Two Pulitzer Center-supported documentaries have been honored with Emmy awards.
The Outlaw Ocean Project, a journalism nonprofit, won an Emmy in the Outstanding Crime and Justice Coverage category for the documentary ‘Get Away from the Target’ - Rescuing Migrants from the Libyan Coast Guard.
Produced by Ed Ou and Will Miller, ‘Get Away from the Target’ is part of the Pulitzer Center-supported project Migrants Seeking Amnesty Blocked in Libyan Waters, by grantee Ian Urbina. The documentary has had a global reach, and has been featured in GloboNews in Brazil, on NBC in the U.S., in El Pais in Spain, and in The Guardian in the U.K.
We're thrilled that the Guardian Documentaries release 'Get Away from the Target' has won Outstanding Crime & Justice Coverage at the @newsemmys.
Congratulations @edouphoto @willnmiller @chrismichaelgdn @lindsay_poulton @JesscatGormley @katya_ochagavia & The Outlaw Ocean Project https://t.co/A1HcgnbZPN
— The Guardian (@guardian) September 29, 2022
“We do this journalism not to win awards but to highlight problems in a way that helps fix them. However, awards ensure that editors and the public take our reporting seriously,” Urbina wrote in the Outlaw Ocean Project’s award announcement.
Through on-the-boat reporting on the experiences of refugees fleeing Libya to seek a new life in Europe, ‘Get Away from the Target’ documents the human rights abuses of migration on the Mediterranean Sea. On international waters, jurisdiction becomes tricky, and a Doctors Without Borders boat clashes with the EU-funded Libyan coast guard on who will take the floating rafts of migrants. It is a dangerous journey, and lives are lost along the way.
“This blue sea that people write odes about has turned into a graveyard,” said one migrant in the film.
The journey is complicated by not only the question of survival, but also the political motivations involved. The same European countries that the refugees hope to make their homes are the ones funding Libyan authorities to keep them back.
“Ultimately, you have to show them that you are human,” one migrant tells another.
Get Away From the Target was also named a finalist in the Online News Association’s 2022 Online Journalism Awards. Long Island University named Urbina a winner of the 2021 George Polk Award for the same project.
Another Pulitzer Center-supported film, Reeducated, also won an Emmy. Reeducated, which won an Emmy for Outstanding Interactive Media, is a virtual-reality documentary that takes viewers inside one of Xinjiang’s “reëducation” camps. The film was directed by grantee Sam Wolson and developed by Wolson and grantee Ben Mauk.
We have won The New Yorker (@newyorker) its first-ever Emmy Award with our film Reeducated, which has won for Outstanding Interactive Media. We are grateful for Erbaqyt Otarbai, Orynbek Koksebek, and Amanzhan Seituly for sharing their stories of detention with us. https://t.co/W3TPPsn1n4
— Ben Mauk (@benmauk) September 30, 2022
“The New Yorker team behind this stunning and haunting film deeply understands the power of visual journalism, and they saw an innovative way to describe one of the most horrific human-rights outrages of the modern era,” David Remnick, editor of The New Yorker, said in the magazine’s award announcement.
The film is part of the Pulitzer Center-supported project Survival in Xinjiang, which seeks to understand the police state in China’s largest region, which imprisons as many as 1 million people or more.
Drawn from hours of firsthand testimony of the “reëducation” camps, survivor sketches, satellite photos, and hand-drawn animation, the V.R. film reconstructs three ex-detainees' experiences in an immersive 3D, 360-degree space. The experience gives viewers a glimpse into “what is likely the largest mass internment of ethnic and religious minorities since the Second World War,” according to the film.
Reeducated was also a 2021 Online Journalism Awards finalist, received special jury recognition at the SXSW film festival, and has been screened at festivals around the world.
