2009 Intl Emmy Awards announces nominees for news, current affairs

    
MUMBAI: The International Academy of Television Arts and Sciences in the US has announced the nominees for the 2009 News and Current Affairs categories.

The winners of the categories will be announced at a ceremony at Time Warner Center in New York City on 21 September, 2009. The international winners will be honoured alongside their American news and documentary counterparts.

This is for the first time that a programme from the Ukraine is nominated in the news category. Al Jazeera is nominated both in the current affairs and news categories for the second consecutive year.

The International Academy of Television Arts and Sciences president and CEO said, “The International Academy is proud to be recognising on the global stage this distinguished work in news and current affairs programming."

The nominees in the news category are: 

Al Jazeera News Hour - Russia-Georgia War
Al Jazeera English, Qatar
Al Jazeera English is on the ground covering the Russia-Georgia war. The channel’s Moscow bureau mobilises on the story three days before fighting begins and travels to the South Ossetian border where, on Friday, 8 August, 2008, they witness the outbreak of hostilities. The channel deploys journalists across the region, feeding live updates and cut packages from the front lines. This entry comprises four packages from Gori, Tskhinvali and South Ossetia and a live update from Tiblisi.

ITV News - China Earthquake
ITV News, UK
On 12 May, 2008 the biggest earthquake in China in 30 years strikes the country's Sichuan Province. The story dominates ITV News programmes for the following 10 days. International editor, Bill Neely, obtains footage of the earthquake, capturing its full force and the terrifying ordeal of the survivors. He also marches with the Red Army to the epicenter. China correspondent, John Ray, reaches the city of Beichuan, where a school has collapsed on 3,000 pupils. He shows survivors pulled from the wreckage before reporting from Hongbai, close to the epicenter.

Details - South Ossetian War
National Information Systems - Inter TV Channel, Ukraine
From the first day of the bloodshed of the South Ossetian War, Inter TV crews cover the conflict from Tskhinvali (Southern Ossetia), Gori war zone (Georgia), Tbilisi, the capital of Georgia, and later from Abkhazia. Witnesses, news-specialists, victims, and refugees all tell their stories. This submission is a compilation of Inter TV newscasts' main stories within the first four days of the conflict.

Jornal Nacional - Eloá’s Story 
TV Globo, Brazil
One hundred hours after a young man holds his ex-girlfriend Eloá and her best friend hostage, elite troops storm the apartment – in full view of the cameras. The abductor comes out unscathed. However, both Eloá and Nayara have been shot. Only the latter survives. Police state that action took place only after a shot was heard from inside. But an independent criminal and forensic expert contacted by TV Globo concludes the shots were fired only after police went in. The truth comes out when Nayara, the survivor, confirms the expert’s findings.
The current affairs nominees are:

Witness Special - Return to Nablus
Al Jazeera English / Flashback Television/ Teachers Television, Qatar
Witness returns to the Palestinian town of Nablus where the cameras go inside Hajja Rushda girls' school and King Talal boys' school for the final months of the academic year, to complete the year-in-the-life observation of two schools under Israeli occupation. In addition to all the usual stresses of running a school and facing exams, teachers and students have to live under siege and the constant threat of violence, arrests by the Israeli army and oppressive restrictions on their movement. This is a story of trials and triumphs.

Dispatches - Saving Africa’s Witch Children
Red Rebel Films and Oxford Scientific Films for Channel 4, UK
In some of the poorest parts of Nigeria, where evangelical religious fervor is combined with a belief in sorcery and black magic, many thousands of children are being blamed for catastrophes, death and famine - and branded witches. Denounced as satan-made flesh by powerful pastors and prophetesses, these children are abandoned, tortured, starved and murdered – all in the name of Jesus Christ. This 'dispatches special' follows the work of one Englishman, 29 year-old Gary Foxcroft, who has devoted his life to helping these desperate and vulnerable children.

ARD exclusive-Kindersklaven
Westdeutscher Rundfunk, Germany
This is a journalistic documentary series about child slaves. In this episode, a 10-year-old boy sits on the floor of a filthy cellar, stitching pearls on fabric for 14 hours a day as a warden snaps at him, demanding that he continue working.

The Team - Babies Traffic
Eyeworks Cuatro Cabezas, Argentina
In Argentina, for every child who is legally adopted, there are three who are victims of trafficking. In Santiago del Estero, for every ten children born, scarcely two are registered in a civil record. Many of these trafficked children end up in prostitution networks, as part of child pornography, and organ trafficking. The team travels to Misiones and Santiago del Estero, both states indicated as the places where the traffic networks are installed. They find mothers whose babies are taken away from them, couples who wait years for an adoption, and adults that discover that they had been adopted illegally. For an illegal baby it is possible to pay from $2000-20,000. The Team will demonstrate that baby trafficking is a huge business.