Preview 1/29: Minimum Wage, duPont Awards, The Underground Girls of Kabul, Don’t Look Down on Me

In his State of the State address this month, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo made raising the hourly minimum wage in both New York City and New York state a major legislative goal for his second term. Stephanie Luce, professor of labor studies at CUNY’s School of Professional Studies, joins MetroFocus host Rafael Pi Roman to compare the proposed new rates to other states and analyze minimum versus so-called “living” wages.

The Alfred I. duPont-Columbia University Award is one of broadcast journalism’s highest honors, celebrating documentaries, news reporting and investigate journalism. In a Listening In segment, MetroFocus features excerpts from the acceptance speech for the PBS program The African Americans: Many Rivers to Cross with Henry Louis Gates, Jr. which was one of this year’s winners.

While on assignment in Afghanistan in 2009, journalist Jenny Nordberg discovered the “bacha posh” – daughters who are temporarily raised as sons and presented to the world as boys. Nordberg shares her experiences reporting on this hidden practice, the subject of her new book The Underground Girls of Kabul which was named a Publishers Weekly Best Book of 2014 and finalist for a Goodreads Choice Award, Nonfiction.

And filmmaker Jonathan Novick is changing the way we look at disabilities through his short video documentary Don’t Look Down on Me, which has accumulated over 2.5 million views on YouTube and illuminates his daily experience living as a little person in New York City. The video was produced as part of a program at the Downtown Community Television Center.

MetroFocus Airs:  
WLIW21   Thursday    1/29    7:00pm
Thirteen    Thursday    1/29    8:30pm
NJTV         Thursday    1/29    10:30pm