CBS anchor and managing editor Norah O’Donnell accepts the 2022 duPont-Columbia Silver Baton for the broadcast series “Military Sexual Assault.”
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“These women who join the military are just the finest…and the fact that they are being harassed and abused and driven from military service is really a national security issue.”
--- CBS Managing Editor and Anchor Norah O’Donnell
As COVID-19 dominated news broadcasts in 2020, CBS News Managing Editor and Anchor Norah O’Donnell remained steadfast in her investigation into tragic sexual abuse cases within the U.S. military, which where subsequently covered up and badly mishandled by top-ranking officials. The watershed investigation won O’Donnell her first duPont silver baton in 2022.
In this episode of the On Assignment podcast, O’Donnell chronicles how one tip catapulted her CBS team into a dogged, years-long investigation. They started by interviewing some two dozen survivors of sexual assault, parents of service women who died by suicide, and victim advocates who were fired for speaking up about abuse. Then they tracked down the “painstaking” corroborative documentation, including court records, police records, and military documents, all to report this ironclad story.
“I've interviewed presidents and prime ministers and princes,” O’Donnell tells Prizes Executive Director Abi Wright and duPont Director Lisa R. Cohen. “But the most difficult interviews I've ever done is with not only victims of abuse and harassment, but also the parents whose daughters died by suicide.”
In an emotional conversation, O’Donnell reveals the impact on a journalist of reporting such a story. And she recounts the impact it had on military policy as well. The National Defense Authorization Act of 2022 took sexual assault cases out of the military chain of command.
“That's why I'm a journalist,”O’Donnell said. “I really do believe that telling stories and interviewing people can change things.”
Watch “Military Sexual Assault” on CBS here