“The incentive structures in the worlds of politics and news media… are geared towards division and not just division, but demonizing people. And it's very dangerous. It has already resulted in loss of life.”
-CNN’s Jake Tapper
Jake Tapper is the CNN Chief Washington Correspondent, anchor of The Lead with Jake Tapper, and co-host of the Sunday morning public affairs program State of the Union. In 2023, he was part of the team that won a duPont-Columbia award for their coverage of the conflict in Ukraine. He also hosted the awards at Columbia University in 2018.
In this episode, Tapper sits down with Columbia Journalism School’s Dean Jelani Cobb to reminisce about their longstanding friendship and talk about the extraordinary state of American politics. including how journalists should report on figures like Trump.
“People are often surprised when they watch the film and they realize that it's sort of a dark comedy. It's a funny movie. He's a funny guy.”
“Navalny” follows Alexei Navalny, his team and his family as he investigates his own poisoning, and heads back to Russia to meet his fate. Director Daniel Roher explains how he built a relationship with Russia’s most prominent opposition leader.
“When we were in the back of a van crossing Hungary to Vienna, the driver was drunk and all the smugglers had AK-47s... and I remember my cousin looking at me like, I hope you're not filming. But I was secretly holding the camera.”
Exodus’ subject Hassan Akkad on filming himself, and Director James Bluemel on collecting these important stories.
“I don't want to have my chain yanked. I do not want to report on things in the news because a bad faith actor is driving me to do that. I do not play requests.’”
– Rachel Maddow
2020 duPont-Columbia Award winner and MSNBC host Rachel Maddow talks to Dean Jelani Cobb about the urgency of reporting on the 2024 Presidential election. She also shares advice to young journalists and her take on the state of journalism today.
“If we're not looking at these issues and understanding them for what they actually are - not just what we hope they are - I don't see much of a bright future, for my kids or anybody else's.”
—Evan Simon, ABC News Producer
Ever wonder if your plastic really gets recycled when you throw it in that bin? Lisa Cohen and Abi Wright speak to ABC News’ Chief National Correspondent Matt Gutman, and his producing team to hear how they tracked their own plastic bags, with surprising results.
“It is easier than it's ever been in the history of human civilization to get your work in print, on the air, on the web. And that is just an amazing opportunity that frankly no other generation before you has had - so have at it.”
- HBO Real Sports’ David Scott’s advice to young journalists
We revisit duPont-Columbia Awards Winner David Scott’s interview to mark the end of an era - 29 seasons of the groundbreaking “Real Sports with Bryant Gumbel," a hard-hitting magazine show that looked at sports from the complex lens of power, culture, and human rights.
“These were just ordinary women turned outlaws.” - Director Tia Lessin
Directors of the 2023 DuPont award-winning film ‘The Janes’, Emma Pildes and Tia Lessin join journalist and J School Adjunct Professor Jessica Bruder for a lively conversation about their film that deep dives into an historic underground service for women seeking safe, affordable, illegal abortions, in the 60s and 70s.
“The incentive structures in the worlds of politics and news media… are geared towards division and not just division, but demonizing people. And it's very dangerous. It has already resulted in loss of life.”
-CNN’s Jake Tapper
Jake Tapper is the CNN Chief Washington Correspondent, anchor of The Lead with Jake Tapper, and co-host of the Sunday morning public affairs program State of the Union. In 2023, he was part of the team that won a duPont-Columbia award for their coverage of the conflict in Ukraine. He also hosted the awards at Columbia University in 2018.
In this episode, Tapper sits down with Columbia Journalism School’s Dean Jelani Cobb to reminisce about their longstanding friendship and talk about the extraordinary state of American politics. including how journalists should report on figures like Trump.
“Maybe the whole art of being a journalist, is being defenseless…you have to be willing to be injured by what you see and somehow convey that..but also not to not to let that injury get in the way of seeing.”
–Journalist Masha Gessen
Masha Gessen is an award-winning journalist and author who received the 2022 John Chancellor Award for Excellence in Journalism, honoring their decades-long career. They have covered topics such as Putin, Trump, L.G.B.T.Q rights, and most recently, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
In this episode, Gessen joins fellow New Yorker staff writer and Columbia Journalism School’s Dean Jelani Cobb to discuss the path that led them to become an essential voice highlighting some of the most vital and pressing issues facing Russia, the US, and beyond.
“I respect the Boy Scouts. I respect what they were founded on. But there was a really dark side and no one was talking about it.”
–Leave No Trace Director Irene Taylor
“Leave No Trace” is a 2023 duPont-Columbia Award winning documentary that exposes the stunning history of sexual abuse faced by over 80,000 young men and its subsequent cover up by The Boy Scouts of America. The film highlights the voices of six men and boys, who bravely share their stories and hold power to account.
Director Irene Taylor talks about the relentless way her team took on an “All-American” institution and the sensitive way they approached its survivors.
“We all understand just how easily history is forgotten. And this history is being actively destroyed.”
–Podcast Host Connie Walker
“Stolen: Surviving St. Michael’s” is a 2023 duPont-winning series that uncovers the horrific abuse many young indigenous children–including the reporter’s own family–faced at a Canadian residential school.
Host and investigative journalist Connie Walker talks about the ethics of making public long buried stories of sexual abuse, highlighting indigenous voices and her own personal stake in this impactful podcast.
“They had told the story of how Tamika died, but not how she lived.”
—Podcast Producer Erika Alexander
“Finding Tamika” is the 2023 duPont-winning Audible series about Tamika Huston, a Black woman who went missing in 2004. The media paid scant attention, and she became a rallying cry for missing Black women and girls. But who was she outside of this tragedy?
Podcast producer Erika Alexander tells us why finding the real Tamika behind the crime statistic is so important, and how journalists need to do a better job of telling these stories.
“People are often surprised when they watch the film and they realize that it's sort of a dark comedy. It's a funny movie. He's a funny guy.”
“Navalny” follows Alexei Navalny, his team and his family as he investigates his own poisoning, and heads back to Russia to meet his fate. Director Daniel Roher explains how he built a relationship with Russia’s most prominent opposition leader.
“I've seen officers lie in reports or stretching the truth - that's not new - but to entirely make something up completely and unequivocally, that just was really disturbing”.
- Dave Biscobing, ABC15 Chief Investigative Reporter
Dave Biscobing’s investigations of the Phoenix police department exposed both dishonest officers lying on the witness stand and outrageous accusations fabricated against Black Lives Matters protestors. Tune in to learn what he found, and how he found it.
“We knew it was important to let the cameras continue to roll live. But I'll be honest, we were nervous about where this was going to go when we saw those armored vehicles show up.”
— VP of News Stephanie Adrouny, NBC Bay Area
The 2022 duPont-winning documentary “The Moms of Magnolia Street” follows three mothers who protest Oakland’s affordable housing crisis by illegally occupying a vacant home. Tune in as NBC Bay Area documentarians talk about following along from defiant start to explosive finish.
“We understood the magnitude of the event fairly early on and the need to start collecting evidence…That's how we think of this. As evidence, not just cover or B-roll.”
— New York Times Visual Investigations Lead Malachy Browne on the January 6 Capitol riots.
“Day of Rage” is a New York Times visual investigation of the January 6th attack on the U.S. Capitol. Co-director Malachy Browne explains what it was like to organize and dissect thousands of hours of footage from “one of the most documented acts of political violence ever.”
In 2019, This American Life founder, host, and producer Ira Glass gave his special brand of insight into how he crafts “This American Life,” from story inception, to reporting, writing, and production. We revisit his preeminent editorial style that paved the way for generations of narrative docu-style podcasters.
“I felt like I don't have to tell you how brutal racial capitalism is in the United States if I am showing you. I wanted capitalism to indict itself in the film.”
--- director and producer Loira Limbal
In her 2022 duPont Award-winning documentary “Through the Night,” filmmaker Loira Limbal intimately captured the burdens on working mothers and puts a mirror to America’s daycare system, reflecting back the darker sides of capitalism.
“Finding people who praise the government is easy. Finding people who are critical of the government is easy. What is the most difficult is convincing some people who are ordinary citizens who have information to come out and speak up. ”
--- director and producer Nanfu Wang
Filmmaker Nanfu Wang assumed a risk few dared during the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic in China. In her 2022 duPont Award-winning documentary, “In the Same Breath,” Wang and her team take their cameras into Wuhan’s hospitals to reveal the disparities between the devastating reality of the pandemic versus the rosy depiction Chinese officials painted for the masses. She details the logistical and emotional difficulties of creating such a film inside an authoritarian country on strict crackdown against freedom of speech – all amid a deadly pandemic.
“For those of us that are in civilian life, if you were a victim of abuse or harassment, you would go to the police, right? In the military, it's handled internally…it's like a family. It's very difficult for the commander who is a parent to then want to kick a child out of the military for something they've done.”
--- CBS News Managing Editor and Anchor Norah O’Donnell
CBS News Anchor, reporter, and editor Norah O’Donnell exposes gross mishandling of sexual assault cases inside the U.S. military, in her 2022 duPont-Columbia award-winning broadcast, “Military Sexual Assault.”
Speaking to families of victims, government officials, and dozens of victims, she sheds a damning light on the abuse the military tried to keep quiet.
“There were literally holes in the newspaper...that related to what happened during the Tulsa Race Massacre. That just stuck with me. I remember thinking, I have to go look into this and see if that is reality.”
--- WNYC host and reporter KalaLea, “Blindspot: Tulsa Burning”
WNYC’s KalaLea talks about how her 2022 duPont Award-winning podcast series immerses listeners in the past, while threading the impact of generational trauma through to the present.
“The most important thing that people need to understand when they're looking at plastic is that it is trash. It is not valuable. It cannot and will not be turned into something new without great expense that nobody's going to pay for.”
--- NPR correspondent Laura Sullivan, “Waste Land”
Reporting for NPR’s Planet Money, investigative correspondent Laura Sullivan found herself sifting through boxes of decades-old archives, and stumbled upon 50-year-old oil and gas industry trade notes. They led her to one compelling central source – a regretful oil “big whig” – and down a reporting path about the damning history and the questionable future of plastic recycling.
“I think it would be nice if this documentary was kind of like a road map for law enforcement to be the best versions of themselves as they can be.”
— Ed Ou, Co-Director "A Different Kind of Force: Policing Mental Illness”
In a candid conversation, video journalist Ed Ou reflects on his 2021 duPont Award-winning documentary, A Different Kind of Force—Policing Mental Illness, for which he embedded with a San Antonio police unit specifically geared to deal with mental health crises.
Ou discusses the ethics of covering the mentally ill, the challenge of telling stories with great moral complexity, and his own run in with police when he was assaulted covering a Minneapolis protest.