
David Fanning
Production
Biography
David Fanning has been executive producer of Frontline , America’s only regularly scheduled investigative documentary series on television, since its first season in 1983. The series has won all the major awards for broadcast journalism, including 34 Emmys, 23 duPont-Columbia University Awards, 12 Peabody Awards, and 11 Robert F. Kennedy Journalism Awards. In 2002, the series was honored with an unprecedented third Gold Baton from duPont-Columbia for its post September 11th coverage, a series of seven hour-long documentaries on the origins and impact of terrorism. In 2003, “A Dangerous Business,” a Frontline / New York Times joint investigation of the cast-iron pipe making industry, won the Pulitzer Prize for public service. Fanning began his filmmaking career as a young journalist in South Africa. He came to the US in 1973 and began producing and directing local and national documentaries for KOCE, a public television station in California. In 1977, Fanning came to WGBH Boston to start the international documentary series WORLD.
Known For

Since it began in 1983, Frontline has been airing public-affairs documentaries that explore a wide scope of the complex human experience. Frontline's goal is to extend the impact of the documentary beyond its initial broadcast by serving as a catalyst for change.
Frontline

Construction company owner John Matthews learns that his estranged son, Jason, has been arrested for drug trafficking. Facing an unjust prison sentence for a first time offender courtesy of mandatory minimum sentence laws, Jason has nothing to offer for leniency in good conscience. Desperately, John convinces the DEA and the opportunistic DA Joanne Keeghan to let him go undercover to help make arrests big enough to free his son in return. With the unwitting help of an ex-con employee, John enters the narcotics underworld where every move could be his last in an operation that will demand all his resources, wits and courage to survive.
Snitch

A deep look into the growing divide in America from the Barack Obama era through the presidency of Donald Trump.
America's Great Divide: From Obama to Trump

A counselor, an expert on depression, and two attorneys try to help a couple who have marital problems.
Speaking of Sex

Bitter Rivals illuminates the essential history - and profound ripple effect - of Iran and Saudi Arabia's power struggle. It draws on scores of interviews with political, religious and military leaders, militia commanders, diplomats, and policy experts, painting American television's most comprehensive picture of a feud that has reshaped the Middle East.
Bitter Rivals: Iran and Saudi Arabia

The dramatic story of a Gitmo detainee released from the controversial U.S. prison after 14 years. With NPR, a report on the struggle over freeing prisoners once deemed international terrorists. Also, the untold history of the Guantanamo Bay prison.
Out of Gitmo

After a quarter-century of political denial and social stigma, of stunning scientific breakthroughs, bitter policy battles and inadequate prevention campaigns, HIV/AIDS continues to spread rapidly throughout much of the world. Through interviews with AIDS researchers, world leaders, activists, and patients, FRONTLINE investigates the science, politics, and human cost of this fateful disease and asks: What are the lessons of the past, and what can be done to stop AIDS?
The Age of AIDS

Events that led to the largest government bailout in U.S. history.
Money, Power & Wall Street

FRONTLINE and NPR investigate the growing inequities in American healthcare exposed by COVID-19. The Healthcare Divide examines how pressure to increase profits and uneven government support are widening the divide between rich and poor hospitals, endangering care for low-income populations.
The Healthcare Divide

FRONTLINE and ProPublica go inside Europe’s fight against terrorism — the missed warnings and the lingering vulnerabilities.
Terror in Europe

In May 1998, a year before the massacre at Columbine High, 15-year-old Kip Kinkel murdered his mother and father, and then opened fire at Thurston High School in Springfield, Oregon, killing two fellow students and wounding 25 others. In this first in-depth television examination of a school shooter, FRONTLINE reveals the intimate inside story of how the “shy and likeable” Kip Kinkel from a solid middle-class family became the boy police call “a cold-hearted killer.”
The Killer at Thurston High

Civilians, journalists and soldiers from both sides of the conflict explain their experience during the Iraq War, from the 2003 invasion through the 17 years that followed. Edited version from "Once Upon a Time in Iraq" (2020)
Once Upon a Time in Iraq

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.
Inside the Uvalde Response

Described by some military commanders as the deadliest urban combat since World War II, the battle to drive ISIS out of Mosul as the terror group held civilians captive there was brutal and grueling. Shot over the course of the entire nine-month fight, this vivid documentary follows the experiences of four young soldiers in a team of Iraqi Special Forces tasked with leading the battle.
Mosul

Outlawed in Pakistan tells the story of Kainat Soomro as she takes her rape case to Pakistan's deeply flawed court system in hopes of getting justice. The 13-year-old Kainat accuses four men of gang rape and shortly after is ordered to be killed by her village elders. Spanning over five years, the story is told through the perspective of Kainat and the four men accused of her rape.
Outlawed in Pakistan

Investigating deadly truck accidents and the fight over measures that could save lives.
America's Dangerous Trucks
In a 2012 joint investigation by FRONTLINE and the Center for Public Integrity, correspondent Miles O’Brien uncovers the shocking consequences of a broken dental care system. Poor children, entitled by law to dental care, often cannot find a dentist willing to see them. Others kids receive excessive care billed to Medicaid, or major surgery for preventable tooth infections. For adults with dental disease, the situation can be just as dire and bankrupting. While millions of Americans use emergency rooms for dental care, corporate dental chains are filling the gaps in care, and in some cases have allegedly overcharged patients or loaded them with high priced credit card debt.
Dollars and Dentists

A documentary exploring how artificial intelligence is changing life as we know it — from jobs to privacy to a growing rivalry between the U.S. and China. FRONTLINE investigates the promise and perils of AI and automation, tracing a new industrial revolution that will reshape and disrupt our world, and allow the emergence of a surveillance society.
In the Age of AI

FRONTLINE and The Wall Street Journal investigate the decades-long failure to stop a government doctor accused of sexually abusing Native American boys for years, and examine how he moved from reservation to reservation despite warnings.
Predator on the Reservation

From veteran FRONTLINE filmmaker and chronicler of U.S. politics Michael Kirk and his team, this documentary traces the U.S. response to the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks and the devastating consequences that unfolded across four presidencies. Drawing on both new interviews and those from the dozens of documentaries Kirk and his award-winning team made in the years after 9/11, 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.