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.

Journalism

NPR’s Laura Sullivan Talks Trash

“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.

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.

NBC's Kate Snow on Cosby's Accusers Revisited

“One person hearing the other person tell her story on television had empowered the next person to come forward. And you got a sense, that in the room too, they were finding strength in numbers and power in numbers. ”

Revisiting an early #MeToo moment - Kate Snow talks about her 2017 duPont Award winning interview with 27 of Bill Cosby’s accusers.

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.

WNYC's Kai Wright and Kaari Pitkin on kids caught in the system.

“The work we do as journalists on some level is exploitive. That is why then we have an ethical standard to not just be trying to entertain people…That is to me, horrific, because there has to be an actual meaningful reason why I'm doing it.” — WNYC “Caught” Host Kai Wright.

WNYC “Caught” Host Kai Wright and Sr Producer Kaari Pitkin talk about their award winning series on young people caught in the justice system, giving the mic to their subjects, and the challenges of reporting such a difficult topic.

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.”

Nikole Hannah-Jones with Lester Holt on covering race and the reporting that won her the 2018 John Chancellor Award

“I think that fairness means that you are fairly representing the sides. That fair representation may be that one of the side’s arguments is bullshit.”

A conversation between The New York Times Magazine’s Nikole Hannah-Jones and NBC’s Lester Holt, where she goes deep on reporting about race, the perils of making things personal, and much more.


NBC Bay Area's Bigad Shaban schools us about questionable student arrests.

“So a kid did scribble on a sidewalk. Is that technically vandalism? Sure. But is the best way to handle it really for the officer to arrest that kid?”

As the new school year begins, a new On Assignment episode explores how schools across the country are disciplining students...by arresting them.

Filmmakers Sebastian Junger and Nick Quested on their 2018 duPont-Columbia Award winning film, “Hell on Earth.”

“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.”