2022 Triple Award Winner: Tony Plohetski

Tony Plohetski has won numerous Headliners awards for his work at the Austin American-Statesman and KVUE-TV. We recently announced he was a triple winner in 2022: He won the Silver Showcase award for his report, “Disabled and Abandoned,” and two Charles E. Green Awards for Best TV Reporter and Star Reporter of the Year.

In “Disabled and Abandoned,” Plohetski examined the lack of wages and neglect in the state’s Medicaid waiver system, which was established decades ago to allow people with developmental and intellectual disabilities to remain in their homes while receiving health care services. “We found that the system was plagued with problems from top to bottom,” Plohetski said. “It truly was a team effort, and ultimately a yearlong effort to ultimately produce the series.”

Plohetski also received recognition for his television reporting of the Uvalde mass shooting in May 2022. While he and his colleagues initially treated the story as breaking news, over the next few weeks it became about a flawed law enforcement response, Plohetski said. He added that a signature reporting feat was to obtain a 77-minute hallway video of law enforcement’s failure to respond by milling around in the hallway during the massacre.

The 2022 triple award winner Tony Plohetski spoke with the Headliners Foundation’s Mark Morrison to discuss his award-winning body of work.