteps and featured never-before-published interviews conducted by state and federal investigators with law enforcement officers that showed critical and long-overlooked gaps in preparedness between children and the officers expected to protect them. The series involved the work of Juanita Ceballos, Michelle Mizner and Lauren Prestileo for FRONTLINE; Lomi Kriel and Lexi Churchill for ProPublica and the Tribune; and Jinitzail Hernández and Zach Despart for the Tribune.
“America’s Dangerous Trucks,” an investigative documentary by ProPublica and FRONTLINE, is nominated for an Emmy in the category of Outstanding Business, Consumer or Economic Coverage. An average of about 5,000 people a year are killed in crashes involving large trucks, a death toll that has soared by almost 50% since 2011, according to the most recent federal data. Tens of thousands more have been injured. Drawing on more than a year of reporting — including leaked documents and interviews with former government insiders, trucking industry representatives and families of crash victims — “America’s Dangerous Trucks” reveals how, for decades, federal regulators proposed new rules to try to prevent underride crashes, where a car slides beneath the trailer of a big truck. But over and over, pushback from trucking industry lobbyists won the day, leaving drivers of smaller vehicles vulnerable.
A collaborative reporting team from ProPublica and FRONTLINE produced an hourlong documentary, while ProPublica reporters complemented the documentary by producing multiple deep-dive text stories.
The news categories of the 45th Annual News & Documentary Emmy Awards will be presented on Wednesday, Sept. 25. See a list of all the nominees.
