BATON ROUGE — Unfiltered with Kiran has been honored with another prestigious national Edward R. Murrow award from the Radio Television Digital News Association, or RTDNA.
It is among the most prestigious awards in journalism, recognizing local and national news stories. Since 1971, RTDNA has been honoring outstanding achievements in broadcast and digital journalism with the Edward R. Murrow Awards.
UWK‘s most recent win is a report focused on the deep history of the Nottoway Plantation, told through the eyes of a tour guide. The 166-year-old plantation burned for 17 hours straight on May 15, 2025. As of this date, officials say the investigation is still ongoing to determine the exact cause of the fire.
READ MORE: State Fire Marshal’s Office updates investigation into Nottoway Plantation
Judy’s journey to telling the full truth about Nottoway began not as a crusade, but as a job. A mile and a half from her home in White Castle, she applied to be a secretary. But fate—disguised as a woman she affectionately called “the Danish Princess,” her supervisor Annette—nudged her toward a tour guide position. Judy had been a student guide in high school. She accepted. With her entry into the parlor rooms of the plantation came something the halls hadn’t held in far too long: honest reckoning.
“Something that troubled me greatly was that they talked about the house, the owner, the kids. You never really heard about the enslaved people,” she said. “So on my own, I started doing research, talking to locals, formulating a little bit of a side tour.”
And she didn’t stop at research. She started to sing.
Her mother, a civil rights activist, had told her: “Judy, you know how to sing. Why don’t you sing them a spiritual song and tell them what it means?”
“So I sang,” Whitney-Davis said. “I noticed that halfway through, another tour guide stuck her head in and it caused a bit of a scandal.”
A scandal, but also a seed. “By the time I got ready to leave, even though there was some blowback, black and white guests were asking: Why don’t you talk about them more? Where are their cabins? Where would they have been?”
The article, written by UWK‘s reporter Megan Kelly, won in the category of Excellence in Diversity, Equity and Inclusion. Kelly has been a reporter for nearly two decades, having joined UWK in 2024.
“After nearly 20 years in journalism, there is still nothing I love more than telling people’s stories. This career has given me the incredible privilege of meeting people from all walks of life, sitting with them, listening to their experiences and learning the history that has shaped who they are. Every person and every place has a story, and I’ve always believed those stories deserve to be told with honesty, care and respect. To receive an Edward R. Murrow Award for doing something I genuinely love is incredibly meaningful. I’m especially grateful that this story gave me the opportunity to dig deeper into a piece of Louisiana history, connect the past with the present and help tell a fuller story. After 19 years, I still consider it an honor every time someone trusts me with their story and allows me to share it with the world,” Kelly said upon learning of the national award.
This is UWK’s fourth national Edward R. Murrow award. UWK has also been honored with four national Telly Awards and an Emmy Award.
In 2023, UWK won two national awards: one for a News Series that reported extensively into Mayor-President Sharon Weston Broome’s storm water fee. The reports revealed that Mayor Broome’s administration and city-parish officials kept citing a non-disclosure agreement, or NDA, from the federal government that kept them from disclosing details about the proposed fee that would charge EBR residents hundreds of thousands of dollars. However, the federal government said they were never aware of any NDA. After UWK‘s reporting, the fee was taken off the council agenda that would have required council members to vote on it. Plus, multiple people left their jobs at city-parish after the fallout.
The second award in 2023 was for UWK’s breaking news coverage of the murder of a woman streamed live to social media.
In 2022, UWK was honored for “Keep on Keeping on” that highlighted a young man with Down syndrome’s triathlon completion.
The Edward R. Murrow Awards Gala is held in New York at Gotham Hall in October where recipients receive their awards.
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