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Nick Paton Walsh has reported for CNN since 2011, focusing on the Mideast and Afghanistan
The senior international correspondent has been awarded an Emmy Award
The award for outstanding writing related to his reports on Syria and Afghanistan
CNN also won awards for its coverage of the 2012 U.S. elections and race in America
CNN senior international correspondent Nick Paton Walsh has won an Emmy award for outstanding writing for his reports filed from Syria and Afghanistan.
The award-winning reports were “Aleppo Airstrikes,” “Aleppo: Old City Fight,” and “Afghan Women Self-Immolation.”
In its submission to the Annual News and Documentary Emmy Awards, CNN highlighted Paton Walsh’s “poetic writing,” saying it contrasted “with the sobering environments from which his stories are usually drawn.”
“His reports punch through the daily accounts of wounded and dead, and give us a fresh way to see the grinding pitilessness of war, and its quirky inconsistencies,” the broadcaster said.
“Aleppo Airstrikes” is the account of indiscriminate shelling in the Syrian city of Aleppo. Walsh’s piece to camera sees him crouching as a government bomber jet flies above. “It’s that sound that terrifies ordinary residents of Aleppo daily,” he says. Of the lone infant who survives the strike, Paton Walsh observes: “A year old, he was born into Syria’s bloody revolution, and may yet survive it still.”
In “Aleppo: Old City Fight,” Paton Walsh goes right inside the fight for the historic old city. His report focuses on the improvised nature of the battle, with “pot-shots at nothing in particular” and what it could mean for the wider conflict.
CNN said Paton Walsh’s war reporting was “complemented by his sensitive stories about the plight of women in the developing world.” In “Afghan Women Self-Immolation,” the correspondent reports on an epidemic of self-immolation among young married women in Herat.
The women take the drastic measure as a form of protest against the abuse they suffer at the hands of their husbands or in-laws. CNN said Paton Walsh’s “delicate writing has a reverential tone, bestowing upon these sad burn victims in Herat the respect they seek.”
Beirut-based Paton Walsh has worked for CNN since 2011, focusing on the Middle East, Afghanistan and surrounding region.
He topped five other contenders to take home the award for outstanding writing at the awards ceremony, which was held in New York, Tuesday.
More recently, Paton Walsh has reported from scenes of conflict in Egypt and Turkey and from Dagestan, where he secured an interview with the parents of the alleged Boston bombers.
CNN’s Anderson Cooper 360 also won an Emmy, for Outstanding News Discussion and Analysis for “Kids On Race: The Hidden Picture,” while CNN’s 2012 U.S. election night coverage saw it honored with an Emmy for “Outstanding Live Coverage of a Current News Story – Long Form.”
Paton Walsh’s previous awards include the British Press Awards’ Young Journalist of the Year in 2000 and Amnesty International’s Gaby Rado Award (2006) for a reporter at the start of their career for his work in the former Soviet Union. He also won Amnesty’s television award for his work in Sri Lanka in 2010, while he was working for British broadcaster Channel 4 News.
Read more from Nick Paton Walsh:
Taliban tightens grip on Afghan schools
Baby survives as family dies in Syrian onslaught
Afghan-army style justice fails to win over locals