SHORT TAKES : ‘Frontline’ Wins Gold Baton

NEW YORK — “Frontline,” the Public Broadcasting Service public affairs series, won the highest honor today in the Alfred I. duPont-Columbia University Awards in broadcast journalism.

Jurors said they chose the series for a Gold Baton award for five outstanding documentaries aired during the year ending last June.

Eleven other broadcasters were honored with Silver Batons, three of which went to networks for the way they covered the uprising in China and events in Tian An Men Square. The winners were CBS News, Cable News Network, and ABC News and Koppel Communications.

Another prize for a network effort went to Gardner Productions and WETA of Washington, D.C., for the PBS broadcast “Arab and Jew: Wounded Spirits in a Promised Land.”

The awards are to be presented at Columbia tonight, with Robert MacNeil of PBS’ “The MacNeil-Lehrer NewsHour” as host.

In major markets, an award went to KCET of Los Angeles for two programs, “Expecting Miracles,” about trying to overcome infertility, and “For the Sake of Appearances,” an investigation of cosmetic-surgery abuses.