Documentary Journalist Ofra Bikel Wins Chancellor Award

Documentary filmmaker Ofra Bikel has won so many prizes that a prestigious award from the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism is “not really going to make one bit of difference” in her career, she said.

“I don’t think that awards make a bit of difference,” she added.

On Nov. 13, the Journalism School presented Bikel with the annual John Chancellor Award for Excellence in Journalism, established in honor of NBC news anchor John Chancellor. Bikel is credited with contributing to the release of 13 prisoners of United States jails through in-depth research into and analysis of their cases.

According to the Journalism School’s Web site, the award recognizes individuals whose sustained contribution to journalism has shown “courage, integrity, curiosity and intelligence and epitomizes the role of journalism in a free society.”

“I got into documentary filmmaking because I couldn’t find another job,” Bikel said.

After studying political science and international law in Paris, Bikel left her native Israel and came to America, where she made an unsuccessful attempt to find a research job with an American magazine. Instead, she ended up working for an afternoon documentary series and learned everything about the industry. “They asked if I could produce, if I could write, if I could direct,” Bikel said. “So, I said ‘Yes,’ and after a while I figured there was nothing left for them to ask me that I hadn’t already done.”

Since 1983, Bikel has worked on the PBS series Frontline and is best known for her reporting on the American criminal-justice system.

Bikel’s work on cases within the criminal-justice system began while researching a sexual-abuse scandal in North Carolina for her 1991 trilogy Innocence Lost. The documentary detailed a case based on allegations of sexual abuse of small children at a day-care center. “So many things that I touched were just so rotten. This went wrong [with the justice system] and this went wrong and I thought that this was just too much. I had to show the audience that the logical conclusion is that the people were innocent.”

Bikel’s 2000 documentary, The Case for Innocence, profiled three men who remained incarcerated despite DNA testing that backed up their claims of innocence. Within a few months of the film’s release, all three men were freed.

“I didn’t imagine that I could help to free them,” Bikel said. “It’s very hard to free someone. I always hope but I never expect to. People hate to say that they are wrong and because they were wrong people were sitting in jail for 15 to 20 years.”

Despite the documentary’s success, Bikel maintains, “I should not have had as much success as I have,” adding: “I am not that good of a researcher. I shouldn’t have found innocent people so readily. If the system were better, that wouldn’t have happened.”

If receiving the prize itself doesn’t thrill Bikel, how about the $25,000 that comes with the Chancellor Award? “To my dismay, so much of it goes to tax,” she said. “The last show that I got money for I bought a Cartier watch. I don’t know what I’m going to do with it. I’ll try not to pay the electricity bill with it. That would be too sad and boring.”

Samantha Saly can be reached at news@columbiaspectator.com.