The Alfred I. duPont-Columbia University Awards (known as the duPont Awards) are to radio and television news and public affairs reporters what the Pulitzer Prize is to authors and print journalists. Like the Pulitzers, the duPont Awards are given by the Columbia University School of Journalism - in their case by its Alfred I. duPont Center for Broadcast Journalism.

Like the Pulitzer Prize, the duPont Awards each year go almost exclusively to those who broadcast left-leaning stories. Stories that attack capitalist corporations or call for expanded government welfare programs win these career-enhancing prizes.

The duPont Awards were created in 1942 by the widow of Alfred I. duPont, an heir to the E. L. DuPont de Nemours & Company of Delaware chemical fortune, through the tax-exempt Alfred I. duPont Awards Foundation. Among recent duPont Award winners is the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) news program Frontline (in collaboration with the New York Times and the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation) for "A Dangerous Business," a feature about how a steel company pollutes the environment while killing and injuring its workers. KMGH-TV Denver won for its look at alleged sexual abuse at the U.S. Air Force Academy in Colorado. WTVF-TV Nashville won for an expose that alleged massive corruption by the Republican Governor of Tennessee and businesspeople associated with him. And National Public Radio (NPR) won a duPont Award for its coverage of the war in Iraq, heavily weighted against American policies.

DuPont winners get no money but receive a silver baton inscribed with a famous quote about television by the late CBS reporter Edward R. Murrow: "This instrument can teach, it can illuminate; yes, it can even inspire. But it can do so only to the extent that humans are determined to use it to those ends. Otherwise it is merely wires and lights in a box."