David Scott (l) talks to duPont-Columbia Awards Director Lisa R. Cohen (l) and Prizes Exec Director Abi Wright (r) in his HBO office.
It’s your last chance to enter for 2019 duPont-Columbia Awards! Deadline July 1.
Details at duPont.org
To celebrate and inspire, take a listen to this episode with one of this year’s winners.
“Our stories in the end are (less) about sports - they're about power or culture or triumph over adversity or human rights. It is almost like a Trojan horse to get inside, and then ask the human rights questions.”
HBO Real Sports Correspondent David Scott talks to Prizes Executive Director Abi Wright and duPont-Columbia Awards Director Lisa R. Cohen about the special brand of investigative reporting that has earned his show four duPont-Columbia Awards, by using sports as an entry point to critical issues. Scott and the Real Sports team won their latest this year for “The Lords of the Rings,” which exposed rampant corruption within the International Olympics Committee.
Scott has won four duPont batons in total, including one for coverage of Qatar’s corruption charges and potential human rights violations as the country prepares for the 2022 World Cup.
In this podcast episode he talks about the dangers of reporting on powerful autocrats, like flying under the radar in China. “Our real business happened after after (the minders) dropped us off at the hotel in the evening and we acted like lazy American sports guys. You know, 'we're just going to go and have some drinks and relax.' And in fact we would go to the basement and get into a van orchestrated by people from the Chinese political underground,” to report on dissidents.
Often, he says, the minders were a bigger problem than the strongmen leaders. On his recent tense confrontation with Chechnyan President Ramzan Kadyrav: “What you have to worry about isn't so much that the big leader is going to decide ‘off with your head,’ it's that some knucklehead in the vast entourage who thinks he knows what the big leader wants is going to do something stupid.”
Tune in to hear Scott discuss the surprising overlap between sports and international politics.
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