A panel of experts discuss the complexities of investigative journalism from a reporter's perspective. They discuss the challenges of going in-depth on a story, and explore the new opportunities that online media presents.
The journalists include: Raney Aronson-Rath, PBS' FRONTLINE; Jeff Fager, CBS' 60 Minutes; David Fanning, PBS' FRONTLINE. The panel is moderated by Dean Neil Henry.
Bio
Raney Aronson-Rath
As senior producer for PBS' flagship public affairs documentary series FRONTLINE, Raney Aronson-Rath guides the editorial development and execution of the series' primetime television broadcasts. With Executive Producer David Fanning, she oversees all phases of film production, from story development and assignment through final edit and post-production. Aronson-Rath is also instrumental in the daily editorial management of the series' nonbroadcast initiatives, including new media projects, audience engagement, educational outreach and promotion.
Since joining FRONTLINE's staff in 2007, Aronson-Rath has supervised a number of FRONTLINE productions, including "Rules of Engagement," which was nominated for an Emmy, and films on domestic health care reform, America's debt crisis and international bribery. Her commitment to exploring how the Web and user-generated content can be used in the creation of public media led to the development of "Digital Nation," a year-long multiplatform initiative set to air in winter 2010.
Prior to joining the series as senior producer, Aronson-Rath produced, directed and wrote six FRONTLINE films -- "News War: Secrets, Sources & Spin"; "The Last Abortion Clinic"; "The Soldier's Heart"; "The Jesus Factor"; and "The Alternative Fix" -- as well as three FRONTLINE/World stories based in India and Hong Kong. Her FRONTLINE/World story on AIDS among India's sex workers won an Overseas Press Club Award.
Before her work with FRONTLINE, Aronson-Rath worked on a number of award-winning series at ABC News, including "Hopkins 24/7", which won the duPont-Columbia Silver Baton. She was coordinating producer on the award-winning ABC primetime series "Boston 24/7" and a field producer on several award-winning specials from the Peter Jennings Reporting unit. Aronson-Rath also lived and worked as a newspaper reporter for The China Post in Taipei, Taiwan, for two years.
Aronson-Rath was the 2005 inaugural recipient of the Peter S. McGhee Fellowship from WGBH. She has also been awarded the Kaiser Family Foundation's Media Fellowship, a Sundance Documentary Fund grant, a New York State Council on the Arts grant and an International Reporting Project Fellowship.
Aronson-Rath has a bachelor's degree in South Asian studies and history from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and spent her junior year living in Benaras, India. She received her master's degree from the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.
Lowell Bergman
Lowell Bergman is the Reva and David Logan Distinguished Professor of Investigative Reporting at the Graduate School of Journalism at UC Berkeley, and director of the Investigative Reporting Program. He is also a producer/correspondent for the PBS documentary series Frontline. Bergman’s career spans nearly four decades, most notably as a producer, a reporter and then the director of investigative reporting at ABC News, and as CBS News as a producer for60 Minutes. The story of his investigation into the tobacco industry was chronicled in the Academy Award–nominated film The Insider. From 1999 to 2008, Bergman was an investigative correspondent for The New York Times. Creating collaborative investigative projects using broadcast, print and the Web became his specialty. Bergman has received honors for both print and broadcasting, including the Pulitzer Prize for Public Service, awarded to The New York Times in 2004 for “A Dangerous Business” which detailed a record of worker safety violations coupled with the systematic violation of environmental laws in the cast-iron sewer and water pipe industry. That story is the only winner of the Pulitzer Prize to also be acknowledged with every major award in broadcasting. The recipient of numerous Emmys, Bergman has also been honored with five Alfred I. duPont-Columbia University Silver and Golden Baton awards, three Peabodys, a Polk Award, a Sidney Hillman Award for Labor Reporting, a Bart Richards Award for Media Criticism, the National Press Club’s Arthur Rowse Award for Press Criticism, a Mirror Award from the S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications at Syracuse University, and the James Madison Freedom of Information Award for Career Achievement from the Society of Professional Journalists.
Jeffrey Fager
Jeffrey Fager has been the executive producer of 60 Minutes since June 2004. In his first three seasons at the helm, Fager led 60 Minutes to a number-one finish among news magazines, more than five million viewers ahead of its nearest competitor. For his work on the broadcast, the Producers Guild of America voted him the best producer in non-fiction television two years in a row.
Before taking over 60 Minutes, Fager is credited with guiding 60 Minutes II to overwhelming critical acclaim as its executive producer. In just seven seasons, the broadcast garnered nine Emmy Awards, two RTNDA/Edward R. Murrow Awards, two Alfred I. duPont-Columbia University Awards, three Peabody Awards, a Delta Sigma Chi Award and two Investigative Reporting and Editing Awards.
David Fanning
David Fanning has been executive producer of FRONTLINE since its first season in 1983. In 2007, after 24 seasons and more than 485 films, FRONTLINE remains America's only regularly scheduled investigative documentary series on television. The series has won all of the major awards for broadcast journalism, including 32 Emmys, 22 duPont-Columbia University Awards, 12 Peabody Awards and nine Robert F. Kennedy Journalism Awards.
In 1990 and in 1996, FRONTLINE was recognized with the Gold Baton - the highest duPont-Columbia Award - for its "total contribution to the world of exceptional television." In 2002, the series was honored with an unprecedented third Gold Baton for its post-Sept. 11 coverage, a series of seven hour-long documentaries on the origins and impact of terrorism.
In 2003, "A Dangerous Business," a FRONTLINE/New York Times joint investigation of the cast-iron pipe-making industry was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for public service. And in 2007, the series won a Special Emmy Award for Excellence in Television Documentary Filmmaking.
Neil Henry
Neil Henry worked for 16 years as a metro, national and foreign correspondent based in Nairobi, Kenya for The Washington Post, and as a staff writer for Newsweek magazine, prior to joining the faculty of Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism in 1993.
A former John S. Knight Journalism Fellow at Stanford University, he is the author of a 2002 racial history, Pearl's Secret. His second book, American Carnival: Journalism under Siege in an Age of New Media, was published in May, 2007.
A graduate in political science from Princeton University, Prof. Henry earned his master's degree from Columbia University's Graduate School of Journalism.
Collection, preparation, and distribution of news and related commentary and feature materials through media such as pamphlets, newsletters, newspapers, magazines, radio, film, television, and books. The term was originally applied to the reportage of current events in printed form, specifically newspapers, but in the late 20th century it came to include electronic media as well. It is sometimes used to refer to writing characterized by a direct presentation of facts or description of events without an attempt at interpretation. Colleges and universities confer degrees in journalism and sponsor research in related fields such as media studies and journalism ethics.
The wierdest thing I ever saw in the investigative news media was that the Jonestown Massacre became the Jonestown Mass Suicide on record, and there were congressman killed at the airport there on film. And kids were being bought and sold in those regions of the world and nothing related to child trafficking was ever reported concerning Jim Jones or David Koresh of Mt. Carmel compound.
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