US Broadcasters Honour Industry Giants (NEWS BRIEF)

Christiane Amanpour of ABC News with Library of American Broadcasting Foundation head Don West. CREDIT: Saarah Al-Mahdi (HN, October 14, 2011) - Renowned television journalist Christian Amanpour is among recipients of an annual US broadcasting awards ceremony held today in New York City.

Lauded as a leader of a new generation of TV correspondents, Amanpour was described by the Library of American Broadcasting Foundation as being fearless and passionate in her reporting.

"In a time when many critics say Americans don't care enough about foreign news and news organizations are castigated for not covering stories far from our shores, Christiane Amanpour has been working hard for almost 30 years to bring home just those kind of stories," the organization said at today's Giants of Broadcasting event.

In a passionate acceptance speech, Amanpour, a former CNN chief international correspondent who jumped to ABC News in 2010 to anchor This Week With Christian Amanpour and provide other network coverage and analysis, said she would like to see more women in journalism - including in top TV network management. "I'd also like to see a female president," she said.

Also awarded for journalistic excellence was NBC News anchor Brian Williams, who inherited the anchor chair in 2004 from Tom Brokaw at just age 43, and is known for cutting edge coverage of the Katrina crisis in New Orleans and the Indian Ocean tsunami.

The organization said of Williams, a former volunteer firefighter: "Being a broadcast network news anchor is to join a select club. And being able to balance the gravitas and earnestness necessary to report on horrific natural disasters and wars, while maintaining a widely appreciated sense of humour, is rarer still. Brian Williams is in a class almost by himself."

In February 2011, when he reported on the Tahrir Square uprising in Egypt, his Nightly News broadcast enjoyed its highest ratings in six years.

Williams, true to form, accepted the award with an off-the-cuff speech that suggested he reached the prized anchor chair almost by chance - pointing out, for example, that he is a college drop-out who started his career in media by answering telephones.

Speakers at the foundation event acknowledged rapid technological change and shifting audience habits as challenges to the industry, but added that core journalistic values will remain.

Also honoured today were: CBS Sunday Morning and Brian Lamb, the founder of C-SPAN.

- HUMNEWS staff