Sunday, June 22, 2025

'The Dirty Business of Monkey Laundering' and 'Apes,' two nominees at the News & Doc Emmy Awards for World Rainforest Day


Happy World Rainforest Day! I told my readers yesterday, "Stay tuned to see how I combine celebrating that day with the Sunday entertainment feature, which may still be coverage of the News & Doc Emmy Awards. It can be done!" I found two nominees that work not only with the biodiversity theme of the holiday, but with each other, beginning with The Dirty Business of Monkey Laundering from Bloomberg Originals, a nominee for Outstanding Short Documentary.


Normally, I focus on the plants in rainforests, particularly those in temperate rainforests, but the challenge I set for myself and the available material led to concentrating on animals in tropical rainforests. It works.

The other nominees for Outstanding Short Documentary are Love To The Max, Motorcycle Mary, Swept, and Wings of Dust. My pick is Motorcycle Mary on two criteria. First, it has the most wins and nominations listed at IMDB, four each, while Wings of Dust has one win and Love to the Max has one nomination, none of which include those at the News & Doc Emmy Awards.* IMDB doesn't even have entries for The Dirty Business of Monkey Laundering or Swept. The second is that the only promotional image I could find touting a nomination in this category was for Motorcycle Mary.


 Its team believes in it.

Follow over the jump for the other News & Doc Emmy nominees that fit today's theme.


The other nominee sharing the theme of sketchy, if not downright criminal, trade in rainforest primates is the "Apes" episode of Trafficked: Underworlds with Mariana van Zeller. Watch its trailer, Inside the Illegal Ape Trade | Trafficked: Underworlds with Mariana van Zeller from National Geographic.

Mariana van Zeller follows the ruthless and heartbreaking business of the illegal trade of wild apes. But amidst the darkness, she encounters a beacon of hope – Congolese activists fighting tirelessly to protect these apes from vanishing forever.
I can find lots of true crime among the News & Doc Emmy Awards nominees, but Trafficked: Underworlds with Mariana van Zeller is the only one that specializes in environmental true crime. If I were making a true crime podcast, that's what I would specialize in.

"Apes" earned three nominations at these awards, Outstanding Climate, Environment and Weather Coverage, Outstanding Writing – News, and Outstanding Research – News, as well as contributing to two awards for the series as a whole, Outstanding Recorded News Program and Technical Excellence – News, making it the most nominated nominee for Outstanding Climate, Environment and Weather Coverage and my pick to win. The rest of the nominees for Outstanding Climate, Environment and Weather Coverage, Last Lands: Indonesia and Ecuador, the "Maui's Deadly Firestorm" episode of FRONTLINE, Relief, NC, "Toxic Trifecta" from PBS NewsHour, and "Warning to the World: Australia’s Climate Disaster" from The Whole Story with Anderson Cooper, have only this nomination, although the "Central Africa" episode of Last Lands earned a nomination for Light Feature – Long Form, so that's a second nomination for the series, if not the episode. On that basis, along with most of the episodes concentrating on countries with tropical rainforests, I'm sharing ABC News Live 'Last Lands', in partnership with Global Conservation.

The four-part series investigates the global fight to protect the planet's most threatened ecosystems
This series, along with the rest of the nominees for Outstanding Climate, Environment and Weather Coverage and The Dirty Business of Monkey Laundering, are all ones that I can recommend to my students. Welcome to blogging as professional development.

I might continue this series tomorrow or I might celebrate Detroit-style Pizza Day. Stay tuned to see if I choose one or combine them.

*The News & Doc Emmy Awards on IMDB need work, although they're not as incomplete or even incorrect as the EMA Awards. I've been considering volunteering for the latter as a retirement project.

Previous posts about the 46th News & Doc Emmy Awards
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