Frontline: The Facebook Dilemma

PBS.org

Frontline SEASON 37: EPISODE 4

The promise of Facebook was to create a more open and connected world. But from the company’s failure to protect millions of users’ data, to the proliferation of “fake news” and disinformation, mounting crises have raised the question: Is Facebook more harmful than helpful? On Monday, Oct. 29, and Tuesday, Oct. 30, 2018, FRONTLINE presents The Facebook Dilemma. This major, two-night event investigates a series of warnings to Facebook as the company grew from Mark Zuckerberg’s Harvard dorm room to a global empire. With dozens of original interviews and rare footage, The Facebook Dilemma examines the powerful social media platform’s impact on privacy and democracy in the U.S. and around the world.

Frontline: Divided States of America

FRONTLINE investigates the partisanship that gridlocked Washington in the Obama era, and the polarized America that Donald Trump inherits as president.

Broadcast Jan 17/18, 2017

4 hours

Watch Online

Frontline: United States of Secrets

Frontline: United States of Secrets
Two-part series airing May 13 & 20, 2014

Press Release
“United States of Secrets”: How the Government Came to Spy on Millions of Americans"
April 24, 2014, 2:20 pm ET

In “United States of Secrets,” a two-part series airing May 13 & 20, FRONTLINE reveals the dramatic inside story of how the U.S. government came to monitor and collect the communications of millions of people around the world—and the lengths they went to trying to hide the massive surveillance program from the public."

When NSA contractor Edward Snowden downloaded tens of thousands of top-secret documents from a highly secure government network, it led to the largest leak of classified information in history — and sparked a fierce debate over privacy, technology and democracy in the post-9/11 world.

Now, in United States of Secrets, FRONTLINE goes behind the headlines to reveal the dramatic inside story of how the U.S. government came to monitor and collect the communications of millions of people around the world—including ordinary Americans—and the lengths they went to trying to hide the massive surveillance program from the public.

Frontline: Generation Like

Generation Like
PBS Frontline
February 18, 2014

Even if we don’t realize it, most of us make decisions about social media every day. In the lead-up to “Generation Like,” FRONTLINE asked you to share how you use social and how it’s affecting your lives.

Frontline: Secrets of the Vatican

Secret's of the Vatican
PBS Frontline
February 25, 2014

Secrets of the Vatican reveals the culture of a Vatican few outsiders have seen, plagued by corruption, cover-ups and ruthless power struggles.

Using undercover footage and interviews with Vatican insiders, as well as abuse victims, whistleblowers, and journalists, Secrets of the Vatican also shows the deep sexual hypocrisy within the Catholic Church and the long legacy of clergy sexual abuse of children.

Frontline: Secret State of North Korea

Secret State of North Korea

January 14, 2014

Just two years on the job and armed with nuclear weapons, North Korea’s Kim Jong-un is the world’s youngest dictator, ruling one of the world’s most isolated countries with an iron fist.

Like his father and grandfather, he is trying to maintain tight control over what the world sees of North Korea—and what North Koreans see of the world. But as FRONTLINE reveals in Secret State of North Korea, cracks are starting to appear in the regime’s information barrier, and it’s becoming more porous.

Not only are North Koreans illegally smuggling information from inside North Korea out, a growing cohort of defectors are risking their lives to get information about the outside world in.

Frontline: The Long Walk of Nelson Mandela

Frontline: The Long Walk of Nelson Mandela

As Nelson Mandela prepared to step down as president of South Africa, FRONTLINE presented a deeply personal biography of one of the great figures of the 20th century.

"The Long Walk of Nelson Mandela" tells the story of the man behind the myth, probing Mandela's character, leadership and life's method through intimate recollections with friends, political allies, adversaries, and his fellow prisoners and jailers on Robben Island where Mandela spent 18 of his 27 prison years.

---

Nelson Mandela 

1918-2013

Frontline - Egypt in Crisis

Egypt in Crisis: The inside story of a revolution gone wrong.

Tuesday, September 17, 2013, at 10 p.m. on PBS

Less than three years after the popular uprising that led to President Hosni Mubarak’s ouster, and just one year after Egypt’s first free and fair elections, the democratically elected government has been overthrown and the Egyptian military is running the state.

And the Muslim Brotherhood—the secretive, long-outlawed Islamist group that came out of the shadows to win the presidency in June 2012—is once again being driven underground, its members killed and arrested in an army-led campaign to wipe it off the map.

Were the Brothers ever really in charge? Or was the Egyptian “deep state”—embedded remnants of Mubarak’s police force, Supreme Court and, most of all, military—in control all along?

In Egypt in Crisis, FRONTLINE goes inside the Egyptian revolution, tracing how what began as a youth movement to topple a dictator evolved into an opportunity for the Muslim Brotherhood to seemingly find the political foothold it had sought for decades—and then why it all fell apart. “This FRONTLINE documentary takes you deep inside these turbulent ups and downs.”

Frontline - The Battle for Syria

In Frontline's two-part special report broadcast Sep 18 2012, The Battle for Syria, FRONTLINE journeys to the heart of the Syrian insurgency, embedding with rebels who are waging a full-scale assault on Assad’s forces. But how organized are Syria’s opposition groups? What dangers might the conflict unleash? And what would it take to end it?

FRONTLINE turned to 10 experts — Syrian activists, journalists who have reported from the country’s dangerous front lines and analysts who specialize in the region — to explain the long-term impacts of Syria’s deadly conflict.

Part 1 - The Battle for Syria

Watch The Battle for Syria on PBS. See more from FRONTLINE.

Part 2 - The Regime Responds

Watch The Regime Responds on PBS. See more from FRONTLINE.

Money, Power and Wall Street
4 hours broadcast on April 24 and May 1 2012, Frontline tells the inside story of the global financial crisis.

The Obama administration arrived in Washington in early 2009 facing the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression - and an American public outraged by bailouts for the financial institutions that had gotten them there. Money, Power and Wall Street gives an inside look at how the Obama administration, including a divided economic team, has handled the crisis and how the financial world has returned to many of the practices that created the meltdown in the first place.

Frontline: Inside Japan's Nuclear Meltdown

Retrospective film almost a year after a tsunami crippled Japan's Fukushima power plant. How a small group of engineers, soldiers and firemen risked their own lives to prevent a complete nuclear meltdown.

Film “a gripping account of a series of potentially catastrophic developments in how the government, plant workers and citizens responded. Describing in detail the days after the earthquake and tsunami from rumors about evacuating Tokyo to a dangerous mission to vent one of the reactors and offers insight into what the workers were thinking during those uncertain hours.

One Year Later, 'Inside Japan's Nuclear Meltdown' (interview)
NPR Fresh Air
February 28, 2012

---

Frontline: Inside Japan's Nuclear Meltdown (film)
February 28, 2012

---

Japan Weighed Evacuating Tokyo in Nuclear Crisis
New York Times
February 27, 2012

Frontline: Nuclear Aftershocks

Frontline: Nuclear Aftershocks
January 17, 2012

Watch Nuclear Aftershocks on PBS. See more from FRONTLINE.

Frontline: The Pot Republic

Frontline: The Pot Republic

A timely report from the frontlines of marijuana legalization in California. The bulk of the marijuana consumed in the United States used to come across the border from Mexico, Canada and elsewhere. Now, more than half of it is believed to be home grown in California, where an enormous black market has emerged under the cover of the state's medical marijuana law. With more than a third of all states now experimenting with some form of legalization and decriminalization -- and several California counties attempting to openly regulate pot production -- FRONTLINE and the Center for Investigative Reporting team up to investigate the country's oldest, largest and most wide-open marijuana market. Is the federal government now moving to shut it down?

Watch the full episode. See more FRONTLINE.

Frontline: The Atomic Artists

Frontline: The Atomic Artists
July 26, 2011

How one group of artists is challenging Japan's unusually strong faith in nuclear power

FRONTLINE journeys with Marco Werman of PRI's The World as he meets Chim-Pom, a provocative group of young artists making headlines as they use art to challenge the status quo in Japan.

"Japanese youth had generally been very apolitical and apathetic" before the March 2011 disaster, says The Atomic Artists producer Emily Taguchi. But things have changed dramatically since then. We talked with Taguchi about this shift, and how one group, the art collective Chim-Pom, is challenging the status quo with their controversial installations.

Watch the full episode. See more FRONTLINE.

Frontline: WikiSecrets

WikiSecrets: The inside story of Bradley Manning, Julian Assange and the largest intelligence breach in U.S. history.

Watch the full episode. See more FRONTLINE.

Frontline: Revolution in Cairo

Watch the full episode. See more FRONTLINE.

Frontline: The Battle for Haiti

Frontline: Battle For Haiti

Can Haiti be rebuilt without the rule of law? A year after the earthquake, a powerful look at the violence threatenin the country's stability .. and future.

Watch the full episode. See more FRONTLINE.

On the night of the earthquake that devastated Haiti last January, something happened in Port au Prince, the capital city, which would threaten the effectiveness of international aid efforts and undermine the country's political stability: 4,500 of the country's most violent criminals escaped from Haiti's overcrowded National Penitentiary.

Now, on the one-year anniversary of the quake -- and in the aftermath of Haitian presidential elections that threatened further crisis -- FRONTLINE presents Battle for Haiti. FRONTLINE producer Dan Reed films with the beleaguered special police units tasked with apprehending the escaped gangsters. At the same time, Reed captures the daily lives of the despairing inhabitants of the slums and tent cities who are often terrorized by these gangsters.

Frontline: God In America

Frontline: God In America, 6 hours over 3 nights, Oct 11-13, 2010

Since the days when the Puritan "city on a hill" beckoned on the horizon of the New World, religious faith and belief have forged America's ideals, molded its identity and shaped its sense of mission at home and abroad.

For the first time on television, God in America explores the tumultuous 400-year history of the intersection of religion and public life in America, from the first European settlements to the 2008 presidential election. A co-production of AMERICAN EXPERIENCE and FRONTLINE, this six-hour series examines how religious dissidents helped shape the American concept of religious liberty and the controversial evolution of that ideal in the nation's courts and political arena; how religious freedom and waves of new immigrants and religious revivals fueled competition in the religious marketplace; how movements for social reform -- from abolition to civil rights -- galvanized men and women to put their faith into political action; and how religious faith influenced conflicts from the American Revolution to the Cold War.

Watch the full episode. See more FRONTLINE.

FRONTLINE: The Quake

The Quake

On air and online Tuesday, March 30, 2010 at 9:00pm (check local listings)

Watch the full episode. See more FRONTLINE.

On January 12, 2010, one of the most devastating earthquakes in recorded history leveled Port-au-Prince, Haiti. Those responsible for handling the catastrophe, including the Haitian government and the United Nations, were amongst the victims and struggled to respond. FRONTLINE correspondent Martin Smith bears witness to the scale of the disaster and examines the ill-coordinated relief efforts. Drawing on interviews with key officials and humanitarian experts from Port-au-Prince to Washington, The Quake asks whether the world can do better. And how?

FRONTLINE: digital nation - life on the virtual frontier

Digital Nation

Tuesday, February 2, 2010

Watch the full episode. See more FRONTLINE.

Over a single generation, the Web and digital media have remade nearly every aspect of modern culture, transforming the way we work, learn and connect in ways that we’re only beginning to understand. FRONTLINE producer Rachel Dretzin (Growing Up Online) teams up with one of the leading thinkers of the digital age, Douglas Rushkoff (The Persuaders, Merchants of Cool), to continue to explore life on the virtual frontier. The film is the product of a unique collaboration with visitors to the Digital Nation Web site, who for the past year have been able to react to the work in progress and post their own stories online. Dretzin and her team report from the front lines of digital culture -- from love affairs blossoming in virtual worlds, to the thoroughly wired classrooms of the future, to military bases where the Air Force is fighting a new form of digital warfare. Along the way, they begin to map the critical ways that technology is transforming us -- and what we may be learning about ourselves in the process.