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2012 NY EMMY AWARDS BRING OUT ELECTION CONCERN

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Influential & high profiled media guests mingled with their colleagues at the NY Emmy Awards

New York– The 33rd News and Documentary Emmy Awards recently held at the prestigious Frederick P. Rose Hall home of Jazz at Lincoln Center in NY, has always been one of the most anticipated and well-respected media events of the year.  Over 900 guests including high profiled media executives, famous news anchors, beautiful and sexy reporters, producers and writers from all the major networks came to support their co-workers vying for the most prestigious accolade in television- The Emmy.

Presented by the National  Academy of Television Arts & Sciences, the awards are more than just about winning or recognizing top talent in television. They are also about bringing awareness to social and international issues that are reported in the news daily. PBS led all networks (Romney, are you listening?) with nine awards and ABC and CBS News tied for seven awards each. The  NBC News team took home three Emmys while CNN and CNN/I, Discovery Channel and HBO each took home two. The National Geographic Channel, Science Channel, Showtime and The New York Times all took home one Emmy.
The one story that was the topic of conversation at the event that almost everyone spoke about is… you guessed it – the presidential election.
From the star-studded cocktail party to the exclusive press room, President Obama and Governor Romney were mentioned in conversation after conversation.

Ravi Yande with Univision Emmy Award recipient Maria Elena Salinas

“The Latino vote is crucial in this presidential election,” stated the beautiful and very intelligent Maria Elena Salinas,  news anchor for Univision who along with her co-anchor, the debonair and talented Jorge Ramos were presented with the 2012 Lifetime Achievement Emmy by the stunning ABC news anchor  Diane Sawyer for their contribution to the world of news reporting.  Salinas spoke exclusively to The Ravi Report about her win and the upcoming election.
RR: It is so nice to see you Maria. Congrats to you and Jorge for the Emmy honor. It is so well deserved. With the election fast upon us, how important is the Latino vote in this presidential election?
SALINAS: Oh boy, so important!  Do you think a presidential candidate would sit down in a forum for a Spanish interview with an audience having the world watching knowing that they are going to be issues that are going to be very delicate to the Latino community, if they didn’t really want the Latino vote?  Every serious candidate knows how important the Latino vote is and they cannot win without it and they know it!”

Univision’s Maria Elena Salinas and Jorge Ramos pose for The Ravi Report

RR: The Lifetime Achievement is indeed a top recognition for your decades of hard work and dedication. What does the honor mean to you personally?
Salinas: We are the first Hispanic team ever to receive this tremendous honor. News is news and journalism is journalism no matter what language you deliver it in and we are so honored about this recognition for our work and dedication to the Spanish-speaking communities.
RR: The women in the  Latino communities I spoke to said that you are a role model for them and their hope for the future. Your thoughts? 
 
SALINAS: That is so nice.. thank you so much. We have developed a close connection with our audiences over the years. We are like their link to their home country, language, people and friends and we talk to them about everything. We are for them.

The beautiful CBS reporter Lara Logan poses with Ravi Yande at the NY Emmys.

Award-winning journalist and top newsman Bob Costas needs no introduction. The youthful anchor knows his craft and has done amazing award-winning interviews for the past three decades. Costas won an Emmy for his compelling interview with Jerry Sandusky which aired on “Rock Center with Brian Williams”.

2012 Emmy winner Bob Costas poses for The Ravi Report

RR: It’s a pleasure to meet you Bob. Congrats on the Emmy. If I may ask, what went through your mind as a person and a father rather than a journalist when you were interviewing Sandusky for the first time?
COSTAS:I tried to concentrate almost entirely on the journalistic aspect. I did not betray any reaction of my own and
I thought the audience should be able to be presented with the facts which in this case were his answers
however one interpreted them to the questions and the audience could make their own judgments. So I thought it was my job to ask whatever were the pertinent questions at least as how they occurred to me and then let the chips fall where they may and let the audience draw their own conclusion not provide any commentary of my own.

Ravi Yande poses with Bob Costas

RR: Was it at all challenging for you when you were speaking to Sandusky knowing what he was accused of?

COSTAS: It was not difficult to be quite honest to put aside any personal reaction to what he had been accused of doing at that point and what is seemed likely what he had done and now he has been convicted of doing. You do your job as a professional and I was just trying to bear down on the facts of the matter and I was well prepared to do the interview. I was trying to listen as intently as I could to his responses so that I wouldn’t be simply following question 5 to  question 6.
RR: You are a staple in the world of sports reporting and have given the viewers some top rated interviews. You also do mainstream news stories. What are some significant changes you would like to see in sports news?
COSTAS: More and more there is an understanding that sports topics are news worthy and they can be covered journalistically and I don’t think that is happens enough. HBO & ESPN  do a lot of journalistic  stories and
they do a very good job of that and when the networks put their minds to it, they can cover sports the same way.
Brian Ross, the eminent and well-respected ABC  news anchor  and his  producing team won an Emmy for Outstanding Investigative Journalism in a News Magazine ABC News 20/20 – Brian Ross Investigates: Peace Corps – A Trust Betrayed.

ABC News anchor Brian Ross with producer Anne Schecter posing for The Ravi Report

 RR: Brian, always a privilege to meet you and congrats on another great honor. Tell me a little bit about the emotional and compelling part of putting this award-winning story together.

ROSS: Thank you. It was extremely emotional(pauses). Sometimes I still think about the courage of the women
who came forward and described…even before they told anyone even their parents…how they had been raped and abused by Peace Corps volunteers. Then for the parents of the young girl who was killed in Africa…they felt something had gone wrong. It is  a great institution but they(Peace Corps) lost their way.
RR: What was the outcome of the story?
ROSS: It led to legislation which gave the Peace Corps volunteer rights which they did not have before to be respected as whistle blowers and names kept secrets…which didn’t happen before either.
RR: What message do you want the world to take away from this powerful story?
 
ROSS: The larger message for me always and for most of the stories I do is that people should  tell the truth even if it is against powerful people and speak out and speak up.
New York award-winning local news ABC local news reporter NJ Burkett has been one of the most well-respected and popular journalist at NY Eyewitness News for years. I’ve been watching Burkett a long time and his stories are compelling, thought-provoking and often bring awareness to social and national issues. Burkett was one of the distinguished presenters at the show.
RR: NJ, nice to see you tonight. You briefly mentioned in your speech the importance of local news and its connection to the national level. Can you elaborate a bit more on how you feel the two are connected?
 
BURKETT: The national networks do such a great job of getting those very important stories on the air for the national audiences. But it is easy to lose the sight of the fact that many of these stories began at the local level. Many of these stories are researched and broken by local reporters at local TV stations and newspapers. The networks have luxury of time and  big budgets and local reporters don’t have those luxuries. They often have to work on very short deadlines and tight budgets with very little help.
RR: It sounds like local news reporting has become sort of one man operation!

WPIX anchor/host Marvin Scott with NJ Burkett pose exclusively for The Ravi Report

BURKETT: You are so right. That’s why I made my point about local news on stage. Sometimes reporters use their own money to get the story. It is  extremely kind that the National Academy make these sorts of stories known to the rest of the industry and sometimes I even think the industry forgets where a lot of these stories come from.

RR: Viewers have a strong and inner connection with their local news as you know very well with your excellent reporting over the years. As a seasoned journalist, do you see it changing with all the new accessible technology? Is that strong  sense of local connection diminishing or getting stronger?
BURKETT: If anything I see we now have a greater connection with the local audience through social media in particular. I have a twitter and Facebook account and people are using those kinds of connections in ways to get to us now more so then before. I love the feedback I get from viewers. We air a story and get comments right away.
RR: What are your thoughts about the importance of New Yorkers voting in the upcoming Presidential elections?
BURKETT: I think both political campaigns have written off NY. Because it’s a “blue state” and you are not seeing to many political ads like you are in  Ohio and Florida. I think people are not getting a sense of their message. NY and NJ folks are very news savvy and they are watching the coverage very carefully on their local news stations. 60 percent of registered voters get their news from local news  and  I am so glad to be part of it for so many years.
For a complete listing of 2012 Emmy winners, please log onto www.emmyonline.com.
The journey continues….and congrats to all the 2012 News & Doc Emmy winners!
Ravi

SPECIAL EVENT COVERAGE: NEWS & DOCUMENTARY EMMY AWARDS

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Guests enjoying the cocktail party prior to the main event.

 To be in the same room among the most distinquished television news legends and award-winning network  anchors and documentarians was indeed an honor.

The Ravi Report recently attended the 31st Annual  News & Documentary Emmy Awards held at the swanky  Time Warner Center in Manhattan, NY. The annual function dedicated to honoring those in the world of news and documentaries included over 900 beautiful guests  from  television news, documentary filmmaking and entertainment news. It was one of the most talked about parties so far this year folks!

This year’s recipient of the Lifetime Achievement Award went to the acclaimed Frederick Wiseman, one of the most prolific, distinguished and accomplished documentarians of all times. Some of Weisman’s memorable films include “Boxing Gym” (2010), “La Danse” (2009) and “The Garden” 2005).  The man is a genius. 

Ravi Yande posing with Emmy winning team Andrew Glazer and Dan Rather.

Iconic & accomplished broadcast news legend Dan Rather  anchor & host of “Dan Rather Reports”  for HDNet   won an Emmy for his story entitled “Iran’s Manhattan Project”, an in dept look into the laundering of Iranian money through NY banks.   He spoke exclusively to The Ravi Report about his win.

RR: Mr. Rather, it is indeed an honor to be here with you  and congratulations.  Please share if you will some of your thoughts about your win.

Rather: Thank you so much. I feel humbled  and honored to be able  to do this kind of work at my age and stage is pretty amazing. To be able to work with people like Andrew Glazer is pretty amazing.

Rather went on to say said that the most surprising fact about the story was that  he never knew that huge sums of Iranian money was  illegally being  laundered through London banks so Iranians can get NY dollars to buy supplies for their nuclear weapons and missiles programs.

Legendary news anchor Dan Rather poses for The Ravi Report

With the explosion of social media and with bloggers ( yours truly) becoming a resource for news, I asked the award-winning & renowned journalist  what his thoughts were on the explosion of the media trend.

RR: Mr. Rather, you’ve seen the journalism industry transform into what it is today- a fast and social media friendly world. What are your thoughts on the whole concept of social media?

Rather: Social media plays a very big role now  and I think it’s destined to play even  a bigger role in the future. It compasses a lot more than journalism but journalism has become part of it. Anyone who is not thinking of social media today is to far behind the times.

 The ever so ravishing Paula Zahn,  the host of “On The Case With Paula Zahn” on the  Investigation Discovery Network was one of the presenters for the event and spoke about how social media has really become an intricate part of citizen journalism.
 
RR: Paula, you look simply amazing tonight.  With so many elements to social media today like blogging, twitter, etc, where do you see it playing a role in future journalism?
 
Zahn- Thanks so much. Honestly,  it’s completely changed in the way we do our business.  When I was at CNN, it was considered pretty revolutionary for people to send us in pictures  of what they saw.  I certainly do welcome the input of audience members and always have  but my biggest concern is the accuracy of it.

Top anchors Ali Velshi & Paula Zahn grace the red carpet at the Emmys.

The Ravi Report also caught up with CNN’s  financial guru & prevalent anchor Ali Velshi  who has been an intricate part of the cable network’s success.
RR: Ali, great to see you again.  Terrific  year for CNN! What’s the secret of their success?
 
Velshi- Thanks. This indeed has been an interesting news year so far. When we  are covering breaking news, when we are covering international events, disasters, etc,  it’s where the DNA comes out. It’s where we don’t have  to worry about the competition.
RR: What was the most thought-provoking story you have done so far in 2010?
 
Velshi: My story is the about the recession. It’s actually about the people whom  I met. The one thing I do is report about the people but I also go out on the CNN Express and talk to my viewers.
RR: Why that particular story?
 
Velshi:The difficulties for me as someone who understands the world of business is that I did not fully understand how we got to where we did in this recession. Many of my viewers  are out of work or losing their homes and THAT  ultimately is what hurts me the most. What I do with my coverage is to design  it around to show opportunities so they (viewers) can try to get back some of their wealth.
NBC award-winning anchor Brian Williams accepted the Emmy for his NBC broadcast news segment that won for coverage of “Miracle On The Hudson“, the incredible landing of US Airways flight 1549 on the NY Hudson River in the middle of the 2009 winter.  Pilot Chelsey B. Sullenger, fondly known as “Sully”, became a  national hero.

Ravi Yande backstage with Emmy winner Brian Williams

RR: Congrats Brian. It’s one of those stories that no one expected to have a miracle ending. What were your thoughts when you first heard about the incident?
 
Williams: Thank you. I was out in NJ listening to a fire scanner as I always have to see what was going in Manhattan.  When I heard about the plane, all I knew is that I needed to get to the studio. I didn’t know what we had there. Because whatever it was, a story about an aircraft in the Hudson could not  end well in all likelyhood..but it DID”.
RR: The story flooded the social media world for days.  Have you become part of it (social media) yet?
 
Williams: I have an account on Twitter and I think I have 4K followers and haven’t said a peep. I am waiting. It has to be thought out. I’ll get there. I am taking my time.
RR: With the explosion of social media, what direction do you think it’s going to take in future mainstream news?
 
Williams: It is media. Someday we will drop the mainstream part and we will drop the social part and it will all be known as media.
 

NBC news anchor Brian Williams poses exclusively for The Ravi Report

The Emmy for Best Documentary went to “War Dance”.  The story focuses  on three kids abducted by war rebels living in Northern Uganda who take part in a music competition.  The eminent director of the film, Sean Fine who lived in the war zone for three months (and caught malaria while filming) says that the film was extremely well received and  all the immense struggles were well worth it.

 
FINE: We were shocked and appalled to see over 60K  children being abducted by rebel forces,” stated the filmmaker to The Ravi Report. The Emmy winner  has also become the guardian of one of the children from the story.
“War Dance” has won numerous awards including being nominated for an Academy Award and for winning the Sundance Directing Award Documentary.  Fine is also planning on building a music and art center there for the kids. For more info on the film or how you can help the kids, check out www.wardancethemovie.com  and   www.thepatangofund.org. The film will be seen in November on the Documentary Channel (www.documentarychannel.com).
The event also included special guests and celebrated actors including “Lethal Weapon” star Danny Glover. The award-winning Hollywood actor is one of several celebrities currently lobbying to legalize cannabis in the state of California.
A special note of thanks goes to Daryl B. Cohen, Chairman of the National Academy of Television Arts & Sciences and to Paul Pilliteri for doing a great job and for accommodating the media with interviews and access.For a complete list of winners, go to www.emmyonline.org.
The journey continues..
Ravi