NPR's Latino USA with Maria Hinojosa, an English-language radio program produced from a Latino perspective, is the recipient of the 74th Annual Peabody Awards, winning the category in Radio/Podcast for their "Gangs, Murder and Migration in Honduras" episode.

The George Foster Peabody Awards (or simply Peabody Awards) announcements were revealed over an eight-day period during the month of April, with the entertainment-based awardees unveiled on ABC's "Good Morning America." With nearly 1,200 entries, there were only 40 winners representing the best in media.

"Latino USA," the longest running Latino-focused program on radio, has oft been recognized for its innovative programming and its exploration of culture through its reporting, news segments and the stories that incorporate the Latino voice.

"'Latino USA' is a great program. Also, I think it's a very unique place in the media landscape. It's a program that I've very proud to work for because it's really about uplifting people who are so often left out of news counts," Marlon Bishop, radio producer and journalist at "Latino USA," said to Latin Post. "From undocumented immigrants to low-income people to working class folks. ... [O]ften stories are about those groups without actually including the voices of those groups. And that's what the show is all about."

Recently, the program led an episode that focused on the composer and star Lin-Manuel Miranda, where Miranda took Hinojosa on a tour of northern Manhattan, revealing a connection between the Founding Fathers and today's hip-hop culture. Also, another episode focused attention on the up-and-coming musical duo, Ibeyi, comprising twin Cuban-French sisters who re-imagine Afro-Cuban religious chants as experimental pop music.

"Ibeyi's music is haunting and moving. They mix spare electronic beats that go into these slow, beautiful songs ... and then they use Afro-Cuban chants. It's music that's super powerful," said Bishop. "They're making a lot of waves in the music scene, yet they're kind of an unlikely band to be profiled by Pitchfork because they stand at the crossroads between world music and Latin music, and all these different things."

Bishop went on to call Ibeyi one of the most extraordinary music groups to come out in some time. From the artists, listeners will learn about music that could've only been made there, in that environment, as they were fathered by a famous Cuban percussionist and they followed the Afro-Cuban traditional religion that influenced their music. Their lives created the circumstances whereby they could integrate tradition with modern contemporary song.

Bishop, who spent his early career as a music reporter writing about music in the Caribbean and Latin America, shared that the show's music coverage is very important to him.

"When we're telling stories it's not about the music, it's about the story behind the music. And when we present them, we try to really bring out those stories. And we like to book something that's fresh and innovative, and we love speaking with younger artists who like to challenge assumptions about what Latin music sounds like," said Bishop.

That said, music is just one aspect of what the show focuses on, evident by the "Gangs, Murder and Migration in Honduras" episode, which won Latino USA respect from the Peabody organizers.

"The Honduras episode is one that I worked on. I went down to Honduras in [October 2014] for a few weeks. We'd been watching these stories last year about child migrants arriving to the U.S. and it was in headlines all of the time, but we were disappointed that it was covered in a short-sighted way. We wanted to bring some depth and understanding to what was going on," said Bishop. "We decided we were going to South America, where all of these kids and families were coming from, and we looked into the lengths of migration. What was making people flee from Honduras for U.S.? Also, why were these numbers climbing so high? We explored the difficulties that happened on the road from the Honduras to the U.S., when cutting through Mexico. Also, we investigated what happened to them when they were sent back and deported.

"We talked about gang violence, which is one of the primary motivators. I interviewed former gang members, and victims of deportation and gang violence. And I started draping together a picture of why Honduras has the highest murder rate in the world, which it has by far."

Bishop went on to add that one should avoid portraying Hondurans as victims or helpless, instead "see them as people who dealing with an incredibly complicated and difficult situation."

"There are always these tropes about poor victims from poor countries, but, that ends up, in a way, dehumanizing people," said Bishop. "We wanted to tell how people connect. The kids in Honduras who are leaving are just like American kids in almost every way, except they have live with the threat of violence at all times."

To learn more about the 74th Annual Peabody Awards, which will be hosted by Fred Armisen, visit the Peabody website. The ceremony for 2014 recipients will be held for the first time at night on May 31, 2015.

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