FRONTLINE: Film Audio Track | PBS

A firestorm has been raging on many American college campuses. Ignited by the devastating October 2023 Hamas attack on Israel and the catastrophic war in Gaza, the outrage deeply divided American campuses and in some places devolved into hate-filled rhetoric and arrests. FRONTLINE and Retro Report have been following the escalating turmoil since the war began — talking to people on all sides of the divide, investigating how universities have responded, how powerful interests joined the fray, and how the conflict over the conflict ultimately spiraled out of control. From director James Jacoby (Netanyahu, America & the Road to War in Gaza, Amazon Empire, Age of Easy Money) and Retro Report producers Scott Michels and Joseph Hogan, Crisis on Campus examines how the debate over one of the world’s most intractable and complex conflicts has gripped American college campuses.

Transcribed - Published: 13 June 2024

"20 Days in Mariupol" is the the Academy Award®-winning FRONTLINE/AP documentary in which Ukrainian journalist Mstyslav Chernov and his colleagues risk their lives to document Russia's siege of Mariupol. Listen to the enhanced film audio track, with audio descriptions.

Transcribed - Published: 10 May 2024

FRONTLINE and The Associated Press, in collaboration with the Howard Centers for Investigative Journalism, investigate deaths that occurred after police used tactics like prone restraint and other “less-lethal force.” The documentary and accompanying reporting draw on police records, autopsy reports and body cam footage, offering the most expansive tally of such deaths nationwide.

Transcribed - Published: 2 May 2024

As new questions arise about Boeing’s troubled 737 Max jet, FRONTLINE and The New York Times update an award-winning investigation into the design, oversight and production of a plane that was involved in two crashes that killed 346 people.

Transcribed - Published: 15 March 2024

Drawing on real-time, firsthand accounts and using official bodycam and audio, FRONTLINE, ProPublica and The Texas Tribune reconstruct the chaotic response to the Uvalde school shooting and examine the missteps. The documentary delves into the lessons learned and the lingering trauma of that day.

Transcribed - Published: 23 January 2024

An investigation into how a young Air National Guardsman allegedly leaked classified documents on the Discord chat platform. With The Washington Post, FRONTLINE examines Jack Teixeira’s alleged leak of national security secrets, why he wasn’t stopped and the role of platforms like Discord.

Transcribed - Published: 16 January 2024

As the war in Gaza continues with devastating consequences, a major 90-minute documentary offers a sweeping examination of the critical moments leading up to this crisis over the course of the past three decades, and the pivotal role of a central player: Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Starting with the Oslo peace accords and continuing through the Oct. 7 Hamas attack and the ongoing war in Gaza, the documentary draws on years of reporting and is an incisive look at the long history of failed peace efforts and violent conflict in the region — and the increasing tensions between Israel and its ally, the U.S., over the war’s catastrophic toll and what comes next.

Transcribed - Published: 9 January 2024

Listen to the FRONTLINE Film Audio Track for the 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.

Transcribed - Published: 9 November 2023

FRONTLINE traces Elon Musk's long and often troubled relationship with Twitter.

Transcribed - Published: 1 November 2023

FRONTLINE examines the Houston Astros cheating scandal and what it says about baseball today. With reporter Ben Reiter, the documentary traces the making of one of the best teams and worst scandals in modern Major League Baseball history, the limited accountability and how the Astros’ approach to baseball changed the sport.

Transcribed - Published: 20 October 2023

"Two Strikes," a film produced with The Marshall Project as part of FRONTLINE’s fellowship with Firelight Media, examines the impact of a little-known “two-strikes” law. "Tutwiler," a documentary short from FRONTLINE and The Marshall Project, offers a powerful and unforgettable window into the lives of incarcerated pregnant women — and what happens to their newborns.

Transcribed - Published: 12 September 2023

In light of recent events in Israel, revisit this 2016 examination of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s political rise and his relationship with the U.S.

Transcribed - Published: 18 August 2023

A year after the Uvalde school shooting, FRONTLINE, Futuro Investigates and The Texas Tribune document the community’s trauma and the fight over assault rifles. Journalist Maria Hinojosa examines the police response, Uvalde’s history of struggle and its efforts to heal.

Transcribed - Published: 14 June 2023

As controversy erupts around Clarence and Ginni Thomas, FRONTLINE tells the inside story of their path to power. This investigation traces how race, power and controversy collide in the rise of the Supreme Court justice and his wife and how the couple has reshaped American law and politics.

Transcribed - Published: 14 June 2023

How did Michael Flynn go from being an elite soldier overseas to waging a “spiritual war” in America?

Transcribed - Published: 10 November 2022

Ahead of the 2022 midterms, FRONTLINE investigates American political leaders and choices they’ve made that have undermined and threatened democracy in the U.S.

Transcribed - Published: 9 September 2022

Who killed Wharlest Jackson Sr.? In investigating the unsolved 1967 murder of a local NAACP leader, "American Reckoning" reveals an untold story of the civil rights movement and Black resistance. The feature-length documentary from FRONTLINE and Retro Report, with support from Chasing the Dream, draws on rarely seen footage filmed by Ed Pincus and David Neuman more than 50 years ago in Natchez, Mississippi, and made available through the Amistad Research Center. In following the Jackson family’s search for answers, "American Reckoning" also taps into the groundbreaking reporting of journalist Stanley Nelson, who investigated allegations of the involvement of a Ku Klux Klan offshoot, known as the Silver Dollar Group. From acclaimed directors, producers and journalists Brad Lichtenstein ("When Claude Got Shot," "As Goes Janesville") and Yoruba Richen ("The Killing of Breonna Taylor," "The Sit In: Harry Belafonte Hosts the Tonight Show"), "American Reckoning" is the latest component of FRONTLINE’s multiplatform initiative "Un(re)solved," telling the stories of more than 150 victims of civil rights era killings for whom there has been no justice.

Transcribed - Published: 22 June 2022

FRONTLINE and Pulitzer Prize-winning reporters from our local journalism partner Star Tribune examine one of the most pivotal events in the history of race and policing in America. "Police on Trial" draws on unique on-the-ground reporting and filming, from the earliest days after George Floyd’s death, to documenting the trial and murder conviction of former police officer Derek Chauvin, to ongoing struggles for police accountability and reform in Minneapolis.

Transcribed - Published: 22 June 2022

In an epic three-part documentary series, FRONTLINE investigates the decades-long failure to confront the threat of climate change and the role of the fossil fuel industry. As leading climate scientists issue new warnings about climate change, Part Three examines how the fossil fuel industry worked to delay the transition to renewable energy sources — including by promoting natural gas as a cleaner alternative.

Transcribed - Published: 13 May 2022

In an epic three-part documentary series, FRONTLINE investigates the decades-long failure to confront the threat of climate change and the role of the fossil fuel industry. Part Two explores the industry’s efforts to stall climate policy, even as evidence about climate change grew more certain in the new millennium.

Transcribed - Published: 13 May 2022

In an epic three-part documentary series, FRONTLINE investigates the decades-long failure to confront the threat of climate change and the role of the fossil fuel industry. Part One charts the fossil fuel industry’s early research on climate change and investigates industry efforts to sow seeds of doubt about the science.

Transcribed - Published: 13 May 2022

In a new investigative collaboration, FRONTLINE and ProPublica trace the hidden sources of misinformation about the 2020 election, demonstrating how a handful of people have had an outsized impact on the current U.S. crisis of democratic legitimacy.

Transcribed - Published: 1 April 2022

An examination of the powerful and polarizing Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives Nancy Pelosi.

Transcribed - Published: 1 April 2022

Amid record police shootings in Utah, an investigation into the use of deadly force in the state. With local journalism partner The Salt Lake Tribune, FRONTLINE examines police training, tactics and accountability, as well as racial disparities in the way force is used.

Transcribed - Published: 2 December 2021

A massive leak of financial documents reveals hidden assets and deals of the world’s wealthy and powerful. With the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, FRONTLINE examines secret finance overseas and in the U.S.

Transcribed - Published: 15 November 2021

When COVID-19 struck, the Federal Reserve stepped in to try to avert economic crisis. As the country’s central bank continues to pump billions of dollars into the financial system daily, who is benefiting and at what cost?

Transcribed - Published: 20 September 2021

In an investigation with The New York Times, FRONTLINE examines the commercial pressures, flawed design and failed oversight behind Boeing’s 737 Max jet and the crashes that killed 346 people.

Transcribed - Published: 20 September 2021

"America After 9/11" traces the U.S. response to the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks and the devastating consequences that unfolded across four presidencies. This two-hour special offers an epic re-examination of the decisions that changed the world and transformed America. From the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq to the January 6 insurrection, "America After 9/11" exposes the legacy of September 11 — and the ongoing challenge it poses for the president and the country.

Transcribed - Published: 15 September 2021

Un(re)solved is an investigative podcast series and part of a multiplatform project from FRONTLINE. What prompted the U.S. Department of Justice to investigate over 150 unsolved civil rights era killings? And what does justice look like for the families of the victims? Reporter James Edwards seeks answers to these questions, reflecting on his own family’s experiences along the way.

Transcribed - Published: 18 June 2021

A co-production between FRONTLINE, Firelight Media and WORLD Channel, Death Is Our Business examines in intimate and moving detail how Black funeral homes in New Orleans have had to adapt to the devastating impact of COVID-19 in their community. While revealing the racial disparities of the virus’ toll, award-winning filmmaker Jacqueline Olive shines a light on how the coronavirus has rocked the Black community’s cherished cultural practices in a city that is no stranger to loss and grief.

Transcribed - Published: 25 March 2021

As America chooses its next president in the midst of a historic pandemic, FRONTLINE investigates whose vote counts — and whose might not. With Columbia Journalism Investigations and reporters from the USA TODAY NETWORK, New Yorker writer Jelani Cobb reports on allegations of voter disenfranchisement, how unfounded claims of extensive voter fraud entered the political mainstream, rhetoric and realities around mail-in ballots, and how the pandemic could impact turnout.

Transcribed - Published: 17 February 2021

I’m Not A Monster is a new multi-part investigative series from FRONTLINE, BBC Sounds, and BBC Panorama. FRONTLINE is featuring the first few episodes of the series here for listeners of FRONTLINE Film Audio Track. In episode 3, the Islamic State group forces Sam’s son Matthew to spread its propaganda. Josh searches the woods of Idaho looking for a man on an elk hunt. Then an obscure tweet leads him to Syria to try to find the family.

Transcribed - Published: 14 December 2020

I’m Not A Monster is a new multi-part investigative series from FRONTLINE, BBC Sounds, and BBC Panorama. FRONTLINE is featuring the first few episodes of the series here for listeners of The FRONTLINE Dispatch. In episode 2, a man who says he’s a people smuggler offers to help the family, while a drive around a suburb in Indiana reveals their past. Sam’s father adds a new twist on who his daughter really is.

Transcribed - Published: 10 December 2020

I'm Not A Monster is a new multi-part podcast series from FRONTLINE, BBC Sounds, and BBC Panorama. For the past four years, journalist Josh Baker has been trying to uncover the truth about an American family’s journey from Indiana to the Islamic State group’s caliphate and back. In episode 1, a suicide bombing in Iraq and a home video from inside the ISIS caliphate begin the search for a family trapped in Syria. A desperate plea arrives from an American woman who says she wants to escape the Islamic State group with her young children.

Transcribed - Published: 7 December 2020

With Justice Amy Coney Barrett’s confirmation to the U.S. Supreme Court days before the 2020 presidential election, Sen. Mitch McConnell solidified the conservative majority he had been seeking for decades. FRONTLINE tells the inside story of McConnell’s hard-fought effort to transform the nation’s highest court in “Supreme Revenge: Battle for the Court,” an updated version of our 2019 film.

Transcribed - Published: 2 December 2020

From the pandemic to the polls, 2020 has been a time of tumult across a deeply divided America. FRONTLINE presents a post-election special on the lives, fears and hopes of Americans in the chaotic months leading up to the historic presidential contest. This documentary was filmed around the U.S. for much of the year, following Americans as they dealt with COVID-19 in their communities this spring, responded to George Floyd’s killing this summer, and then experienced the polarizing election and its aftermath this fall.

Transcribed - Published: 2 December 2020

Why was the United States left scrambling for critical medical equipment as the coronavirus swept the country? With the Associated Press and Global Reporting Centre, FRONTLINE investigates the fragmented global medical supply chain and its deadly consequences. Teachers can find curricular materials and sign up for interactive learning experiences related to this documentary at pulitzercenter.org/USMedicalSupplyCrisis.

Transcribed - Published: 29 October 2020

In the midst of the historic coronavirus pandemic, economic hardship and a reckoning over racism, this November Americans will decide who leads the nation for the next four years: President Donald Trump or former Vice President Joe Biden. Ahead of the 2020 election, FRONTLINE’s critically acclaimed series “The Choice” returns with interwoven investigative biographies of both men, focusing on how they have responded in moments of crisis. In this 2-hour special from veteran FRONTLINE filmmaker Michael Kirk and his team, hear from friends, family, colleagues and adversaries about the challenges that shaped Trump and Biden’s lives and could inform how they confront the crises facing the nation at this pivotal juncture.

Transcribed - Published: 25 September 2020

George Floyd’s killing triggered mass demonstrations nationwide calling for racial justice and police accountability in the United States. In the wake of those protests, New Yorker writer and historian Jelani Cobb returns to a troubled police department he first visited four years ago (Policing the Police) to examine whether reform can work, and how police departments can be held accountable.

Transcribed - Published: 25 September 2020

Their families were already struggling to make ends meet. Then came the coronavirus. Director Jezza Neumann, who made 2012’s Poor Kids, once again delves into how poverty impacts children. With the 2020 election approaching, Growing Up Poor in America follows three children and their families in the battleground state of Ohio as the COVID-19 pandemic amplifies their struggle to stay afloat. As the country also reckons with issues of race and racism, the children share their worries and hopes about their futures.

Transcribed - Published: 25 September 2020

They’ve been keeping America fed throughout the pandemic — and they say they’ve had to choose between their health and their jobs. For the essential agriculture workers who pick and process the food we eat, many of them undocumented immigrants, COVID-19 is amplifying existing challenges. Journalists Daffodil Altan and Andrés Cediel discuss what their reporting for FRONTLINE shows about the virus’s toll on workers at farms and meatpacking plants, the lack of federally required COVID-19 protections for agriculture workers, and why workers who are undocumented have been fearful to speak out: “Even if you’re called essential, you can still potentially be deported.” For more, watch COVID’s Hidden Toll — the latest installment in FRONTLINE’s award-winning body of work exposing the hidden realities facing low-wage immigrant workers in the U.S. (Rape in the Fields, Rape on the Night Shift, Trafficked in America). The documentary is supported by Chasing the Dream.

Transcribed - Published: 22 July 2020

As COVID-19 spread from Asia to the Middle East to Europe, why was the U.S. caught so unprepared? Despite repeated warnings of a potent contagion headed our way, America’s leaders failed to prepare and protect us. Why and who is accountable?

Transcribed - Published: 10 July 2020

How a drug company made millions pushing an opioid painkiller up to 100x stronger than heroin, as many on Wall Street looked the other way. FRONTLINE filmmaker Tom Jennings and Financial Times reporter Hannah Kuchler discuss their new investigation of Insys Therapeutics — from a jaw-dropping interview with a former sales director who admits to bribing doctors to prescribe the highly addictive drug Subsys, to how Wall Street propelled Insys’ success even as questions emerged about its practices, to what role drug companies’ pursuit of profits has played in the opioid crisis: “I think that it's really interesting just how people are able to disconnect their actions from the consequences, especially in business,” Kuchler says. With federal prosecutors using laws designed to catch mob bosses, Insys would ultimately become the first pharmaceutical company to have its top executives sentenced to prison time in connection with the opioid epidemic. For more on Insys’ spectacular rise and fall — and its consequences — watch the documentary Opioids, Inc. from FRONTLINE and the FT, and read our in-depth joint reporting — also available at ft.com/insys.

Transcribed - Published: 23 June 2020

Days before an expected verdict in her trial, Philippine journalist Maria Ressa speaks out about reporting on President Rodrigo Duterte’s brutal drug war — and then becoming a high-profile target of his government’s crackdown on the press. As she faces potential prison time on cyber libel charges, the co-founder and CEO of the independent Philippine news site Rappler tells FRONTLINE how she’s preparing, discusses her reporting on Duterte, and says that her conviction about what she does is undaunted: “All it has done is to make us stronger in our intent to continue to hold government to account…” For more on Duterte’s drug war, watch FRONTLINE’s On the President’s Orders. And for more from Ressa, read FRONTLINE’s interview with her for The Facebook Dilemma, in which she discusses her reporting on how Duterte weaponized the platform to target his critics and spread disinformation. Plus: Stay tuned for the forthcoming documentary A Thousand Cuts, featuring Ressa’s story, which will see a summer theatrical release and a fall FRONTLINE broadcast.

Transcribed - Published: 12 June 2020

As streets across America erupt into clashes over racism during the coronavirus pandemic, Jelani Cobb of The New Yorker examines a connection between George Floyd’s death and the disproportionate impact of COVID-19 deaths among African Americans: “the thing that ties them together is empirical evidence of a phenomenon that had been dismissed otherwise.” Cobb describes how the relationship between black Americans and the police has become a “barometer” for race relations in the country, drawing on his years of covering explosive tensions that he says are “overwhelmingly” in response to an issue of police use of force. “…Once you looked at the way that policing functioned, it was almost an indicator of the way lots of other institutions were functioning in those communities.” And yet, he says that this time — as the nation battles a highly infectious outbreak — the outrage is spreading in a way that seems different. For more from Jelani Cobb and FRONTLINE, watch 2016’s “Policing the Police”: now streaming on YouTube, on the PBS Video App and online.

Transcribed - Published: 2 June 2020

As COVID-19 has spread, so, too, have misinformation and conspiracy theories about the virus — amplified by figures like Alex Jones, and proliferating on social media and even at the highest levels of government. Veteran FRONTLINE filmmaker Michael Kirk, who was already making a documentary about the rise of conspiracy theories in American politics when the pandemic hit, shares what he’s learned about how such theories have become central to understanding the nation’s response to the coronavirus outbreak. “There's been a concerted effort, now that everything is moved from the fringe to the center, to knock down knowledge-based information,” Michael says. “And all of a sudden, a large number of Americans simply do not believe what they're being told. And that's where we find ourselves now.”

Transcribed - Published: 28 May 2020

In the Bronx, as the coronavirus is disproportionately killing black and Latino people, COVID-19 is swelling the ranks of the dead — and also upending how loved ones grieve. Reporter Anjali Tsui goes inside a family-owned funeral home in the NYC borough to discover the outbreak's toll on the community. As one grieving woman reflects, "When people die, they need to be celebrated and there is no celebration of life right now. It’s like people are just disappearing."

Transcribed - Published: 17 May 2020

As COVID-19 ran rampant through the adult care facility, family members struggled to learn the truth of how the coronavirus outbreak was hitting their loved ones. Reporter Joaquin Sapien takes us inside the story of a daughter’s midnight rescue of her father from Queens Adult Care Center, which he says is in an area that became “the epicenter of the epicenter” of the outbreak in New York. Natasha Roland describes rushing her father from the facility to a hospital, where he tested positive for COVID-19 — though not long before she'd been told he was safe and that the center had no cases. The Queens Adult Care Center, for its part, disputes Roland's account, and says it has taken "extensive precautions to ensure the well-being of each of its residents and employees." Listen to the full story.Queens Adult Care Center was the subject of a story and short film co-published by FRONTLINE and ProPublica in April 2020. Read and watch HERE. Sapien first encountered the facility in reporting he did for FRONTLINE and ProPublica’s 2019 documentary,Right to Fail. Now streaming on the PBS Video App and online.

Transcribed - Published: 2 May 2020

How did the U.S. become the country with the worst known coronavirus outbreak in the world? FRONTLINE investigates the American response to COVID-19 — from Washington state to Washington, D.C. — and examines what happens when politics and science collide.

Transcribed - Published: 27 April 2020

What the feud between President Trump and Washington Gov. Inslee reveals about federal-state tensions in the coronavirus fight. In his conversation with Gov. Inslee, FRONTLINE correspondent Miles O’Brien discovers that “what should be a partnership with the federal government is like this hostile relationship.” Inslee describes a scenario in which states are left competing with each other for scarce resources: “We are searching the world for every potential warehouse that has any of this personal protective equipment… and states are bidding against one another,” he tells O’Brien. “It would be much more efficient, economically and otherwise, if the federal government was playing a more vigorous role.” Listen to the podcast now, and stay tuned for O’Brien’s documentary Coronavirus Pandemic, premiering April 21, which explores the differing responses to the coronavirus outbreak in Washington D.C. and Washington State — where the first known U.S. case of COVID-19 was detected.

Transcribed - Published: 18 April 2020