KTLA Wins Peabody Award for King Video : Awards: The station is cited for its ‘courage . . . without sensationalizing the event or its aftermath.’

KTLA Channel 5 has been honored with a Peabody Award for distinguished broadcasting for being the first station to show the amateur-shot videotape of Los Angeles Police Department officers beating motorist Rodney G. King.

Other TV winners of the Peabodys for 1991 programming included CBS’ “Murphy Brown,� NBC’s “Late Night With David Letterman,� PBS’ “Dance in America: Everybody Dance Now!,� ABC’s “Pearl Harbor: Two Hours That Changed the World� and Falahey-Austin Street Productions, the company that makes CBS’ “Northern Exposure� and NBC’s “I’ll Fly Away.�

Radio winners included National Public Radio for its coverage of the confirmation hearings of U.S. Supreme Court nominee Clarence Thomas, and “Joe Frank: Work in Progress,� which is produced at KCRW-FM (89.9) in Santa Monica.

KTLA was cited “for its courage in presenting an explosive tape produced by an amateur photographer, and doing so without sensationalizing the event or its aftermath.�

Cable winners included CNN for its coverage of the Soviet coup, HBO’s “America Undercover: Heil Hitler! Confessions of a Hitler Youth,� Nickelodeon’s “It’s Only Television� and the Discovery Channel’s “People of the Forest: The Chimps of Gombe.�

One individual was among the 27 Peabody winners: Peggy Charren, president and co-founder of Action for Children’s Television. The judges said that her “commitment to improving children’s television for nearly a quarter century embodies the highest ideals and the tenacity required in our participatory democracy.�

The winners, selected from more than 850 entries, will be honored at a luncheon in New York City on June 1. The awards are administered by the University of Georgia College of Journalism and Mass Communication.