“We must help rebuild … the faith that most Americans have always had in their future and their ability to share in the American dream,” the filmmaker said in a 1992 keynote at the PBS Annual Meeting.
Programs/Content
Fanning quotes Friendly: public TV’s greatest right is to ‘rock the boat’ with journalism
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In 2011, as partisan critics attacked NPR, Frontline chief David Fanning urged public media to specialize in strong journalism. Fanning, who was accepting Quinnipiac University’s annual Fred Friendly First Amendment Award, quoted the famed CBS News producer: public TV’s “most precious right will be the right to rock the boat.”
Audience
Public affairs: What the invisible hand of the news market leaves all too invisible
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People consuming public affairs coverage because of duty or a fascination with policy create a demand for news with context, details, debate, and reason. But those watching public affairs in search of drama create a demand for covering politics as a horse race or morality tale with winners and sinners.
Programs/Content
Fanning on a ‘big bang’ moment for Frontline: bringing online depth to reporting
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David Fanning, e.p. of Frontline, discussed the WGBH program’s evolving use of the Web Aug. 23, 2010, in accepting the Goldsmith Career Award for Excellence in Journalism at Harvard University’s Joan Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy. At the same time, the Center honored the winner and finalists for the Goldsmith Prize for Investigative Reporting. One of the four finalists was a reporting project, including a Frontline doc, “Law & Disorder.” The film about white vigilante activities in New Orleans was prepared in collaboration with ProPublica, the Nation Institute and the New Orleans Times-Picayne.
Why public media?
David Fanning’s Loper Lecture, 2009
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David Fanning, the founding executive producer of PBS’s Frontline series, gave this talk in 2009 as the annual James L. Loper Lecture in Public Service Broadcasting sponsored by the University of Southern California’s Annenberg Center on Communication Leadership & Policy. Thank you, Geoff Cowan and Dean Wilson, for your kind words, and especially for your invitation to come here to the Annenberg School to give the annual Loper Lecture. This also gives me a chance publicly to thank Jim Loper, for the years of work he gave not just to KCET but as a leader in public broadcasting. It’s an honor to be invited in his name. I would also like to thank Mr. Russell Smith for his sponsorship of this lecture.
Programs/Content
The challenge for public radio: Letting go of our expected future
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The fact that the public radio audience is 82 percent white is a problem when the public we aspire to serve is becoming rapidly more diverse. It is absolutely imperative that we find ways to bring in new voices, and that we resist the urge to apply old filters to new ideas. …
Programs/Content
We’re deep into news — let’s walk that walk
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“Let’s face it,” writes a prominent pubradio station news director, “despite 40 years of evolution, we have produced a lot of journalism, but we still lack full commitment. Especially local news commitment.”
Programs/Content
Good isn’t good enough — our best is ahead
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Public radio is hitting home runs, but it can do better. Producer and StoryCorps founder Dave Isay says public radio is entering its golden age.
Programs/Content
What makes public broadcasting ‘public’ is engagement
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The authors head the Public Media ThinkTank at American University in Washington, D.C. With backing from the Ford Foundation they’re working to distill the means and motives of a broader realm of public media, including public broadcasting. This is one of their first efforts. Public engagement is the semisecret success story of public broadcasting, and it shouldn’t be. The many community partnerships that flourished with public TV’s June broadcast of the special on caregiving for seniors, And Thou Shalt Honor, and the amazing insights that Story Corps brings to public radio shouldn’t be heartwarming, exceptional stories. They should be the norm.
Why public media?
A moral transaction
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This essay appeared in the Washington Post June 21, 2005, after Bill Moyers retired from hosting the PBS weekly public affairs program. I must be the luckiest man in television for having been a part of the public broadcasting community for over half my life. I was present at the creation. As a 30-year-old White House policy assistant in 1964, I attended the first meeting at the Office of Education to discuss the potential of “educational television,” which in turn led to the Public Broadcasting Act of 1967. When I left the White House that year to become publisher of Newsday, I did fundraising chores for Channel Thirteen in New York and appeared on its local newscasts.