'The First Wave' wins three News & Documentary Emmy Awards

While I told my readers to "Stay tuned as I have more Emmy Awards coverage coming up," I didn't say which Emmy Awards I'd be covering, so I feel O.K. covering the News & Documentary Emmy Awards winners today, better than how I feel physically because I'm stuck at home with COVID-19. So far, it feels like a really nasty cold, but that's probably because my wife and I are vaxxed and boosted. If we hadn't done that, we'd likely be in much worse shape. Also, my wife and I got Paxlovid today. Here's to that helping us recover.

Because my wife and I are both at home recuperating, I've decided to blog about The First Wave, which earned seven nominations at the News & Documentary Emmy Awards, and took home three statuettes for Best Documentary, Outstanding Editing: Documentary, and Outstanding Cinematography: Documentary, tying it with "The Rescue" for most honored documentary at last week's ceremony. Watch The First Wave - Trailer | National Geographic.

With exclusive access inside one of New York’s hardest hit hospital systems during the terrifying first four months of the pandemic, Oscar®-nominated and Emmy® Award-winning director Matthew Heineman’s THE FIRST WAVE spotlights the everyday heroes at the epicenter of COVID-19 as they come together to fight one of the greatest threats the world has ever encountered.

Wow, powerful! I can see why it won.

For more, watch The First Wave: The Human Face of Covid-19 | Interview with Matthew Heineman from friend of the blog Factual America Podcast.

The National Geographic documentary "The First Wave" captures the first months of the Covid-19 pandemic as it played out in one of New York City’s hardest-hit hospital systems...

The National Geographic documentary The First Wave captures the harrowing first four months of the Covid-19 pandemic as it played out in one of New York City’s hardest-hit hospital systems.

Joining us is Matthew Heineman, an Academy Award-nominated and Emmy-winning filmmaker who directed and produced this film. The incredible footage he obtained and shaped into The First Wave represents a testimony to the strength of the human spirit and how people come together in the face of crisis.

He shares how he gained access to the hospital at the beginning of the crisis, the heroes he filmed, and the inevitable emotional toll the production had on him and his crew.

“I saw an obligation to take this issue that was so relegated to stats, headlines, and misinformation, and try to put a human face to it.” - Matthew Heineman

Again, powerful. Congratulations to Matthew Heineman and his fellow producers, cinematographers, and editors!


Another News & Documentary Emmy Award winner covered the pandemic as well, the PBS FRONTLINE episode "Yemen's COVID Cover-Up," which won Outstanding Investigative News Coverage: Long Form. The entire episode is on YouTube. Watch Yemen's COVID Cover-Up (full documentary) | FRONTLINE.

Correspondent Nawal al-Maghafi reports from inside Yemen on how the coronavirus pandemic is worsening what the UN has called the worst humanitarian crisis in the world.

This journalism is made possible by viewers like you. Support your local PBS station here: http://www.pbs.org/donate

Following six years of war between the Houthis, a rebel group backed by Iran, and a Saudi-led coalition, an estimated 2 million children in Yemen are suffering from starvation, and 3.5 million people have been internally displaced. In “Yemen’s COVID Cover-Up,” the Yemen-born al-Maghafi returns to her home country to investigate how COVID-19 has impacted these compounding crises.

She finds evidence of a far higher death toll than Houthi authorities in the country’s north are admitting, and reveals that the Houthi suspension of doctors' salaries, international aid cuts and the Saudi blockade have had a dire impact on Yemeni doctors’ ability to treat COVID patients.
“Lack of oxygen caused most of the deaths,” one doctor tells her.

As President Biden commits to ending U.S. support for Saudi offensives in Yemen, this documentary is a powerful look at the situation on the ground.

And I thought the U.S. had political problems with the pandemic! At least we don't have a civil war to make it worse.

Stay tuned for more Emmy Awards coverage.

Previous entries in this series

• Emmy nominee 'My Garden of a Thousand Bees' for World Honey Bee Day
• Sir David Attenborough and Judy Woodruff at the 2022 News & Documentary Emmy Awards

Vox explains how Saudi Arabia became the largest buyer of U.S. arms and is using them in Yemen

Much to my surprise, I have written nothing about Saudi Arabia's involvement in Yemen.  The closest was Gas prices move up on Yemen fear premium more than three years ago, which didn't mention Saudi Arabia at all.  I have also written nothing about Jamal Khashoggi.  Considering that I'm interested in collapse and have worked as a journalist, those are both oversights on my part.*  Fortunately for me, Vox has just provided me two opportunties to correct them.

First, Vox uploaded how the Saudis ended up with so many American weapons yesterday.

And why they want more.
...
Saudi Arabia and the US have a partnership that's been in the making for over seven decades. It started after World War II and survived the Iranian Revolution, the Cold War, the Gulf War, September 11, and the proliferation of conflicts across the Middle East. This whole time, the US has been selling weapons to Saudi Arabia -- now its number one customer. Saudis bought bombs, tanks, guns, and planes over the years to defend themselves from various threats. The US supplied those weapons because the Saudi’s threats have usually been a threat to the US as well.

Today, there's a shift in the relationship. Saudi Arabia’s intervention in Yemen has created the worst humanitarian disaster in the world - and thrown the Middle East into chaos. The problem is, the Saudis are using US bombs to do it.

This is not new.  Vox uploaded The US may be aiding war crimes in Yemen two years ago.

The U.S. is helping Saudi Arabia bomb Yemen and it's a disaster.

Nothing came of efforts to disentangle the U.S. from Saudi Arabia's involvement in Yemen then.  That changed this week, as Vox reported The Senate just passed a resolution to end US support for the Saudi war in Yemen, writing "It’s a bipartisan rebuke of the Trump administration in the wake of Jamal Khashoggi’s murder."

Sens. Bernie Sanders (I-VT), Mike Lee (R-UT), and Chris Murphy (D-CT) co-sponsored the resolution to stop US involvement in Yemen, where a Saudi-led coalition is fighting the Iran-backed Houthi rebels. The nearly four-year conflict has killed an estimated 50,000 people and put nearly 12 million on the brink of famine.

The war in Yemen — and US support for the Saudi-led effort — actually began during the Obama administration. But President Trump has moved the US even closer to Saudi Arabia as part of his administration’s broader Middle East policy, which largely focuses on countering Iran.

The horrific assassination of Khashoggi in the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul has put the US-Saudi relationship under a microscope, particularly after the CIA concluded that the country’s de facto leader, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MBS), ordered Khashoggi’s murder.

The Senate resolution is a major step toward holding the administration accountable and wresting back some control of war powers from the executive branch. Yet it’s still a long way away from actually ending US support for the Saudis in Yemen, or finding a resolution to the conflict altogether.

The White House in particular has pushed back against the Senate’s measure, and if it were to end up on Trump’s desk, it would almost certainly face a presidential veto. Additionally, the House approved a rule on Wednesday that blocks the chamber from taking up any Yemen resolutions before the end of the year, meaning the Senate resolution won’t advance.

Well, phooey.  With any luck, it will be reintroduced next year, when the House rule expires and the Democrats take over control of the body.  If so, I'll re-examine the issue.