“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.
“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.
“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.”
“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.
“I'm sometimes heartwarmed and sometimes I'm frustrated. Sometimes I'm reminded that, you know, the power of storytelling can be so amazing and that people really do care and people can empathize with cultures beyond their own. And then sometimes you see the frenzy of social media and what's going on in America and then you get really frustrated.“
VICE Senior Correspondent Isobel Yeung reflects on her 2021 duPont award-winning work, “India Burning.” She discusses the rise of anti-Muslim discrimination in India, the tension between spotlighting the oppressed and keeping them safe, and the broader challenge of making an American audience care about foreign news.
“Our lived, authentic experience is not only important... but it adds to the breadth of the kind of stories people are reading about. If we're a missing color in the landscape of journalism, it's just a little grayer without us.”
Crip Camp Directors Jim LeBrecht and Nicole Newnham discuss the importance of including unrecognized voices to the journalism landscape as they reflect on the six year challenge of melding dual roles as subject and filmmaker, of weaving civil rights history with human stories...and how Barack and Michelle Obama helped them figure it all out.
This month On Assignment is revisiting a popular past episode with New Yorker Staff Writer Jelani Cobb, who teamed up with FRONTLINE to ask a simple question: Can a troubled police department be reformed? To get answers Cobb embedded with the gang unit of the Newark, New Jersey police department and spoke to officers, citizens, and city officials. Hear him and FRONTLINE producer James Jacoby in conversation with Professor Betsy West on the latest On Assignment podcast.
“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.
“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.
“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.
In our latest, we catch up with 2019 duPont award winning director Alexandria Bombach about her latest film, “On Her Shoulders.” It’s an achingly beautiful 3-month snapshot of the life of activist and Yazidi genocide survivor, Nadia Murad. But it’s also a call to action for journalists and filmmakers, to think about the stories we tell, how we tell them and most importantly, why.
Director Bing Liu started making “Minding the Gap,” when he was 23-years-old. Now, six years later, he’s premiered at the Sundance Film Festival and snagged himself an Oscar nomination.
As the countdown to the Academy Awards begins, get a behind the scenes look at how Liu made the film, plus hear about some of his ethical dilemmas while filming. But before you listen, be warned. There will be spoilers.
Roger Ailes founded Fox News, kicked off #MeToo, and helped elect Donald Trump. “It was about using Roger's story to try to make sense of where we were as a country...it gave us a point of entry to a difficult, complicated, national moment,” says Producer Will Cohen. In this episode of On Assignment, Cohen discusses navigating Fox News for access, the challenge of profiling a dead man, and how Ailes influenced the current media and political climate.
“Going into Syria itself at the point where we started shooting was basically a suicide mission. Not so much the risks of combat, but the risk of being kidnapped, sold to ISIS and having your head cut off. So we were making a film about the Syrian civil war and we couldn't shoot in the Syrian civil war.”
“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.