David Fanning (journalist)

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David Fanning
Filmmaker
TitleExecutive producer, Frontline 1983–2015 now at large
SpouseRenata Simone

David E. Fanning (born 25 May 1946) is a

Frontline since its first season in 1983 to his retirement in 2015. He has won eight Emmy Awards and in 2013 received a Lifetime Achievement Emmy in honor of his work.[1][2]

Career

He began his filmmaking career as a young journalist in South Africa. His first films, Amabandla AmaAfrika, directed alongside BBC Journalist, Francois Marais (1970) and The Church and Apartheid (1972), produced for BBC-TV, dealt with race and religion in his troubled homeland. He came to the U.S. in 1973 and began producing and directing local and national documentaries for

Emmy Award
for best investigative documentary.

In 1982, Fanning began the development of Frontline. The series has worked with well over 200 producers and as many journalists, covering a wide range of domestic and foreign stories. Its signature has been to combine good reporting with good filmmaking.

With Fanning's encouragement, one of Frontline's singular achievements has been its embrace of the Internet. In 1995, Frontline developed one of the first deep content web sites in history. By putting interviews, documents and additional editorial materials on the web, the series made its journalism transparent, and changed the nature and content of broadcast journalism. Rather than an ephemeral one-time transmission, the documentaries and all their ancillary materials are now preserved on the series website. In 2013, there are over 150 hours of full-length documentaries streamed on the series website, one of the largest sites of its kind. Fanning is quoted saying, "This is the great promise of public media. This is where we hold our work for the future, our public library, our contribution to the intellectual commons."

In 2001, Fanning's determination to bring more foreign stories to American audiences led to the creation of

Frontline/World, a television magazine-style series of programs designed to encourage a new, younger generation of producers and reporters. The emphasis has been on bringing a largely unreported world to viewers through a series of journeys and encounters. Like its counterpart series, Frontline/World has made a deep commitment to its website
, offering original web-exclusive video and reporting by graduate journalism students and an international network of correspondents. Fanning sees it as a prototype for the future, and a place to build a community of enterprising journalists.

In 2015, Fanning retired as executive producer of Frontline after 33 seasons. He's now at large and the current executive producer is Raney Aronson-Rath.[4]

Awards and honors

In 2004, Fanning received the Columbia Journalism Award, the highest honor awarded by the faculty of the

Harvard Kennedy School
.

In 2013, on Frontline's 30th anniversary, Fanning received a Lifetime Achievement Emmy Award.

In 2022, he received a

Peabody Award for his work as an executive producer for the documentary The Power of Big Oil
.

References

  1. ^ Taddonio, Patrice (9 July 2013). "FRONTLINE's David Fanning to Receive Lifetime Achievement Emmy". PBS. Retrieved 14 July 2015.
  2. ^ Ng, Philiana (13 July 2015). "CBS, PBS Lead News and Documentary Emmy Award Nominees". The Hollywood Reporter. Retrieved 14 July 2015.
  3. ^ Marty Kaiser (17 December 2012), FRANK TERPIL - CONFESSIONS OF A DANGEROUS MAN, retrieved 3 January 2018
  4. Boston Globe
    . Retrieved 14 July 2015.
  5. ^ "Executive Producer David Fanning". PBS Frontline. 31 August 2011. Retrieved 27 February 2013.

External links

As of 17 April 2013, this article is derived in whole or in part from Public Broadcasting Service (PBS). The copyright holder has licensed the content in a manner that permits reuse under

CC BY-SA 3.0 and GFDL. All relevant terms must be followed. The original text was at "Executive Producer David Fanning"

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