The FRONTLINE Dispatch

Since the murder of George Floyd two years ago, FRONTLINE's local journalism partner the Star Tribune has chronicled the aftermath of that pivotal event — from the protests that spread globally, to documenting the trial and murder conviction of former police officer Derek Chauvin, to ongoing struggles for police accountability and reform in Minneapolis. The new documentary “Police on Trial,” from FRONTLINE and the Star Tribune, draws on unique on-the-ground reporting and filming to examine the police department at the center of the story.

In this new episode of "The FRONTLINE Dispatch," Star Tribune Editor Suki Dardarian in Minneapolis joins FRONTLINE Executive Producer Raney Aronson-Rath to discuss the newsroom’s Pulitzer-winning reporting and “Police on Trial.”

"Police on Trial" is now streaming on FRONTLINE’s website, the PBS Video app and FRONTLINE’s YouTube channel.

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For years, hundreds of workers at the Gopher Resource lead smelting plant in Florida were exposed to dangerous levels of lead in the air. “Poisoned,” a series from the Tampa Bay Times, in collaboration with FRONTLINE’s Local Journalism Initiative, uncovers the consequences of what happened.

Times reporters Corey G. Johnson, Rebecca Woolington and Eli Murray gained access to thousands of pages of regulatory reports, company documents and employee medical records. In March 2021, Johnson joined FRONTLINE’s executive producer, Raney Aronson-Rath, on The FRONTLINE Dispatch to discuss the project and what the reporters found after months of investigating. This year, Johnson and his collegues were awarded a Pultizer Prize in Investigative Reporting for the project.

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The fossil fuel industry cast doubt on climate change for decades, even as the scientific evidence grew stronger and the warnings more dire.

In this episode of The FRONTLINE Dispatch, investigative reporter Russell Gold joins executive producer Raney Aronson-Rath to discuss FRONTLINE’s new three-part documentary series, The Power of Big Oil, and the role of the fossil fuel industry in delaying action on climate change.

Gold, a senior editor at Texas Monthly, served as an editorial consultant on the docuseries. The author of two books, he previously spent nearly 20 years reporting on energy for The Wall Street Journal, where he covered stories including the Deepwater Horizon oil spill and California’s 2018 Camp Fire.

All three episodes of The Power of Big Oil are now streaming on FRONTLINE’s website, the PBS Video app and FRONTLINE’s YouTube channel.

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More than a year after President Joe Biden's inauguration, around two-thirds of Republican voters believe his election was illegitimate. How did a stolen election myth make its way to the center of American politics? Director and producer Samuel Black and correspondent A.C. Thompson, part of the team behind the 2022 FRONTLINE and ProPublica documentary "Plot to Overturn the Election," sit down with FRONTLINE’s executive producer, Raney Aronson-Rath, to discuss how a handful of people have had an outsized impact on the current U.S. crisis of democratic legitimacy.

The legacy of misinformation extends beyond the 2020 U.S. presidential election and the Jan. 6 Capitol riot, Black and Thompson found. “How is the ongoing battle over the last election threatening the next one?” Thompson asks in the documentary.

"Plot to Overturn the Election" is now streaming on FRONTLINE’s website, the PBS Video app and FRONTLINE’s YouTube channel. Want to be notified every time a new podcast episode drops? Sign up for The FRONTLINE Dispatch newsletter: https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/dispatch-newsletter-subscription/

Journalist Julia Ioffe recently sat down with producer Mike Wiser for the March 2022 FRONTLINE documentary “Putin’s Road to War.” In this episode of The FRONTLINE Dispatch, we hear an excerpt of that interview, in which Ioffe discusses Russian President Vladimir Putin's brutal invasion of Ukraine and how he, and the world, reached this tipping point.

Journalist Maria Ressa, a 2021 Nobel Peace Prize winner and the subject of the documentary A Thousand Cuts, joined director Ramona S. Diaz and FRONTLINE’s executive producer, Raney Aronson-Rath, for a special conversation prior to the Nobel ceremony.

Ressa and her fellow Nobel Peace Prize laureate Dmitry Muratov are the first journalists to receive the prestigious award since 1935. Ressa and her staff at the independent news site Rappler in the Philippines have been at the forefront of reporting on both President Rodrigo Duterte’s bloody drug war and the rapid-fire spread of online disinformation in support of Duterte. A Thousand Cuts chronicled how Ressa and Rappler became top targets in Duterte’s crackdown on the news media — and how Ressa vowed to “hold the line” in the face of numerous court actions and online harassment.

With Ressa now a Nobel Peace Prize winner for her efforts, she joins Diaz and Aronson-Rath to discuss disinformation, the importance of journalism and press freedom, the future of democracy in the Philippines, why she believes the world is in the midst of “a global rise in fascism” similar to the last time a journalist won a Nobel Peace Prize, and how “we need to make sure facts survive.” 

“When you live in a world without facts, you can't have truth. You can't have trust,” she says. “And when you don't have that, your shared reality is torn apart.”

A Thousand Cuts is now streaming on FRONTLINE’s website, the PBS Video app and FRONTLINE’s YouTube channel. After Philippine distributors and TV broadcasters did not license the film, FRONTLINE secured full streaming rights in the country so that it would be available for the Philippine public to view via FRONTLINE’s platforms.

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In October 2021, the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists — with 150 partner news organizations around the world, including FRONTLINE — began publishing the results of an investigation based on a massive leak of confidential documents. The leaked files, known as the Pandora Papers, exposed a secretive financial system that enables the world’s wealthy and powerful to hide their money and assets from creditors, taxing authorities and governments. The revelations have reverberated across the globe.

In this episode of The FRONTLINE Dispatch podcast, FRONTLINE producer Evan Williams and ICIJ reporter Will Fitzgibbon, both featured in the November 2021 short documentary Pandora Papers, from ICIJ and FRONTLINE, join FRONTLINE executive producer Raney Aronson-Rath to discuss some of the investigation’s key findings, the ongoing impacts, and the importance of global reporting collaborations.

“The basic principle of ICIJ really is one of journalistic equality, I think. Recognizing that the smartest reporter in New York City or Washington D.C., is never going to have the experience or the ability to find a story in the Democratic Republic of Congo, or in the Philippines, right?" Fitzgibbon says. "And that's why we provide access to the data and bring on reporters from more than 100 countries. Because we know that, hidden in these documents, are only stories the reporters from those countries can tell."

The Pandora Papers documentary is now streaming on FRONTLINE’s website, the PBS Video app and FRONTLINE’s YouTube channel. 

Want to be notified every time a new FRONTLINE podcast episode drops? Sign up for The FRONTLINE Dispatch newsletter.

As the U.S. Federal Reserve and its chair, Jerome Powell, confront concerns over inflation and the impact of the Fed’s pandemic-era policies, we take a deep dive into the country’s central bank, which financial journalist Dion Rabouin calls “the most powerful and least understood institution in the country.”

James Jacoby, a producer of the FRONTLINE documentary “The Power of the Fed,” and Rabouin, who was featured in the film, join FRONTLINE Executive Producer Raney Aronson-Rath for a conversation about how the Fed’s actions to avert crisis when COVID struck were the latest chapter in an experiment the Fed began after the 2008 crash — one that has dramatically changed the American economy. Jacoby and Rabouin explore criticisms that, while well-intentioned, the Fed’s efforts have contributed to wealth inequality and helped today’s financial world grow far removed from the real-world economy.

“The Federal Reserve has taken on a much more active role in trying to manage our economy, basically, since the financial crisis in 2008-2009,” Jacoby tells Aronson-Rath. “And then the experimental policies that they put into gear at that point really never left us. … it's led to all sorts of unforeseen, unintended consequences that we're all contending with now.”

“The Power of the Fed” is now streaming on FRONTLINE’s website, the PBS Video app and FRONTLINE’s YouTube channel.

What did Boeing know about the potential for disaster with its 737 Max passenger jet, and when did the company know it? Tom Jennings, director of the FRONTLINE/New York Times documentary “Boeing’s Fatal Flaw,” and Times reporter David Gelles detail what their findings reveal about the lead-up to the two 737 Max plane crashes in 2018 and 2019 that killed 346 people. 

Dan Reed (“Leaving Neverland”) discusses his new FRONTLINE documentary, “In the Shadow of 9/11,” the story of how seven Black men from Miami were accused of planning an Al Qaeda plot to blow up American buildings.

Their indictment marked the federal government’s first major post-9/11 counterterrorism sting within the U.S. Yet the men, who came to be known as the Liberty City Seven, had no weapons and had never communicated with anyone from Al Qaeda.

Reed joins “The FRONTLINE Dispatch” to discuss why this was a story he wanted to tell; how he built trust with sources, including the accused men themselves and an FBI agent with a key role in the sting; and what the documentary reveals about the federal government's post-9/11 counterterrorism tactics — notably its use of informants and sting operations.

“It's a story that really needs to be told, because Americans … have the right to know what techniques have been used to keep the country safe after 9/11,” Reed tells FRONTLINE’s executive producer, Raney Aronson-Rath. “But it's just a very challenging story to tell. … I really think that FRONTLINE is the only place on American television that I could have done this.”

The feature-length documentary “In the Shadow of 9/11” is now streaming on FRONTLINE’s website, the PBS Video app and YouTube.