Documentary Filmmaker
Ofra Bikel Wins 2007
John Chancellor Award
In a career of over 30 years as a documentary filmmaker, Ofra Bikel's work has freed more innocent prisoners than many professionals in the criminal justice system. Powerful, persuasive and relentless, her documentaries reveal hard truths about an American justice system that is at times vulnerable to ambition, racism, inertia, pride, haste, hysteria, corruption and a host of other human frailties. Bikel, who has worked exclusively for the PBS series FRONTLINE since its inception in 1983, was presented with the 2007 John Chancellor Award for Excellence in Journalism at a black tie gala at Columbia University's Low Memorial Library on Tuesday, November 13, 2007.
 The complete 2007 Chancellor Award ceremony honoring
Ofra Bikel and a tribute to the late David Halberstam
Thirteen men and women walk the streets today because Ofra Bikel wouldn't let the public forget about them. "People pay attention to death row prisoners when they try to make a case for their innocence because the stakes are life or death. If you are imprisoned with a sentence like 15-to-life then it is easier for the criminal justice system to turn the page and write you off," says Bikel. In eye-opening documentaries such as Snitch, The Case for Innocence, and The Plea, Bikel has reported on what really happens when the wheels of justice break down in America. Her journalism has explored how the criminal justice system relies on aggressive plea bargaining to secure convictions and avoid the process of jury trials, how eyewitness testimony can turn out to be terribly wrong, and how judges and prosecutors sometimes resist acknowledging mistakes even in the face of irrefutable DNA evidence. Her most recent film, When Kids Get Life, looks at the growing trend in some states to sentence adolescents to life in prison.
The $25,000 annual John Chancellor Award, administered by the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism, recognizes and rewards a journalist whose reporting over time shows courage, integrity, curiosity and intelligence. Nicholas Lemann, who is the dean of the journalism school, said, "Ofra Bikel's work has shone a stark light on the realities of the American justice system. Her extraordinary body of work grapples with fundamental issues of fairness, due process, and the rule of law in our democracy, and she has exposed miscarriages of justice with an extraordinary clarity of intelligence." Equal parts legal primer and cautionary tale, Bikel's documentaries are used in the law schools of Yale, Harvard and Georgetown University.
Bikel is perhaps best known for her Innocence Lost trilogy, three films that meticulously detailed the charges of sexual abuse at a daycare center in the small town of Edenton, N.C. Over six years, beginning with the first film in 1991, Bikel's reporting in Innocence Lost revealed the unreliability of "recovered memories" in children, the manipulation of their testimony and the effect of public hysteria on prosecutions. The sobering impact of these powerful documentaries was so overwhelming, all seven defendants were freed including Betsy Kelly, who owned the daycare center with her husband. Now, ten years after the final film in the trilogy premiered in 1997 and changed her life, Betsy Kelly will pay tribute to Ms. Bikel at the Chancellor Award ceremony.
In The Case for Innocence, Bikel profiled three men whose claims of innocence seemed to have been confirmed by DNA testing of evidence but who still languished in jail. The program's premiere in January, 2000, provoked a storm of public outrage, and within a few months all three men were set free. A young black man with no criminal record, no motive, and no similarity to the description provided in crime scene police reports was the subject of Bikel's An Ordinary Crime. His first name was Terence, and that fact alone was the reason for his arrest. The eyewitness testimony of a traumatized woman shot during the crime was enough to convict him. Why didn't the police pursue another man named Terence, a career criminal who closely resembled the police reports, and who had been identified as the shooter? Bikel's film suggested reasons and following her astonishing expose, Terence Garner was freed and all charges against him were dropped in June 2002.
"There is a good, old-fashioned crusading journalism to what she does – a fire in the heart and the brain that says this is an outrage and a wrong that can be corrected,'' said David Fanning, executive producer of FRONTLINE, who has worked closely with Bikel for nearly three decades. "Ofra has the ability to help relatively uneducated, poor and marginalized people tell their stories with persuasive eloquence and, as a result, she has produced documentaries of extraordinary consequence."
In addition to her reporting about the American justice system, Bikel has produced documentaries around the world on international affairs and the clash of cultures. Her other credits for FRONTLINE include: The O.J. Verdict (2005); Requiem for Frank Lee Smith (2002); Saving Elian (2001); The Search for Satan (1995); Divided Memories (1995); Poland -- The Morning After (1990); American Games, Japanese Rules (1988); Israel: The Price of Victory (1987); The Russians Are Here (1983); and the Emmy-winning Clarence Thomas and Anita Hill: Public Hearing, Private Pain (1992). In March, 2006, she produced The Unexpected Candidate, a film for FRONTLINE/World that profiled the then-Israeli candidate Ehud Olmert.
The John Chancellor Award was established in 1995 by Ira A. Lipman, founder and chairman of Guardsmark, LLC, one of the world's largest security service firms. The award honors the legacy of John Chancellor, the pioneering television correspondent and longtime anchor for NBC News. In addition to Dean Lemann, the selection panel includes journalists Tom Brokaw, John L. Dotson Jr., Henry Klibanoff, Jack Nelson, Michele Norris, and Lynn Sherr, as well as John Chancellor’s daughter Mary Chancellor and Ira Lipman.
The Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism administers many of the leading journalism awards, including the Pulitzer Prizes, the Alfred I. duPont-Columbia University Awards, the Maria Moors Cabot Prizes for reporting on the Americas, and the National Magazine Awards. For nearly a century, the journalism school has been preparing journalists in programs that stress academic rigor, ethics, journalistic inquiry and professional practice. Founded by Joseph Pulitzer in 1912, the school offers Master of Science, Master of Arts and Doctor of Philosophy degrees.
Watch Ofra Bikel’s recent films http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/us/bikel.html
Press Contact:
Karen Salerno
Kelly & Salerno Communications
914-239-7202
karen@kellysalerno.com
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