Described as one of many biggest true crime tales a couple of crime that by no means occurred, eight-part podcast Peter Ellis, the Creche Case & Me has gained two silvers at this yr’s New Zealand Podcast Awards, for finest documentary podcast and finest true crime podcast.
It was the primary podcast produced by Newsroom’s investigations editor, Melanie Reid, and comes the day after one other of Reid’s sequence, The Boy within the Water, was hand-picked by Apple Podcasts as one among its unique Exhibits We Love for 2023.
Peter Ellis, the Creche Case & Me was a 30 yr labour of affection for Reid, a narrative of prejudice, paranoia and a conservative political local weather in early Nineteen Nineties Christchurch when a witch-hunt in opposition to younger, homosexual childcare employee Peter Ellis was in full swing.
The podcast helps listeners comprehend simply how a homophobic institution coalesced round an irrational concern that Satanic youngster intercourse rings had been working underneath everybody’s noses.
As a younger reporter, Reid gained unique entry to Ellis and secretly interviewed him whereas the case unfolded within the courts, then continued to do main investigations spanning three many years.
Reid and her staff then introduced this astonishing story to life via archival taped interviews she had rescued from a bin on the TV station the place she used to work.
The sequence gained the award for finest crime reporting at this yr’s Voyager Media Awards, and was a finalist in two classes of the distinguished worldwide New York Festivals Radio Awards.
“The cascade of failures by our establishments and methods that allowed this absolute injustice to happen continues to be exhausting to abdomen. The collective delusion by the state and its subsequent dedication and funding in his guilt is a shameful episode in New Zealand’s historical past that also troubles me immensely to this present day,” says Reid.
“That is a unprecedented podcast due to Peter. To cite his sister, Tania Ellis, ‘Peter took all of the arrows however very not often fired them’, even on the peak of his vilification.
“I’m additionally significantly pleased with the then crèche woman and her mom who had been courageous sufficient to interrupt their silence and put some actuality and perspective right into a time period that may later turn into referred to as Satanic panic.”
Newsroom’s fashionable weekday podcast The Element, produced for RNZ, took out gold for finest highlight award, which recognises reveals with sizeable audiences bringing the medium into the mainstream, whereas the listeners’ alternative class was gained by music podcast The Morning Shift.
That is the third yr the awards have been held, set as much as recognise the expansion in impartial and established podcast creators each domestically and internationally. Judging was carried out by a panel of greater than 30 judges from throughout New Zealand and overseas.
“The standard, creativity and variety displayed by podcasters this yr was incredible to see, and it’s a testomony to the thriving podcasting neighborhood in New Zealand,” says awards co-founder, Richard North.