The FRONTLINE Dispatch

Latest Episodes:

Reconstructing the Uvalde Shooting Response Jan 04, 2024

Show notes

The May 2022 gun massacre at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas left 19 children and two teachers dead. It was one of the deadliest school shootings in U.S. history. Inside the Uvalde Response, a recent documentary from FRONTLINE, ProPublica and The Texas Tribune, probes the chaotic police response to the shooting and sheds new light on law enforcement’s thoughts and actions as the tragedy unfolded.

Among the revelations: Students and teachers at the school had practiced active shooter drills and knew what to do, but scores of law enforcement officers who responded that day did not.

Lomi Kriel, a reporter with the ProPublica-Texas Tribune Investigative Unit, and director Juanita Ceballos join The FRONTLINE Dispatch to discuss how they used hundreds of hours of body cam footage and officer interviews to reconstruct one of the most criticized mass shooting responses in recent history, and examine what went wrong.

“I think one thing that makes this very different is that for prior mass shootings — Parkland, Pulse, others — we just don't necessarily… have this kind of information, both body camera footage, 911 calls, interviews with officers — to actually know how those responses happened.”

Kriel says that while the Uvalde community awaits fuller answers from the district attorney investigating the law enforcement response, FRONTLINE, ProPublica and The Texas Tribune’s reporting provides at least “one comprehensive accounting of what happened that day”

You can watch Inside the Uvalde Response on FRONTLINE’s website, FRONTLINE’s YouTube Channel, and the PBS App.

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

Underage Workers in New England’s Seafood Processing Industry Dec 14, 2023

Show notes

Journalists with The Public’s Radio, a station serving Rhode Island and Southeastern Massachusetts, spent two years investigating teen labor in the local seafood processing industry.

Their investigation, supported by FRONTLINE’s Local Journalism initiative, reveals flaws in systems designed to protect migrant teens, who’ve arrived at the U.S. southern border in unprecedented numbers in recent years.

The investigative team interviewed migrant teens and their families, and uncovered that the U.S. Department of Labor was investigating at least two New Bedford, MA, seafood processors, as well as a Rhode Island staffing agency, for possible child labor, overtime pay, and anti-retaliation violations.

In this episode of The FRONTLINE Dispatch, reporters Nadine Sebai and Nina Sparling from The Public’s Radio join FRONTLINE editor-in-chief and executive producer Raney Aronson-Rath to discuss their findings.

Sebai and Sparling say they sought to illustrate the complexities of what happens to underage migrants after they arrive on the nation's southern border — especially the challenges they face. Sebai says, "We've all seen... the waves of kids migrating to the border, unaccompanied minors coming to the border. But they actually end up somewhere in the U.S.”

For more, read and listen to The Public Radio’s investigation “Underage and Unprotected,” supported by FRONTLINE’s Local Journalism Initiative.

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

Documenting the Siege of Mariupol (re-release) Nov 30, 2023

Show notes

20 Days in Mariupol is an unflinching, first-hand account of the early days of Russia’s invasion of the port city of Mariupol, which remains under Russian occupation to this day.

Ukrainian-born director and journalist Mstyslav Chernov and his colleagues from the Associated Press were the last international journalists to remain in Mariupol as Russian troops attacked. His new film, from FRONTLINE and the AP, draws on Chernov’s news dispatches and his reflections as he documented the devastation of his home country for the world to see.

Chernov sat down with FRONTLINE editor-in-chief and executive producer Raney Aronson-Rath and editor and producer Michelle Mizner in February 2023, as we marked the grim anniversary of the war in Ukraine.

In this episode of The FRONTLINE Dispatch, recorded at the Boston Public Library, Chernov recounts the decision to go to Mariupol, how he and Mizner created a documentary feature from his Pulitzer Prize-winning journalism, and what he hopes people will take away from the film — today, and in years to come.

“I know that we form our understanding of the current events of the world around us by watching news and consuming news,” Chernov said. “ But [we] form our understanding of our past with documentary films… Film is a medium which carries meaning across time, for generations to come.”

An earlier version of this episode was published in July.

You can watch 20 Days in Mariupol on FRONTLINE’s website, FRONTLINE’s YouTube Channel, the PBS App, and the PBS Documentaries Prime Video Channel.

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

Introducing The Big Dig Part 1: We Were Wrong from GBH News Nov 23, 2023

Show notes

The FRONTLINE Dispatch presents The Big Dig, Part 1: “We Were Wrong.”

The Big Dig is a new 9-part podcast series from GBH News, hosted by Ian Coss.

There is a cynicism that hangs over the topic of American infrastructure — whether it’s high-speed rail or off-shore wind — it feels like this country can’t build big things anymore. No one project embodies that cynicism quite like Boston’s Big Dig. Infamous for its ever-increasing price tag, this massive highway tunneling effort became a symbol of waste and corruption. Yet the project delivered on its promise to transform the city. So how did the narrative go so horribly wrong? And what lessons can the Big Dig offer for the ambitious projects of today?

You can listen all nine episodes of The Big Dig at GBH News, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Shattered Dreams of Peace: The Road From Oslo (Full-length Film Audio Track) Nov 09, 2023

Show notes

FRONTLINE Film Audio Tracks are FRONTLINE documentaries, in audio form. Stream or download full-length recordings of film audio tracks on Apple Podcasts or our website.

Listen to the Film Audio Track for FRONTLINE’s seminal 2002 documentary on how the Israeli-Palestinian peace process begun at Oslo was derailed and ultimately undone by the dynamics of politics and violence on both sides.

Shattered Dreams of Peace: The Road From Oslo traced how cautious optimism in the aftermath of Palestine Liberation Organization Chairman Yasser Arafat and then-Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin agreeing to the 1993 Oslo Accord was undermined in the following years by violence and major setbacks. It explored the growing threat to the peace process posed by radical nationalist factions among both Jews and Palestinians — groups, including Hamas, that opposed all compromise between the two peoples.

The documentary also examined the U.S. role in the peace process, including the U.S.-brokered negotiations at in 1998, 2000 and 2001. Shattered Dreams of Peace: The Road From Oslo includes interviews with key figures from both sides of the negotiating table, including Benjamin Netanyahu, Yasser Arafat, Shimon Peres, Saeb Erekat, and Ehud Barak.

Looking Back at the Houston Astros Cheating Scandal Oct 27, 2023

Show notes

The Houston Astros didn’t make the World Series this year. But they’re still widely considered one of the best teams of the past decade. FRONTLINE’s documentary The Astros Edge: Triumph and Scandal in Major League Baseball examines how the team used cutting-edge techniques to rise from the bottom of the league to the top, and what happened in 2017 when they went too far in what would become one of the worst cheating scandals in MLB history.

The Astros Edge correspondent Ben Reiter has covered the team extensively for Sports Illustrated and boldly predicted the Astros’ stratospheric rise at a time when they were coming off a three-year slump. His book called Astroball unpacked some of the team’s techniques, which were modeled on strategies from the business world. After The Athletic revealed that the team had used an illegal sign-stealing scheme, Reiter hosted a podcast series examining how the scandal unfolded.

Reiter sat down with The FRONTLINE Dispatch to talk about the scandal and the limited accountability that followed. He told host and FRONTLINE editor-in-chief and executive producer Raney Aronson-Rath that he thinks the scandal has implications that go beyond baseball.

“What does it mean when your business becomes so obsessed with efficiency and profit over everything else?” he said. “Like, yeah, there's a good chance you're going to have a lot of success, but there's a lot of problems that come with that.”

You can watch The Astros Edge: Triumph and Scandal in Major League Baseball on FRONTLINE's website, FRONTLINE's YouTube channel, and the PBS App.

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

From Russian Newspaper Editor to ‘Foreign Agent’ Oct 05, 2023

Show notes

When filmmaker Patrick Forbes decided to make a documentary about Russian newspaper editor Dmitry Muratov, Muratov had just won a Nobel Prize. Over the course of the next year, Russia would invade Ukraine, and Russian President Vladimir Putin would intensify his government’s crackdown on the press – a crackdown in which Muratov and his newspaper, Novaya Gazeta, would be caught up.

In this episode of The FRONTLINE Dispatch, Forbes joins host Raney Aronson-Rath, editor-in-chief and executive producer of FRONTLINE, to discuss Putin vs. the Press, the new documentary that follows Muratov as he as he faces personal attacks and fights to keep his reporters safe.

Forbes recounts the difficulty of filming a documentary in Russia, where he says Muratov’s story “symbolizes the increasing restriction on freedom of press in Russia” and “the slow strangling of any independent voices.”

Putin vs. the Press is streaming on FRONTLINE’s website, FRONTLINE’s YouTube channel, and the PBS App.

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

Locked Up for Life After ‘Two Strikes’ Sep 14, 2023

Show notes

Two Strikes, a documentary from FRONTLINE, The Marshall Project, and Firelight Media, tells the story of Mark Jones, a former West Point cadet serving a life sentence in Florida after an attempted carjacking.

The film’s director and producer Ursula Liang, a 2021 FRONTLINE/Firelight Filmmaker Fellow, and reporter Cary Aspinwall of The Marshall Project, join The FRONTLINE Dispatch to unpack the story behind Jones’ sentence — and a law that increases prison time for certain repeat offenders. Florida’s so-called “two-strikes” law allows prosecutors to seek the maximum sentence for people found guilty of felonies within three years of a prison release.

In some cases, like Jones’, that can mean life in prison for crimes in which no one was physically injured. Florida has virtually abolished parole.

“Florida has almost a quarter of the nation's population of life-without-parole prisoners,” Aspinwall told The FRONTLINE Dispatch host Raney Aronson-Rath, a statistic she calls “staggering.”

Two Strikes is streaming on FRONTLINE’s website, FRONTLINE’s YouTube channel, and the PBS App.

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

Struggling for Breath in Coal Country (re-release) Aug 17, 2023

Show notes

A new rule proposed by the Labor Department could help limit coal miners' exposure to a toxic dust called silica.

“The purpose of this proposed rule is simple: prevent more miners from suffering from debilitating and deadly occupational illnesses by reducing their exposure to silica dust,” Chris Williamson, assistant secretary for mine, safety and health, said in a statement. “Silica overexposures have a real-life impact on a miner’s health.”

Williamson has said the proposal was inspired, in part, by FRONTLINE and NPR’s 2019 investigation, which exposed a link between silica dust and an epidemic of severe black lung disease.

Our documentary Coal’s Deadly Dust highlighted the resurgence of black lung — and how federal regulators and the industry had failed to protect miners.

“Struggling for Breath in Coal Country” was originally released alongside the film in 2019. In this archival episode of The FRONTLINE Dispatch, correspondent Howard Berkes spoke with coal miners whose lives were forever changed when they were diagnosed with the disease.

Coal’s Deadly Dust is streaming at pbs.org/frontline, in the PBS App and on FRONTLINE’s YouTube channel.

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

Documenting the Siege of Mariupol Jul 21, 2023

Show notes

Now playing in select theaters and coming to PBS this fall, 20 Days in Mariupol is an unflinching, first-hand account of the early days of Russia’s invasion of the port city of Mariupol, which remains under Russian occupation to this day.
Ukrainian-born director and journalist Mstyslav Chernov and his colleagues from the Associated Press were the last international journalists to remain in Mariupol as Russian troops attacked. His new film, from FRONTLINE and the AP, draws on Chernov’s news dispatches and his reflections as he documented the devastation of his home country for the world to see.

Chernov sat down with FRONTLINE editor-in-chief and executive producer Raney Aronson-Rath and editor and producer Michelle Mizner earlier this year, as we marked the grim anniversary of the war in Ukraine. In this episode of The FRONTLINE Dispatch, he recounts the decision to go to Mariupol, how he and Mizner created a documentary feature from his Pulitzer Prize-winning journalism, and what he hopes people will take away from the film — today, and in years to come.

20 Days in Mariupol is currently playing in select theaters.

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