Sky News has been awarded an International Emmy for its 2022 coverage of the Ukraine war.
The winning entry in the news and current affairs category, The Battle for Bucha & Irpin is a compilation of seven days of news reports from 5 March as the brutal battles for Bucha and Irpin began. When Russian troops attempted to surround Kyiv, civilians were bombed out of their homes leaving many with no choice but to escape. Others, including Sky’s own journalists, were targeted in their cars.
The winning footage features Chief Correspondent Stuart Ramsay and his teams’ ambush outside of the Ukraine capital, Kyiv, and Special Correspondent Alex Crawford’s interview with President Zelensky (his first interview with UK media since the war started). Crawford’s reporting from the Irpin bridge and Communities Correspondent Lisa Holland’s report from Poland documenting the arrival of survivors and refugees from Bucha and Irpin were also featured.
Ramsay won in the same Emmy category in 2021 for ‘A warning from Italy’, his report filmed in Bergamo, Italy, during the first wave of Covid-19, and he won the coveted Royal Television Society Journalist of the Year Award back in March.
Crawford has previously been awarded four BAFTAs for her journalism and is the only journalist to have won the Royal Television Society’s Journalist of the Year Award five times. She won Broadcast Journalist of the Year at the inaugural Society of Editors’ Media Freedom Awards last year.
The International Emmy Award was accepted by Sky News’ Head of International News, Tim Singleton.
Reflecting on the dangers encountered by Ramsay and his team, Singleton said during the acceptance speech: “We know that reporting from Ukraine and many conflict zones is so hard… The truth is that journalism comes at a cost, reporting the truth comes at a cost, it shouldn’t be that way but it is, so I’m very grateful to the scores of journalists and camera operators from Sky News, who have gone on my behalf, into Ukraine over the last 18 months. And we know the greatest prize is when we are able to bring our colleagues back home again.”
Other nominated programs in the News category included the death of Al Jazeera correspondent Shireen Abu Akleh while on assignment in the West Bank and the disappearance and deaths of Brazilian researcher of Indigenous culture, Bruno Pereira, and British journalist, Dom Phillips, in the Amazon.