David Fanning, the founding executive producer of PBS’s Frontline series, gave this talk in 2009 as the annual James L. Loper Lecture in Public Service Broadcasting sponsored by the University of Southern California’s Annenberg Center on Communication Leadership & Policy. … Continue reading
Following a very public dustup, Frontline and correspondent T.R. Reid have parted ways. The split leaves series producers and freelance on-air correspondents examining their complex and sometimes contentious relationship. Continue reading
Frontline knows how to shake things up in North Carolina. Last week, less than a month after the series aired Ofra Bikel’s 90-minute documentary “An Ordinary Crime,” about 21-year-old Terence Garner, a state court granted Garner’s motion for a new … Continue reading
Various people tried to prepare Juanita Buschkoetter for the public reaction to The Farmer’s Wife, filmmaker David Sutherland’s cinema verite depiction of the real-life struggle to keep her husband’s farm and their marriage afloat, but the reponse to the show’s … Continue reading
At first glance, the girding storyline is whether Darrel and Juanita Buschkoetter, a farming couple raising three young daughters in Lawrence, Neb., can realize Darrel’s dream of farming his father’s land … Continue reading
Four days before the May 27 airing of “Innocence Lost: The Plea,” Frontline‘s third documentary on the Little Rascals child-abuse case in Edenton, N.C., the prosecutor announced she was dropping all remaining charges in the long and troubling legal action. … Continue reading
Frontline sometimes comes on like a multimedia prosecutor, revealing the evidence in pictures, voices and logic, and driving toward a conclusion. It’s usually a very sobering conclusion, too, because the series has increasingly specialized in reminding us of our society’s … Continue reading