Frontline today (March 29) provided NPR’s Morning Edition portions of its reporting on the private life of Army Pfc. Bradley E. Manning, the soldier who stands accused of leaking the largest cache of classified documents in U.S. history to the WikiLeaks website. It’s part of the newsmag’s ongoing collaborative efforts to provide breaking news to a wider audience through pubmedia partners.
Portions of Frontline correspondent Martin Smith’s exclusive interview with Manning’s father that ran on PBS NewsHour on March 10 sparked national headlines, when the elder Manning alleged his son was being mistreated in detention.
“That strategic public media partnership allowed both Frontline and PBS NewsHour to benefit from the immediate release of breaking news,” Frontline senior series producer Raney Aronson-Rath told Current in a statement. Linda Winslow, NewsHour e.p., said such collaborations “strengthen public media’s presence in the news and public affairs landscape more than ever.”
In today’s report on Morning Edition, Manning’s father recalled past pivotal incidents, including pushing his reluctant son to join the Army. The segment includes audio of a 911 call in which Bradley Manning allegedly threatens his stepmother with a knife.