Frontline is an investigative documentary program distributed by the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) in the United States. Episodes are produced at WGBH in Boston, Massachusetts. The series has covered a variety of domestic and international issues, including terrorism, elections, environmental disasters, and other sociopolitical issues. Since its debut in 1983, Frontline has aired in the U.S. for 42 seasons, and has won critical acclaim and awards in broadcast journalism. In 2024, Frontline won its first Oscar at the 96th Academy Awards for Best Documentary Feature, 20 Days in Mariupol, made by a team of AP Ukrainian journalists. Frontline has produced over 800 documentaries from both in-house and independent filmmakers, 200 of which are available online.
The Alfred I. duPont–Columbia University Award honors excellence in broadcast and digital journalism in the public service and is considered one of the most prestigious awards in journalism. The awards were established in 1942 and administered until 1967 by Washington and Lee University's O. W. Riegel, Curator and Head of the Department of Journalism and Communications. Since 1968 they have been administered by the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism in New York City, and are considered by some to be the broadcast equivalent of the Pulitzer Prize, another program administered by Columbia University.
Anne Longworth Garrels was an American broadcast journalist who worked as a foreign correspondent for National Public Radio, as well as for ABC and NBC, and other media.
Lowell Bergman is an American journalist, television producer, and journalism professor. In a nearly five-decade-long career, Bergman worked as a producer, a reporter, and then the director of investigative reporting at ABC News and as a producer for CBS’s 60 Minutes, leaving in 1998 as the senior producer of investigations for CBS News. He was also the founder of the investigative reporting program at the Graduate School of Journalism at UC Berkeley and, for 28 years, taught there as a professor. He was also a producer and correspondent for the PBS documentary series Frontline. In 2019, Bergman retired.
Miles O'Brien is an independent American broadcast news journalist specializing in science, technology, and aerospace who has been serving as national science correspondent for PBS NewsHour since 2010.
Rory O'Connor is a journalist, author, educator, and documentary filmmaker. He is co-founder and president of the Globalvision Corporation, and board chair of the Global Center, an affiliated non-profit foundation. His films and television programs have aired on PBS, BBC, NHK, CBS, NBC, ABC, Fox, and numerous other networks. He has been involved in the production of more than two dozen documentaries, and his broadcast, film and print work has been honored with a George Polk Award, a Writer's Guild Award for Outstanding Documentary, an Orwell Award and two Emmys. He has written several books and blogs for the Huffington Post, AlterNet, Al Jazeera and other news sources.
Jamie Doran is an Irish-Scottish independent documentary filmmaker and former BBC producer. He founded the award-winning company Clover Films, based in Windsor, in 2008. He is also president of Datchet Village Football Club, which he founded in 1986. Doran's films have been shown worldwide, and on series such as BBC's Panorama, Channel 4's Dispatches, Channel 4's True Stories, PBS's Frontline, Al Jazeera, ABC's Four Corners, Japan's NHK, Germany's ZDF NDR/ARD and Denmark's DR.
Brian Elliot Ross is an American investigative journalist who served as the Chief Investigative Correspondent for ABC News until 2018. He reported for ABC World News Tonight with David Muir, Nightline, Good Morning America, 20/20, and ABC News Radio. Ross joined ABC News in July 1994 and was fired in 2018. His investigative reports have often covered government corruption. From 1974 until 1994, Ross was a correspondent for NBC News.
Hedrick Smith is a Pulitzer Prize-winning former New York Times reporter and Emmy award-winning producer and correspondent. After serving 26 years with The New York Times from 1962-88 as correspondent, editor and bureau chief in both Moscow and Washington, Smith moved into television in 1989, reporting and producing more than 50 hours of long-form documentaries for PBS over the next 25 years on topics from the inside story of the terrorists who mounted the 9/11 attacks and Gorbachev's perestroika to Wall Street, Walmart and The Democracy Rebellion of grassroots citizen reform movements. Smith has authored five best-selling books including The Russians, The Power Game: How Washington Works, and Who Stole the American Dream?, and co-authored several other books, including The Pentagon Papers and Reagan: The Man, the President. Smith is currently Executive Editor of the website ReclaimTheAmericanDream.org and the YouTube channel The People vs. The Politicians.
Thomas Furneaux Lennon is a documentary filmmaker. He was born in Washington, D.C., graduated from Phillips Exeter Academy in 1968 and Yale University in 1973.
Stephen Henderson Talbot is a TV documentary producer, writer and reporter. Talbot directed and produced "The Movement and the 'Madman' " for the PBS series American Experience in 2023. He is a longtime contributor to the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) and worked for over 16 years for the series Frontline.
Leslie Cockburn is an American investigative journalist, and filmmaker. Her investigative television segments have aired on CBS, NBC, PBS Frontline, and 60 Minutes. She has won an Emmy Award, The Hillman Prize, Alfred I. duPont–Columbia University Award, Robert F. Kennedy Journalism Award, and the George Polk Award.
Michael Kirk is a documentary filmmaker and partial creator of the PBS show Frontline, where he worked as senior producer until 1987. Kirk founded and currently owns the production company, the Kirk Documentary Group, in Brookline, Massachusetts, which has produced dozens of award-winning documentaries, both for Frontline and through his company, that focus on political, social and cultural issues.
Adam Clay "A.C." Thompson is an investigative journalist, producer, and staff reporter with ProPublica. His work has appeared on the PBS series Frontline. His stories, many of which examine the criminal justice system, have helped lead to the exoneration of two innocent San Francisco men sentenced to life in prison and the prosecution of seven New Orleans police officers.
Keith Summa is an American television news producer and executive. Summa currently serves as Senior Vice President of Content & Programming for Univision. From 2007 to 2012 Summa headed CBS News' investigative unit. For 15 years prior he was a producer for ABC News and Peter Jennings Productions. Summa has received the George Polk Award, the Alfred I. duPont–Columbia University Award, the Peabody Award, and several News & Documentary Emmy Awards for his work in television news production.
Raney Aronson-Rath produces Frontline, PBS's flagship investigative journalism series. She has been internationally recognized for her work to expand the PBS series' original investigative journalism and directs the editorial development and execution of the series. Aronson-Rath joined Frontline in 2007 as a senior producer. She was named deputy executive producer by David Fanning, the series’ founder, in 2012, and then became executive producer in 2015.
Richard Rowley is a documentary filmmaker. His films and TV shows have received three Emmy awards, an Oscar nomination, and other awards and nominations, as well as recognition at film festivals around the world.
Elizabeth Deane is a writer, producer and director of documentary films for PBS, specializing in American history. She is based primarily at WGBH-TV in Boston, with work ranging from presidential politics to biographies and musical history.
William Brangham is an American journalist who is currently a correspondent, producer, and substitute anchor for the PBS NewsHour. Before, he worked as a producer for several other television programs, mostly for PBS. He has won two Peabody Awards and three News & Documentary Emmy Awards.
Jane Ferguson is an Irish journalist.
