KARE, the Twin Cities' NBC affiliate, has won a prestigious Alfred I. duPont-Columbia University Journalism Award, one of only five local stations in the country to make the list.

The station was recognized for stellar work on three pieces:

  • "Invisible Wounds: Treatment and Reform," an investigative series that revealed the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) was using unqualified doctors and inadequate tests to improperly deny veterans benefits and access to promised healthcare.
  • "The Insane Benefit: Minnesota's Secret Sex Offenders," a local investigation which revealed a legal loophole that allowed Minnesota judges and prosecutors to grant select sex offenders a special status to make their criminal record secret.
  • "Double Billing the Badge," which revealed law enforcement agencies across Minnesota were over- or double-charged for equipment on police vehicles, wasting hundreds of thousands of dollars of state taxpayer money

Other winners include HBO's "Real Sports With Bryant Gumbel," CBS's "60 Minutes," Netflix's "13th" and The New York Times' podcast, "The Daily."

Ceremonies will be held Jan. 16 in New York with hosts Jake Tapper and Gayle King.