Poh Si Teng wore a bright red kebaya with a flowers motif and gold “kerongsang” (brooch), and stood out at the gala event held at the Jazz at Lincoln Center’s Frederick P Rose Hall in New York City.
Poh attended the gala night as a nominee after her news documentary, Flirting With the Islamic State, was nominated for an Emmy in the Outstanding Interview category. She is credited as producer for the documentary which she made while working for The New York Times (NYT), last year.
Her post on her Facebook page has since grown in popularity and has even been covered online by local media, including Star Online and Malay Mail Online.
The awards show honouring the best of news and documentary film-making came three days after the television industry in the United States celebrated the best of entertainment with the Emmy Awards, which was aired live on Star World via Astro on Monday morning (Malaysian time).
Despite not winning – the Outstanding Interview award went to Dateline NBC for its news feature, The Cosby Accusers Speak – Poh wrote on Facebook thanking friends and family for their support.
“Thank you so much for all your wishes and support. Unfortunately, Flirting With the Islamic State lost the Emmy to the Cosby Accusers in the Outstanding Interview category.
“I’m from Penang, Malaysia, and when I started out in journalism the thought of doing this form of reporting seemed so out of reach,” she said in thanking her collaborators and now former colleagues at NYT, Rukmini Callimachi and Ben Laffin, in producing the documentary.
Poh has since left NYT, and joined Al Jazeera in August as a senior producer.
In a post written on July 22, a day after her documentary was nominated, Poh wrote that she began to take an interest in the Islamic State after her former colleague, journalist Jim Foley was murdered.
“Although we never met, we worked for the same organisation for years but based in different countries. More than a year after Jim’s disappearance, video of his execution appeared. It was devastating.
“Despair led to anger, anger to frustration, and frustration led to more questions. And since then I’ve been working on the subject of radicalisation to understand it for myself.
“I hope this story will help many others out there who are drawn to Islamic State and other militant/terrorist groups, and to law enforcement, preachers and parents working to prevent recruitment.”
Flirting With the Islamic State is about the conversations between a young woman in rural Washington State and a British man with ties to radical Islam that aims to provide clues about how the Islamic State recruits new members around the world.