Today our guests are Errol Morris, director of the new MSNBC documentary “Separated”, and Jacob Soboroff, executive producer, upon whose 2020 book, “Separated: Inside an American Tragedy,” the documentary was based. 

We had Errol on the show last year to discuss his Oscar-shortlisted portrait of John le Carré, “The Pigeon Tunnel”, which with its implicitly self-reflective focus on the ability of representation to capture reality, can be read as a career-culminating masterpiece. “Separated” is a bit of a departure, one the topic of which has been made ever more urgent by the return of Donald Trump to the white house. In it, Errol draws upon Jacob's reporting–for which he was awarded the Walter Cronkite award for individual achievement by a national journalist as well as the Hillman Prize for broadcast journalism–on the child separation policy at the border in the first half of the first Trump administration. Jacob and Errol, with the help of the hero of this story, Captain John White, demonstrate this policy was not a “byproduct” of a tighter immigration approach, but an abusive tool used to terrify migrants by deliberately harming their children. Cruelty as the saying goes, was the point. 

“Separated” will first air on MSNBC on December 7th.  

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