Journalists Engel, Lavandera among 2020 Peabody Award winners

NBC News correspondent Richard Engel and CNN national correspondent Ed Lavandera are among the journalists who have captured 2020 Peabody Awards, according to a Wednesday announcement from the organization. 

Engel, who has been NBC’s chief foreign correspondent since 2008, won for his reporting on the U.S. decision to remove military forces from northeast Syria, leaving the Kurds, a longtime American ally, at risk of military threats from Turkish forces.

The reporting in a special titled “American Betrayal” aired on Engel’s MSNBC program, “On Assignment with Richard Engel.”

“American Betrayal masterfully attends to both the big picture and to the humans trapped in it. For offering a nuanced historical primer, and for interrogating policy as much as featuring the human costs of rash policy, American Betrayal receives a Peabody Award,” the organization said on Wednesday.

NBC News also won for “A Different Kind of Force: Policing Mental Illness,” which was produced by NBC Digital’s Ed Ou.

CNN’s Lavandera won for “The Hidden Workforce: Undocumented in America.”

“This revealing look at undocumented workers in the United States takes the focus away from the border and places us instead in the American Midwest to show how vital immigrants have become to the heartland,” the Peabody organization wrote in its winners announcement.

“Correspondent Ed Lavandera visits rural communities in Minnesota, Iowa, and New Jersey transformed by immigrants (many undocumented) to explore the new landscape. For humanizing and placing value on immigrants who enrich the social, economic and cultural fabric of the nation, The Hidden Workforce: Undocumented in America deserves a Peabody Award,” the statement concludes.

CNN Films also captured a Peabody for its documentary “Apollo 11.”

“The Peabody Awards exist to recognize when storytelling is done well; when stories matter,” Peabody director Dr. Jeffery P. Jones said, defining the awards and their mission. 

The annual awards ceremony, which usually takes place in June, was cancelled this year due to the coronavirus pandemic.