PBS Documentary

About the January 2008 Broadcast...

The best news stories connect the dots. Telling the Truth: The Best in Broadcast Journalism, with host Christiane Amanpour, presents a compelling anthology of last year’s outstanding reporting, exploring coverage that brought fresh perspective to critical events and uncovered truth that was sometimes hiding in plain sight. Premiering on PBS stations beginning on Monday, January 28th (check local listings), this annual documentary features journalists honored by the prestigious Alfred I. duPont-Columbia University Awards including excerpts from their award-winning reports.

The news media continue to struggle with covering the complex nexus of terrorism, Middle Eastern politics, the Iraq War, U.S. foreign policy and Islamic belief. Telling the Truth kicks off with analysis of three award-winning reports that each tackled very different aspects of this story last year. Each used a different style of journalism to help the American public get a handle on these overlapping issues.

CBS’s 60 Minutes brought its extensive network news resources to bear on a probing investigation of a scandal involving $800 million that went missing from the Iraqi Defense Ministry. Amanpour interviews 60 Minutes Correspondent Steve Kroft, who describes the painstaking reporting that was necessary to follow a multinational trail of corruption.

Dramatically different coverage of the Iraq War emerged from a freelance reporter named Richard Engel, who created a raw and very personal video diary with a handheld camera. Engel was soon hired as a war reporter for NBC and, ultimately, combined his video diary with his broadcast reports on the realities of the war in Iraq for a one-hour MSNBC special that offered a unique perspective on everyday realities in Baghdad. In Telling the Truth, Amanpour probes Engel’s reasons for sharing his personal life with television audiences.

How Producer Bill Cran covered the ideas that motivate terrorists is the subject of the segment on the PBS documentary Jihad: the Men and Ideas Behind Al Qaeda. Cran traced the philosophical roots of Osama bin Laden’s terrorist network and examined turning points in the interpretation of Islamic theology that have been both the catalyst and the rationale for Islamist terrorism.