New Day Films’ “Trust Me” Wins Walter Cronkite Award
Joe Phelps (R) and Roko Belic (L) receiving the Walter Cronkite Award for “Trust Me”
New Day Films’ Trust Me, was awarded the prestigious Walter Cronkite Award for Excellence in Television by the USC Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism on June 9.
"At a time when journalists are fighting a tidal wave of disinformation and misinformation,” said Annenberg professor Martin Kaplan, director of the school’s Norman Lear Center, which administers the award, “it’s incredibly heartening to honor these examples of superlative work by indefatigable TV reporters and producers, from the national to the local level."
This year’s Cronkite award winners all addressed the critical issue of disinformation and the threats it poses to Democracy. Other awardees included programming from PBS’s Frontline, ABC and NBC News, CNN and Comedy Central’s The Daily Show.
Trust Me was honored with an award for special achievement in news literacy, and judges praised the filmmakers for “embracing the mission of media literacy -- taking on the worldwide effects of disinformation, and spelling out how to spot and debunk it. [The film] shows how dangerous disinformation is to anyone who scrolls media sites.... This story should cause all of us to rethink media practices by the unscrupulous.” Trust Me aired on PBS/World Channel.
Trust Me was made by New Day Films’ Joe Phelps (Executive Producer) and Rosemary Smith (Impact Producer), and directed by Roko Belic.
Trust Me joins the growing list of free expression and First Amendment-related films distributed by New Day that include:
The Lord is Not on Trial Here Today
The Lord is Not on Trial Here Today, by Jay Rosenstein, a Peabody award-winner, is the riveting First Amendment story of how separation of church and state in public schools became part of American law – and the courageous woman who made it happen.
The Most Dangerous Man in America: Daniel Ellsberg and the Pentagon Papers
The Most Dangerous Man in America: Daniel Ellsberg and the Pentagon Papers, by Judith Ehrlich and Rick Goldsmith, an Academy Award nominee and Peabody Award-winner, is a political thriller of how one man’s act of "civil courage" resulted in a landmark Supreme Court First Amendment decision, and events that led directly to Watergate, President Nixon’s resignation and the end of the Vietnam War.
Tell the Truth and Run, George Seldes and the American Press
Tell the Truth and Run, George Seldes and the American Press, by Rick Goldsmith, another Academy Award nominee, is the dramatic saga of a maverick muckraking journalist and a piercing look at censorship and suppression in America's news media.
Visit New Day Films’ full collection of more than 300 films at newday.com.