Peabody Awards Go To NPR, 'This American Life,' Among Others

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The 75th annual Peabody Awards were announced Tuesday and honored NPR, This American Life and PBS NewsHour, among others.

The awards recognize excellence in electronic media, and are granted to both journalism and entertainment programs.

NPR's Investigations Unit was recognized for a series on mustard gas testing during World War II — specifically, secret race-based gas tests and how the Department of Veterans Affairs broke a promise to help the men who had been the subjects of those tests. NPR's Caitlin Dickerson, Barbara Van Woerkom, Nicole Beemsterboer and Robert Little of the investigations team, as well as Ariel Zambelich and Christopher Groskopf of the visuals team, worked on the project.

"This American Life" (which is unaffiliated with NPR) won for a two-part broadcast on the case for school desegregation; PBS NewsHour won for "Desperate Journey," a series on the refugee crisis.

Each winner is unanimously approved by the 16-person Peabody board, and small, local programs compete with big-budget national programming.

"There is no set number of winners, the Peabody Awards are not given in categories, and there are no degrees of winners," the Peabody Awards organization says on its website. "Once a program is submitted, it competes solely on its merits."

The complete list of winners is here. Other organizations recognized with awards include:

- WXIA-TV for "911: Lost On The Line"

- "Real Sports with Bryant Gumbel" for The Killing Fields

- The BBC for a project on the European migrant crisis.

- A collaborative group, including the CBC, for Do Not Track