Broadcasting ‘Powerful’ Purveyor of Hopes, Dreams, Says LABF Award Winner LeVar Burton
Las Vegas, April 25, 2022 — “Broadcasting is the most powerful tool ever invented for achieving cultural societal change,” actor, director and educator LeVar Burton told a receptive audience today at the opening ceremonies of the National Association of Broadcasters annual convention.
The medium conveys the stories that sets the “foundation for who we are, for what’s important to us as families, as a culture, as a civilization,” he said.
“Our stories contain our hopes, our dreams, our aspirations, our failures and our triumphs. In a world that is increasingly beset by an assault on truth, it is our responsibility…to do what we can to tell the stories we tell from a place of integrity.”
Burton’s remarks came as he accepted the first-ever Insight Award of the Library of Award Broadcasting Foundation.
“[I]t is our responsibility…to do what we can to tell the stories we tell from a place of integrity,” Burton said.
The annual award recognizes an individual or organization for an outstanding artistic or journalistic work or body of work that enhances the public’s understanding of the role, operation, history or impact of media in our society.
In presenting the award, LABF Co-Chair Jack Goodman called Burton a “true American icon….For decades, LeVar has been a beloved champion of childhood literacy, a promoter of education through entertainment and a champion of the importance of lifelong learning.”
Burton’s best-known acting credits are as Kunta Kinte in the acclaimed television mini-series Roots and as Lt. Commander Geordi La Forge in Star Trek: The Next Generation, which aired in syndication from 1987 to 1994 and launched several feature films.
A lifelong children’s literacy advocate, Burton was host and executive producer of Reading Rainbow, one of the longest-running children’s television shows in history. During its 26-year run from 1983 to 2009, the show received more than 25 Emmy Awards, including 10 for Outstanding Children’s Series, and was honored with a prestigious George Foster Peabody Award in 1992.
Burton credited his success to his supportive family, particularly his mother, a high-school teacher and social worker. “My mother… was my first teacher and told me that there would be no obstacles to what I could achieve in my life except those that I imposed upon myself.”
He also cited a trio of “storytelling mentors” – Alex Haley, the author of Roots; Gene Roddenberry, creator of the Star Trek franchise; and fellow children’s TV educator Fred Rogers.
“Alex was one of the most authentic voices I have ever heard,” he said. “To this day when I read that man’s words I hear his voice, his rhythms, his cadence in my head. Gene Roddenberry: I was a fan of Star Trek long before I joined the cast.”
He said that Rogers taught him if we do the job fully and from the heart, we can do more than entertain. “We can inform. We can enlighten. We can lift ourselves up and light the way for one another in the world.”