KCUR investigative reporter Peggy Lowe and KFF Health News reporter Bram Sable-Smith have won a national Edward R. Murrow Award Thursday for their news series "The Injured." This same series was honored with a Public Media Journalists Association Award and a regional Edward R. Murrow Award.
Over the course of a year, Lowe and Sable-Smith followed survivors of the 2024 mass shooting at the Kansas City Chiefs Super Bowl victory parade, which killed one person and injured 23 others.
Their reporting investigates what happens to the children and adults who experience gun violence — and who suffer physically or emotionally for potentially the rest of their lives.
"So much news coverage focuses on fatal shootings — the people lost to gun violence. But there are scores of victims across the country who live with the trauma of being shot," said Lisa Rodriguez, KCUR's interim director of journalism-content. "I applaud Peggy and Bram for bringing those stories to Kansas City."
Lowe has won several awards for her reporting at KCUR, and was part of the Denver Post team that won a Pulitzer Prize for breaking news coverage of the Columbine High School shooting.
"Ever since I covered the Columbine High School shootings so many years ago, I’ve wondered what happened to the many kids who were injured by gunfire that day," Lowe said. "Did they recover? What was the physical and emotional fallout from that life-changing event? The media focuses on those who were killed during mass shootings – and rightfully so — but there are so many more people who live with injuries sustained during those awful events."
"So when my editor Madeline Fox asked if I’d like to do a year-long series on the 23 people injured during the 2024 Super Bowl shooting, I jumped at the chance," Lowe continued. "Along with my KFF colleague, Bram Sable-Smith, we found the survivors to be shaken, heart-broken, in pain, out of money and wondering how to navigate the rest of their lives with these injuries. It was a privilege to be allowed in to their lives, to spend a year watching how they survived, some thriving and some not coping so well.
"Mostly, we were moved by their steadfastness and resiliency in the face of every American’s nightmare: random gun violence."
The prestigious national award from the Radio Television Digital News Association honors outstanding achievements in electronic journalism. The award is named after famed CBS broadcast journalist Edward R. Murrow, best known for his radio dispatches from London during World War II.
You can explore more stories from The Injured series below:
