Al Jazeera English Named Broadcaster of the Year At the 2021 New York Festivals TV & Film Awards for 5th Year in a Row

Al Jazeera English (AJE) was named ‘Broadcaster of the Year’ at the 2021 New York Festivals TV & Film Awards for the fifth consecutive year.

The channel collected an impressive array of gold, silver and bronze medals for its programmes and news coverage.

The awards featured entries from over 50 countries, covering content screened on U.S and international broadcasters including CBS, ABC, CNN, PBS, NBC, NHK, Channel 4 as well as streaming services such as Netflix.

The winners were announced online on October 12 – this year’s ceremony being virtual due to the ongoing coronavirus pandemic.

All content was judged online and screened by NYF’s TV & Film Awards Grand Jury of 200+ producers, directors, writers, and other creative media professionals from around the globe.

Al Jazeera English won 9 gold medals. The Witness documentary ‘St Louis Superman’ about an activist, battle rapper, and former politician from Missouri, which was nominated for an Oscar in 2020, won three gold medals.

The “Fascism in the Family” episode from the Al Jazeera Correspondent series, in which Italian-born Al Jazeera presenter, Barbara Serra, examines fascism in Italy and her own family’s links to Benito Mussolini’s regime, won two gold medals.

Other gold medals went to episodes from the 101 East and Fault Lines documentary strands, another from the Witness strand as well as an episode from the “Women Make Science series”.

Al Jazeera English’s Creative team was also recognised, earning a gold in the TV Station/Network ID category for the Channel Idents, which was part of the 2020 refresh.

The channel also won 9 silver and 10 bronze medals, as well as an additional silver for the Creative team.

The organisation also gave awards to other divisions in the network. Al Jazeera Digital and Al Jazeera Arabic got one gold medal each, for “AJ Close Up – Mexico’s Missing Sons” and “The Search for Assad Executioners” respectively. The Investigations unit’s “Diplomats for Sale” was awarded two gold medals, while “Anatomy of a Bribe” earned one.

For over 60 years, New York Festivals TV & Film Awards have honoured exceptional and innovative content created on all continents and seen across all platforms.

The ‘Broadcaster of the Year’ award, considered the premier prize by the organisers, goes to the media organisation that wins the highest number of gold medals.

“To win this top accolade in what is arguably the most competitive TV market in the world, and to do this five years running, is an outstanding achievement,” said Giles Trendle, Managing Director of Al Jazeera English. “It is further evidence that industry peers acknowledge the quality of what we do and that audiences value the content we produce. I commend the professionalism, talent and creativity of all the teams at Al Jazeera English for their commitment to quality journalism that is enshrined in Al Jazeera’s values.”

Al Jazeera English is a highly-decorated news and current affairs channel. In recent years it has won a Royal Television Society award, a Peabody and an Emmy, among other awards.