UPDATE: Caught Up In A Revolution by RFE/RL photojournalist Amos Chapple was awarded a "Highly Recommended" citation on November 7, at a gala event in London where the the winners of the 2018 AIB Awards were announced. Said the judges, "Interactivity doesn’t have to be complicated – it needs to be direct and motivating, and this was.”
PRAGUE -- Two Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL) projects have made the shortlist for the 2018 Association of International Broadcasting (AIB) awards in the Interactive category.
Caught Up In A Revolution is a multimedia project that takes viewers on a journey through the street protests that toppled Armenian Prime Minister Serzh Sarkisian and his government in April this year. The piece combines RFE/RL photo journalist Amos Chapple’s striking photos captured during the protests with his first-hand audio narration of the dramatic events he documented.
The project has been viewed nearly six thousand times online, and Chapple’s photos of the revolution have been shared thousands of times on Facebook. His image capturing the moment a little girl confronted a policeman guarding a government building was selected as a finalist in the Single Shot category of the 2018 World Report Award.
Chapple had been on assignment in another part of Armenia working on an unrelated project when the unrest erupted.
“I was able to be on the spot when trouble began to break out,” said Chapple. “Everything I was reading pointed to something major looming.”
The Dragon’s Reach, a team effort by member organizations of the U.S. Agency for Global Media (USAGM) that explores the economic power play of China, was nominated in the same category.
RFE/RL’s contribution, a video feature titled Tales Of The Silk Road, examines China’s massive new dry port in a remote desert near the border with Kazakhstan that was built to facilitate overland routes for Chinese exports to markets in Europe, Russia, and Central Asia. The producer, RFE/RL’s award winning multimedia editor Ray Furlong, says that while the short documentary explores opposing views about the massive logistics project, the stunning shots of the dry port are the star of the show.
AIB award winners will be announced during the gala dinner celebrations in London November 7. Since the first AIBs were awarded 14 years ago, the awards have recognized over ten RFE/RL productions for journalistic excellence. Last year, an audio project from RFE/RL’s Persian language service Radio Farda titled The Horses Shot Along With Me was a finalist in the Human Interest category.
In their fourteenth year, the AIBs celebrate journalistic excellence in video, audio, and interactive production from around the world.
