Peter W. Klein

Last updated
Peter W. Klein
Education Columbia University (M.S. in Journalism, 1993)
Pennsylvania State University (B.A. in Philosophy, Honors Degree in Economics, Honors Degree in Science Technology and Society, 1991)
Occupation(s) Journalist, television and documentary film producer, professor
Known forInvestigative and global reporting (earning three Emmys, and numerous other awards)
Websiteglobalreportingcentre.org

Peter W. Klein (born in Cincinnati, Ohio) is an Emmy Award-winning journalist, documentary filmmaker, professor, and media leader. He was the founder of the Global Reporting Centre, [1] a non-profit organization dedicated to innovating how global investigative journalism is funded, produced and finds audiences. A hallmark of the centre is collaboration, as well as experimentation with new forms of reporting, including empowerment journalism.

Contents

Peter is the executive editor of investigations at NBC News. He was an investigative producer for the CBS newsmagazine 60 Minutes and previously was an investigative producer at ABC News' Law & Justice unit. [2] He is a contributor to the documentary series PBS Frontline, where his work has been honored with the Emmy for Best Investigative Magazine, as well as the Investigative Reporters and Editors Award and the Sigma Delta Chi Award. [3] [4] He was a regular contributor to The New York Times series Retro Report, focusing on national security stories. He previously wrote a column for The Globe and Mail .

From 2009 to 2010 Klein was the host of the Canadian current affairs interview program The Standard. [5] From 2010 to 2015 he was the Director of the University of British Columbia's Graduate School of Journalism where he continues to serve as a professor and runs the Global Reporting Program, [6] in which he works with students around the world to collaborate on major reporting projects. His journalism has earned recognition from leading professional organizations, including the National Academy of Television Arts & Sciences (three Emmy Awards), Society of Professional Journalists (two Sigma Delta Chis), Radio Television Digital News Association (numerous Edward R. Murrows), International Academy of Digital Arts and Sciences (Webby Honor) and the Online Journalism Organization (ONA).

Early life

Klein was born to immigrants who fled the Hungarian Revolution of 1956. His father Fred was a knife sharpener and burr hand at the Ford automotive plant in Sharonville, Ohio. [7] His mother Alice was a bookkeeper at a bank. The family spoke Hungarian at home, and Klein maintains dual American and Hungarian citizenship. He was born in Cincinnati, Ohio, and grew up in Miami Beach, Florida.[ citation needed ]

Career highlight

In the early 1990s, Klein worked as a public radio reporter during the Bosnian War while freelancing print stories for various publications. In 1994, he helped found VNI New York Times Television, which pioneered foreign news reporting using small format Hi-8 cameras. He went from there to become a senior producer for CBS News' cable channel, Eye on People, and co-created a documentary series called I Witness, where video journalists spent months covering one topic.

In 1996 Klein left CBS to become a producer at ABC News' Law and Justice Unit. There he conducted investigations for 20/20 , Nightline , and World News Tonight . In the late 90s he and correspondent John Miller investigated anti-government militias, as well as Eric Rudolph of the Army of God’s string of abortion clinic attacks. Klein and correspondent Elizabeth Vargas investigated the wrongful conviction of a woman named Betty Tyson and helped overturn her conviction, a project which earned Vargas her first Emmy nomination. Klein also filmed, edited and produced documentary specials for Nightline, following people over long periods of time, including the abortion clinic bombing victim Emily Lyons as she spent her first year recovering from a near-fatal blast. [8] In a project entitled "Life & Death", [9] Klein shadowed Noel Earley, a Vietnam veteran dying of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, as he fought for the right to use doctor-assisted suicide. In another project, Klein followed a convicted child molester from the day he was released from prison. [10] Over a six-month period, Klein documented his journey moving back into society, showing the police notifications, the community meetings and the pedophile's life at his mother's house.

In 1999, Klein joined 60 Minutes as a staff producer. [11] In 2000 he and Mike Wallace reported on the threat posed by unsecured smallpox virus samples, and on September 5, 2001, their report won a News and Documentary Emmy. [12] After 9/11, Klein went on to work with Wallace covering the aftermath of the terrorist attacks. Their interview with Secretary of Health Tommy Thompson, in which Thompson insisted the country was completely safe from any biological attack, led to a Senate hearing about US biowarfare preparedness. [13] Klein was one of the first network magazine producers to travel to Iraq after the invasion and, working with correspondent Bob Simon, he secured the first and to-date, only Western TV interview with the Shiite cleric Muqtada Al-Sadr. [14]

Throughout his career, Klein has reported on public and mental health, earning two Emmy Awards for projects on pandemics, and was co-producer of Unseen Enemy, a feature documentary directed by Janet Tobias about the risks of global pandemics. [15] Other areas of investigation include corruption and national security.

In 2006, Klein launched an investigative series for the History Channel called Beyond Top Secret. The series received two Emmy nominations in 2007 [16] and was featured on a segment of The Daily Show with Jon Stewart. [17] He was the director and producer of the Emmy-nominated documentary Over a Barrel, an ABC News special project about the business of the oil industry. Klein has also contributed business reporting and documentaries to CNBC and CBS News, and earned several Business News Emmy Award nominations, including for a 60 Minutes investigation into market timing in the mutual fund industry.

In 2009, Klein became the host of a weekly current affairs program on VisionTV and JoyTV in Canada called The Standard. Some of his notable guests have included former Mossad director Efraim Halevy and Nate Phelps, [18] son of the radical anti-gay preacher Fred Phelps.

Klein has written for The New York Times , [19] The Globe and Mail , The Miami Herald , The Christian Science Monitor , and numerous other publications during his career.

Teaching

In addition to his professional work, Klein has been teaching journalism since 1998, initially at New York University [20] and Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism. [21] In 2005 Klein became a professor at the University of British Columbia's School of Journalism, where he teaches investigative reporting, documentary production and global reporting. [22] In 2009, with the support of a $1 million donation from Mindset Foundation, [23] he founded the International Reporting Program in which he took graduate students overseas to produce long-form reporting projects. In 2009, his class produced a documentary for PBS Frontline/World called "Digital Dumping Ground" in which they traced the path of electronic waste to three continents. The project won the Emmy Award for Outstanding Investigative in a Newsmagazine. The course has developed into a more collaborative Global Reporting Program [24] in which students at universities around the world work together to produce journalism in partnership with major media organizations.

Related Research Articles

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 39 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 750 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.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Lowell Bergman</span> American journalist

Lowell Bergman is an American journalist, television producer, and professor of journalism. In a career spanning nearly five decades, 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.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Robert Krulwich</span> American radio and television journalist (born 1947)

Robert Louis Krulwich is an American radio and television journalist who co-hosted the radio show Radiolab and served as a science correspondent for NPR. He has reported for ABC, CBS, and Pacifica, with assignment pieces for ABC's Nightline and World News Tonight, as well as PBS's Frontline, NOVA, and NOW with Bill Moyers. TV Guide called him "the most inventive network reporter in television", and New York Magazine wrote that he's "the man who simplifies without being simple."

Richard N. Kaplan is an American network television producer. He has worked for CBS, ABC, CNN and MSNBC. Kaplan has also served as executive producer for some of the biggest names in television news journalism, including Walter Cronkite, Peter Jennings, Ted Koppel, Diane Sawyer, Katie Couric, and Christiane Amanpour.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">John Quiñones</span> American television anchor

Juan Manuel "John" Quiñones is an American journalist and host. After earning a degree from Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism, he became an ABC News correspondent for 20/20, Nightline and Good Morning America. He gained prominence hosted the show What Would You Do? since 2008. He has received numerous accolades including 7 Emmy Awards and a Peabody Award.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Charles Lewis (journalist)</span>

Charles Lewis is an investigative journalist based in Washington D.C. He founded The Center for Public Integrity and several other nonprofit organizations and is currently the executive editor of the Investigative Reporting Workshop at the American University School of Communication in D.C.

Armen Keteyian is an American television journalist and author of 13 non-fiction books, including six New York Times bestsellers. Most recently he was the Anchor and an Executive Producer for The Athletic. Previously he spent 12 years as a network television correspondent for CBS News where he also served as a contributing correspondent to 60 Minutes. Keteyian is an 11-time Emmy award winner.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Stephen Talbot</span> American journalist

Stephen Henderson Talbot is a TV documentary producer, reporter and writer. 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.

Neeraj Khemlani served as president and co-head of CBS News and Stations from 2021 to 2023.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Martin Smith (documentarian)</span> American documentary filmmaker (born 1949)

Martin Smith is a producer, writer, director and correspondent. Smith has produced dozens of nationally broadcast documentaries for CBS News, ABC News and PBS Frontline. His films range in topic from war in the Middle East to the 2008 financial crisis. He is a member of the Overseas Press Club and the Council on Foreign Relations.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Solly Granatstein</span> American television producer

Solly Granatstein is an American television producer and director, formerly with CBS 60 Minutes, NBC News and ABC News. He is co-creator, along with Lucian Read and Richard Rowley, of "America Divided", a documentary series about inequality, and was co-executive producer of Years of Living Dangerously Season 1. He is the winner of twelve Emmys, a Peabody, a duPont, two Polks, four Investigative Reporters and Editors awards, including the IRE medal, and virtually every other major award in broadcast journalism. He is also the screenwriter, with Vince Beiser, of The Great Antonio, an upcoming film, developed by Steven Soderbergh and Warner Brothers.

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.

The University of British Columbia School of Journalism, Writing, and Media (JWAM) offers a two-year Masters of Journalism program offered at the University of British Columbia's Point Grey campus in Vancouver, British Columbia. The program requires students to focus on an area of reporting specialization. The school has also developed a reputation in teaching multimedia journalism and was one of the first programs in North America to replace craft streams with an integrated journalism curriculum. The program has 60 students a year, with close to 20 faculty members, adjuncts and staff. Faculty members come from a variety of traditional and new media organizations including CBC, BBC News Online, CBS News 60 Minutes, The Globe and Mail, The Vancouver Sun, and The Tyee.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">David Fanning (journalist)</span> South African journalist

David E. Fanning is a South African American journalist and filmmaker. He was the executive producer of the investigative documentary series Frontline since its first season in 1983 to his retirement in 2015. He has won eight Emmy Awards and in 2013 received a Lifetime Achievement Emmy in honor of his work.

Shawn Efran is an American filmmaker, journalist, television producer, and media entrepreneur. His work, including as producer for 60 Minutes on CBS, and as founder and executive producer of Efran Films, has garnered critical acclaim, including seven Emmy awards, a Peabody, a Polk, and four Society of Professional Journalists National Distinguished Public Service Award.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Janet Tobias</span> American film director

Janet Tobias is a media executive specializing in healthcare as well as an Emmy Award-winning director, producer, and writer.

The Global Reporting Centre (GRC) is an independent news organization focused on innovating global journalism, based out of the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. Its model works by pairing scholars, leading journalists and news organizations to cover neglected stories around the world. Founded by Peter W. Klein, it grew from the International Reporting Program (now called the Global Reporting Program) based at the University of British Columbia Graduate School of Journalism, Writing, and Media. Peter W. Klein stepped down as executive director in 2023 to join NBC News as executive editor of investigative reporting. Andrea Crossan, who was the former executive producer of PRX’s The World (radio program), took over as executive director.

Christopher Isham is an American journalist currently serving as Chief of CBS News' Washington Bureau, a position he has held since July 2007. Isham spent nineteen years with ABC News, beginning as an associate producer in 1978, eventually serving as ABC's Chief of Investigative Projects. In addition to his roles with ABC and CBS, he helped build the website The Blotter with investigative reporter Brian Ross.

Joel Bach is an American journalist, film and television producer, known for his work on 60 Minutes with CBS News and for co-founding the environmental project, Years of Living Dangerously with David Gelber. He won two Emmy Awards for his work on 60 Minutes, and shared with David Gelber both a Primetime Emmy Award and an Environmental Media Award for Years of Living Dangerously.

References

  1. ↑ Globe & Mail, "UBC journalism director looks to philanthropy to fund reporting centre".
  2. ↑ "Backgrounder: Peter Klein | Bullpen". nyujournalismprojects.org. Retrieved 2023-06-03.
  3. ↑ "Peter Klein, Author at FRONTLINE". FRONTLINE. Retrieved 2023-06-03.
  4. ↑ "Peter Klein". School of Journalism, Writing, and Media. Retrieved 2023-06-03.
  5. ↑ The Standard, "The Host – Peter Klein". Archived from the original on 2010-02-11.
  6. ↑ "UBC Graduate School of Journalism faculty biography". Archived from the original on 2012-07-12. Retrieved 2010-04-17.
  7. ↑ "Ohio primaries: Trump promises a time machine for blue-collar Americans".
  8. ↑ "The Survivor".Nightline. Aired January 28, 1999.
  9. ↑ "A Public Death". The Province Journal Company. 1997.
  10. ↑ "Sex offender next door".Nightline. Aired in 1999.
  11. ↑ "60 Minutes – show description, cast and crew". 1968–present.
  12. ↑ "The 23rd Annual News and Documentary Emmy Award Nominees Announced By The National Academy of Television Arts And Sciences".
  13. ↑ Connolly, Ceci "Senators Criticize HHS Chief On Readiness; Bio-Terrorism Comments 'Will Not Really Help'".The Washington Post. October 4, 2001.
  14. ↑ McKay, Mary Jayne "Muqtada Sadr's Battle Against U.S.: Bob Simon Interviews Iraq's Radical Cleric". CBS News. May 28, 2004.60 Minutes. Aired May 30, 2004.
  15. ↑ "CNN Press Release: Unseen Enemy".
  16. ↑ "Nominees for the News and Documentary Emmy Awards in 32 categories announced by NATAS". Archived from the original on 2007-12-02.
  17. ↑ "– YouTube". YouTube .
  18. ↑ Cutbirth, Joe Cutbirth, Joe (June 10, 2010). "Phelp's Son Says "God Hates Fags" Church Could Turn Violent". Huffington Post.The Huffington Post. April 11, 2010.
  19. ↑ Klein, Peter W. Klein, Peter W. (January 4, 2007). "My Father's Red Scare". The New York Times.The New York Times. January 4, 2007.
  20. ↑ Richards, Jennifer "Background: Peter Klein". Archived from the original on 2010-06-20. Retrieved 2010-04-17.Bullpen
  21. ↑ "The Interview reinforces a negative view of US journalists".
  22. ↑ "UBC Graduate School of Journalism Faculty Bio". Archived from the original on 2012-07-12. Retrieved 2010-04-17.
  23. ↑ "$1m gift creates groundbreaking International Reporting course". UBC Graduate School of Journalism News & Events. April 6, 2009.
  24. ↑ "GRP Press Release". 21 September 2016.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.