Frontline
Frontline
U.S. Public-Affairs Program
The Public Broadcasting System's series Frontline has served as one of the major documentary and public-affairs programs on American television since its debut in 1983. Emerging at a time when the U.S. television networks were dramatically cutting back on documentary and public-affairs television, producer David Fanning and his team have produced a series of award winning programs on issues ranging from programs on the Gulf War, Afghanistan, and Iraq, to producer Ofra Bikel's investigation of the Little Rascals sexual abuse case to Martin Smith and Lowell Bergman's chronicle of America's drug wars.
Courtesy of the Everett Collection
Bio
Originating from PBS's WGBH Boston affiliate, Frontline has won all of the major awards for broadcast journalism, including Emmy Awards, Peabody Awards, George Polk Awards, and DuPont Columbia University Awards. The series has specialized in current affairs documentaries, producing programs on U.S. military interventions in the Reagan era and on the Panama invasion and Gulf War during the presidency of George H.W. Bush. There have also been documentaries on the presidential candidacies, and the lives of Bill Clinton and Bob Dole (The Choice, 1996) and on Al Gore and George W. Bush in 2000.
Frontline has also produced many provocative documentaries on the U.S. economy and political system, such as the investigations of the savings and loan scandal, Other People's Money and The Great American Bailout. Its probing investigative studies of the bank BCCI (The Bank of Crooks and Criminals) and the examination of the Exxon Valdez Alaska tragedy, Anatomy of an Oil Spill, are also noteworthy.
The series creator and senior executive producer is David Fanning. In 2002 Michael Sullivan was promoted to executive producer for special projects after serving as the series senior producer. Sullivan has supervised the production of many major Frontline projects, including Faith and Doubt at Ground Zero in 2002, a probing examination of theological questions regarding the existence of God and good and evil in the wake of the events of September 11, 2001. Under Sullivan's supervision, the program continued to produce the high-quality documentaries for which it is renowned-including Cyber War! on hi-tech warfare, Truth, War, & Consequences on the chaotic aftermath of the Iraq war, and Chasing the Sleeper Cell on the Islamic terrorism-into the 2003-04 season.
Frontline's excellent website makes available transcripts and streaming videos of many of its programs (http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/). For instance, one can access Truth, War, & Consequences from the website. The program is divided into sections, much like a DVD, with textual commentary surrounding the screen. The program's website also makes accessible transcripts of interviews with the characters in the documentary, textual analysis of the material and issues in the program, and links to other Internet resources. Thus Frontline continues its tradition as a top documentary and public-affairs television series, while providing cutting-edge educational material on the Internet.
Frontline has won numerous awards for several of its productions, including Peabody Awards, Emmy Awards, Robert F. Kennedy Journalism Awards, and Edward R. Murrow Awards. In 1995 Frontline received the Distinguished Achievement in Journalism Award from the Journalism Alumni Association of the University of Southern California.