Most Awards Shows Dodge Real-World Issues — Not This One
Marcus Jones
The first Los Angeles edition of the Peabody Awards on June 9 declared its intention to stand out from the awards-season pack by daring to address the complex real-world events in ways that other shows would never dare.
Where else would it befit host Kumail Nanjiani to make partition jokes in the guise of a bit about how Pakistan lost to the United States at the ICC Cricket World Cup? “Getting some perspective, it would be like Pakistan beating the USA at basketball,” the comedian said an appreciative applause.
Outside of Jonathan Glazer’s controversial Oscars speech, awards shows have steered clear of world issues for some time. However, to hear documentarian Laura Poitras end her Peabody Award acceptance speech for “All the Beauty and the Bloodshed” with the declaration of “Free Palestine” had a resonance that no polite lapel pin could touch.
Early in the Sunday night program — shortly after “Dead Ringers” and “Reality” accepted their Peabodys, and “Abbott Elementary” creator Quinta Brunson accepted the Trailblazer honor — presenter Mo Amer got emotional handing out awards to “War in the Holy Land” by PBS NewsHour and “It’s Bisan from Gaza and I’m Still Alive” from Al Jazeera Media Network. The comedian’s Netflix series “Mo,” about life in Texas as a Palestinian refugee, won a Peabody Award two years ago.
PBS NewsHour anchor Amna Nawaz said in her speech, “War is hell. And covering it is one of our toughest duties. But I ask that you remember: We can stand here today and accept this award because we could leave and I ask that you remember those who can’t, including the more than 100 journalists who have been killed in this war so far. Two Israeli, three Lebanese, 103 Palestinians, without whom we would not know what’s happening on the ground in Gaza.”
That objective reminder of the Israel-Hamas War was one of the most significant statements during a televised awards show since the conflict started last October.
Amer even grew quiet saying “It’s Bisan from Gaza and I’m Still Alive,” with subject Bisan Owda accepting the honor via video since she is still in Gaza. “I’m still alive and perhaps luck[ier] than 48,000 people who were killed in an eight-months ongoing genocide,” Owda said. “I feel better today because I feel that our stories, our struggles, and our weaknesses are heard and seen and that our documentation for this genocide is well-recognized. So thank you for making us, our people heard. … We are saying justice for our people, and free Palestine.”
The Israel-Hamas War was not the only global issue put into the spotlight at the 2024 Peabody Awards. Documentary winner Mstyslav Chernov, director of the Oscar-winning film “20 Days in Mariupol,” began his speech by saying, “My hometown was bombed today.” He added that it was not the first time he has been able to start an acceptance speech that way during the film’s year-long awards run.
Entertainment winners included “Last Week Tonight with John Oliver” and its “Israel–Hamas War” episode that aired a little over a month after the October 7 attacks.
“I know that for many Israelis there was an understandable sense of fear and precarity right now, and with the specter of Hamas attacks and rockets flying overhead,” said Oliver in an episode clip shown to the Peabody audience. “But it’s worth also acknowledging the overwhelming sense of precarity among Palestinians living under a blockade and a barrage of Israeli rockets. And it has to be possible to fill the pain in one community without denying it in another.”
That remark got one of the evening’s biggest rounds of applause.
