Doc Category Winners Announced at the 44th Annual News & Documentary Emmy® Awards

Winners of the Documentary categories of the 44th Annual News and Documentary Emmy®Awards were announced tonight by The National Academy of Television Arts & Sciences (NATAS). The awards were presented at the Palladium Times Square in New York City.

Acclaimed documentarian Barbara Kopple was honored with a Lifetime Achievement Award for her distinguished body of work. The award was presented to her by Thom Powers, the co-founder of DOC NYC and the host of the Pure Nonfiction podcast.

The News & Documentary Emmy® Awards were presented as two individual ceremonies: categories honoring Television News Programming were presented last night; categories honoring Documentaries were presented this evening. Both last night’s and tonight’s ceremonies were live-streamed on our dedicated platform, Watch.TheEmmys.TV powered by Vimeo.

“There has never been a time when the need for thoughtful and hard-hitting documentaries has been greater, nor a time when excellence in this genre has been more deserving of note, honor and celebration”, said Terry O’Reilly, Chairman, NATAS. “Tonight’s Emmy honorees take us behind the headlines to explore the many facets of our shared global reality and do so at the highest level of the craft. We congratulate them for their achievement.”

“Tonight’s documentary Emmy winners are to be celebrated for bringing us in-depth explorations of the world in all its complexity,” said Adam Sharp, NATAS CEO & President. “One person who exemplifies this more than any other is our Lifetime Achievement honoree, Barbara Kopple, whose work has cast a critical gaze at the core of the American experience itself. We also are thrilled to congratulate our inaugural class of national documentary Gold and Silver Circle honorees for their service to our industry and their countless hours of mentorship and support for the next generation.”

The inaugural class of national Gold and Silver Circle honorees for documentary was inducted tonight. The Gold and Silver Circle is a society honoring members of the television and wider broadcasting community who have made an enduring contribution to the industry. Gold Circle and Silver members have a tenure of 50 and 25 years in the broadcasting profession respectively.

GOLD CIRCLE – 2023 DOCUMENTARY INDUCTEES:

Jon Alpert, Documentarian, Journalist, CoFounder of DCTV

Keiko Tsuno, Documentarian, Journalist, CoFounder of DCTV

SILVER CIRCLE – 2023 DOCUMENTARY INDUCTEES:

Daniel H. Birman, Documentarian, Birman Productions

Lois Vossen, Executive Producer, Independent Lens

Chris White, Executive Producer, American Documentary

Tonight’s Documentary ceremony was hosted by a group of industry leaders introducing different segments of the show. The group included:

Nancy Abraham, Executive Vice President, Documentary Programming, HBO

Jelani Cobb, Dean, Columbia Journalism School, Staff Writer, The New Yorker

Kathryn Ferguson, Director and Writer, Director of “Nothing Compares”

Lisa Heller, Executive Vice President, Documentary and Family Programming, HBO

Elvis Mitchell, Film critic, Host of KCRW’s, “The Treatment,” Director, ”Is That Black Enough For You?!?”

Thom Powers, co-founder of DOC NYC, host of the Pure Nonfiction podcast, documentary programmer for the Toronto International Film Festival and Miami Film Festival

Mariana van Zeller, Correspondent, “Trafficked with Mariana van Zeller”

The 44th Annual News & Documentary Emmy® Awards honor programming content from more than 2300 submissions that originally premiered in calendar-year 2022, judged by a pool of over 1000 peer professionals from across the television and streaming/digital media News & Documentary industry.

The 44th Annual News & Documentary Emmy® Awards was produced by NATAS with Lisa Armstrong and Adam Sharp, Executive Producers, and David Winn and Christine Chin, News & Documentary Administration. Tonight’s program was Directed by John D’Incecco.

All programming is available on the web at Watch.TheEmmys.TV and via The Emmys® apps for iOS, tvOS, Android, FireTV, Roku, and Samsung Smart TV (full list at apps.theemmys.tv).

The complete list of winners is also available on the National Television Academy’s website: theemmys.tv