Australia leads the world in rural broadcasting

An Australian television journalist has won the world’s first international award for farm broadcasting.

Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) reporter Kerry Staight, from Adelaide, has won the inaugural IFAJ Star Prize for Agricultural Broadcasting, announced this week in Europe.

She was named overall winner after taking out the television category of the awards. ABC rural reporter, Sarina Locke, from Canberra, won the radio category.

The awards honouring rural journalism broadcast via radio, television or the internet in 2009 were organised by the International Federation of Agricultural Journalists (IFAJ) as part of its prestigious Star Prize program. They were announced at the 2010 congress of the IFAJ in Belgium, which went ahead despite many delegates being unable to make it because of flight cancellations.

Kerry won the prize for ‘All in the Family,’ a story about the sensitive issue of succession planning, broadcast in February 2009 on the ABC’s Landline program, which is celebrating its 20th year.

Sarina won the radio category for a documentary piece based around experiences in West Timor, Indonesia, where her mother worked as a veterinarian helping to contain exotic animal diseases. The story had broad airplay in June last year on local, national and international ABC radio programs.

Both journalists qualified for the international awards after winning the Australian Star Prize for Rural Broadcasting, sponsored by Rabobank.

Both the national and IFAJ competitions were coordinated by Liz Harfull, who is president of the Australian Council of Agricultural Journalists (ACAJ) – the umbrella organisation for the country’s five rural press clubs. She was unable to be in Belgium to present the awards after being stranded in Singapore when her flight was cancelled.

“The ACAJ is extremely excited that Australia has done so well in this, the first year of the awards. It says a great deal about the calibre of rural broadcasting in this country,” Liz said. “The winners not only informed us about issues of vital importance to agriculture, but they found a way to entertain us at the same time, through applying considerable technical skills with often limited resources.”

The independent panel of international judges applauded Kerry Staight for “a cracking good story about an important issue”. They said the piece covered all angles of farm succession planning, was informative, and clearly involved detailed research and travel over a wide area.

“The end result was a first rate and balanced program which held the attention of the viewer from first frame to last,” said one judge. “The story definitely pulls at a person’s heart strings,” said another.

Judges found that Sarina’s winning radio piece made effective use of natural sound to capture a real sense of being in there. One said the piece was an “excellent program – solid, informative and well presented. It gave the listener a strong feel for a corner of the world that very few know anything about.”

To view the winning entries go to www.acaj.org.au. For more information about the IFAJ awards go to www.ifaj.org
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Editor’s please note: For more information on the awards contact coordinator and ACAJ president Liz Harfull on 0409 674 941 or email lizk@adam.com.au.