Season 17
duPont-Columbia Awards
CNN's Jake Tapper with Dean Jelani Cobb

“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. 


Season 16
duPont-Columbia Awards
“Navalny”: Daniel Roher’s Real Life Political ...

“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.

Season 5
duPont-Columbia Awards
Michael Barbaro and Zoe Chace in Conversation ...

Zoe Chace of This American Life and Michael Barbaro of The Daily speak about the rewards and challenges of making stories for audio, the "tyranny of the good talker," and the sense of intimacy that comes from the voice alone.

Season 5
duPont-Columbia Awards
"I Felt Like a Filmmaker, Not Like a Refugee:" ...

“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.

Season 4
duPont-Columbia Awards
Death, Life and Writing: Director Vanessa Gould

"It struck me how quickly the facts of a life just start to immediately disappear when someone dies." OBIT director Vanessa Gould on why she was compelled to make her film.

Season 11

Investigative Reporter Charlie Specht on Cultivating Sources and Interviewing Victims of Abuse

“That is a holy thing to do - to come forward. I think the verse goes, ‘Thou shall see the truth and the truth shall set you free.’” - Charlie Specht, Chief Investigator, WKBW Buffalo

Specht was dubbed “the source whisperer” by his primary whistleblower. In this episode of On Assignment, he tells how he worked with sources for his 2020 duPont Award-winning reporting on the Buffalo diocese, Fall From Grace: When Priests Prey and Bishops Betray, which uncovered years of mishandled abuse cases and led to the resignation of Bishop Richard Malone.

CNN Chief International Correspondent Clarissa Ward on Covering Crises

“When you're starting out, you feel a sort of invincibility and there is an arrogance that comes with with real youth and inexperience…The more really dangerous situations I have been in, the more cognizant I am of the fact that life is very precious and that death is not something to be trifled with.” — CNN’s Clarissa Ward

Clarissa Ward’s reporting from global hotspots – Afghanistan, Syria, and Yemen among many others – has won her two duPont-Columbia silver batons. She joined duPont Awards Director, Lisa R. Cohen for a very personal conversation about covering crises, COVID related reporting challenges, and career tips for young journalists.

Local Reporters Joe Bruno and Michael Stolp on Breaking the N. Carolina Election Tampering Scandal

“Thankfully, we were just so far ahead of the national media, because we got there first and we had people providing us with information, and we had already been working on it for a week straight. So we we were playing chess and they were playing checkers.” — Joe Bruno, WSOC Political Reporter

WSOC-TV political reporters Joe Bruno and Mike Stolp discuss their duPont Award winner - breaking an election tampering scandal in North Carolina’s Bladen County that dominated national headlines, and flags important questions about mail-in voting.

Directors Lindsey Seavert and Ben Garvin on their Emotional Doc “Love Them First”

“We've had two dozen theater screenings by now. It's mostly white audiences that really feel opened up to a world that they didn't know — people saying, I had no idea that’s six miles from my house, I didn't know that's what life was like there.” — Filmmaker Lindsey Seavert

Local Minneapolis reporters Lindsey Seavert and Ben Garvin became documentary filmmakers by taking their nightly news coverage of visionary principal Mauri Friestleben and the students of Lucy Laney Elementary and turning it into a duPont Award Winning Documentary, Love Them First.

Knock Down the House Director Rachel Lears on Making Fly-on-the-Wall Campaign Docs

“Our democracy is imperfect. All of the problems that existed before this film still exist. But whether it's voting, volunteering on a campaign or in your community, to running for office, I hope people feel like there's a place for their voice in the democratic process.” — Rachel Lears

Award-winning director Rachel Lears discusses her prescient film Knock Down the House, which followed four women, including Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, running insurgent, grassroots campaigns.

Nanfu Wang Director of One Child Nation

“I hope that the film could serve as a record. Fifty years later, 100 years later when people truly want to understand, the official version of history is not the only version.“ -- Filmmaker Nanfu Wang

Award-winning director Nanfu Wang (Hooligan Sparrow, I Am Another You) talks with Columbia Journalism Professor Betsy West (RBG) about her shocking film One Child Nation.