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.

Editor's Pick

Erika Alexander on Finding Tamika

“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. 

“Navalny”: Daniel Roher’s Real Life Political Thriller

“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.

Nanfu Wang’s Brave COVID Doc Draws Dramatic Parallels

“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.

CBS News Anchor Norah O’Donnell On Her Toughest Story Yet: Sexual Assault in the U.S. Military

“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.

Ed Ou on his NBC News documentary about policing mental illness.

“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.

Rachel Maddow and Michael Yarvitz on their 2020 duPont Award-winning podcast, Bag Man

“The reason the story was worth telling was not just to identify a Trump doppelgänger in history, but to really tell the story of the good guys…the people who did right…and made the system work.” -- Rachel Maddow

Donald G. McNeil Jr. with Michael Barbaro in our own "The Daily: This Is Your Life" episode

“I'm sorry to say I knew from the beginning that we weren't going to be able to control this disease, because Americans won't cooperate.” -- Donald G. McNeil Jr.

On our latest episode of On Assignment, The New York Times Science and Health Reporter Donald G. McNeil Jr., 2020 winner of the John Chancellor Award, discusses the rise of his career covering infectious diseases to The Daily host Michael Barbaro.


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.

Revisiting RBG: Directors Betsy West and Julie Cohen with EP Amy Entelis on “RBG” documentary

“She had not seen it, and she never asked to see it ahead of time which is pretty extraordinary…people are always asking to see your work ahead of time. She never asked. ” — RBG Producer/Director Betsy West

A repeat of one of our most popular episodes: A look back at last year’s Columbia J-School screening of “RBG,” when the Supreme Court justice herself made a surprise visit. The filmmakers talk about the power of optimism, and how RBG herself reacted to seeing the film for the first time in front of a sold out audience at Sundance.

Revisiting Nikole Hannah-Jones in Conversation with Lester Holt

“Most writing about race simply says ‘there's a disparity that exists.’ That's not news... What's much more important is the why and the how. And I don't think that we see nearly enough of that.” — Nikole Hannah Jones, NYT Magazine

A repeat of one of our most popular episodes: NBC News Anchor Lester Holt speaks with NYT Magazine reporter/writer and 2019 winner of the John Chancellor Award for Excellence in Journalism about the convergance race and reporting.

Our 50th Episode featuring Ira Glass

“It really is just like a bunch of people thinking what would amuse us to put on the radio, and we're interested in the news and what's going on. And honestly it is not more sophisticated than that.” — This American Life Host/Producer Ira Glass

In our special 50th episode, find out what goes into the making of This American Life, one of the most listened to radio shows - one that spawned a generation of podcasts.

Bonus: Hear Ira’s sage advice from his speech to the Columbia Journalism School graduating class of 2018.

CNN’s Nima Elbagir on risking her life for the stories that must be told, and the challenges of being a female, Muslim journalist of color.

“The first battle is almost with yourself. Because you often are running away from what makes you different…whether that’s being a woman of color whether that's being a practicing Muslim, whether that's being an Arabic speaker, often you want to prove yourself on somebody else's terms.”