Amy Costello ’92 Nominated for Emmy Award for Her PBS Program on War in Darfur, Sudan

Amy Costello ’92 was nominated for an Emmy Award in the category of Outstanding Feature in a News Magazine. Her news feature, “Sudan: The Quick and the Terrible,” was broadcast on FRONTLINE/World on PBS. The 27th Annual News and Documentary Emmy Awards will be presented on September 25, 2006 in New York City.

Costello, a journalist based in South Africa, traveled to one of the most dangerous regions in the world to report the segment. By the time her report aired in January 2005, war in the western region of Darfur, Sudan, claimed more than 70,000 lives and produced more than two million refugees. Then-Secretary of State Colin Powell declared the actions of the Sudanese government genocide.

Costello toured Darfur’s sprawling refugee camps, met members of the Sudanese Liberation Army and interviewed members of the Janjaweed, Arab nomad militias accused of raping and killing innocent civilians and burning their villages.

As the crisis escalated, Costello filmed at a refugee camp bulldozed by the Sudanese government. Walking the ruined landscape of the Al Jeer camp, Costello says, “It is hard to imagine any words, even one as powerful as genocide, fixing such a broken place.”

Earlier this year, Costello reported on an invention that may revolutionize the supply of clean water to poor communities: a schoolyard merry-go-round that drives a water pump, providing a day’s supply of fresh water for a village of 2,000 people. This is no small achievement – in rural villages across South Africa , some 5 million people do not have access to clean drinking water. Initially launched on FRONTLINE/World’s online-only video series, Rough Cut, “Clean Water Is Child’s Play” was so popular online that the program decided to broadcast the segment on the air.

Trinity Graduate Amy Costello ’92 Reports on the Sudan on PBS’ FRONTLINE/World

Read Amy Costello’s first-person account of her experiences as a freelance journalist online interview with Washingtonpost.com

FRONTLINE/World Interview with Amy Costello: Witness to a Crisis

Chad/Sudan: A Question of Genocide by Amy Costello

The Sudan Series by Amy Costello, BBC/PRI’s The World Radio Program: Audio Clips and Transcripts

Amy Costello’s Bio: Africa Correspondent for BBC/PRI’s The World

FRONTLINE/World Web Site