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On Assignment Podcast

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October 6, 2023
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. 


March 10, 2023
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.

April 26, 2018
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.

February 22, 2018
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.

November 8, 2017
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.

duPont-Columbia Awards
December 12, 2016
Season 3

Ron Suskind and Roger Ross Williams on "Life, Animated"

duPont-Columbia Awards
December 12, 2016
Season 3

"For me, it was a coming of age story. And the stakes were higher because Owen lives with Autism." 

Tagged: Documentary

duPont-Columbia Awards
November 17, 2016
Season 2

Nikole Hannah-Jones on Reporting Racial Segregation

duPont-Columbia Awards
November 17, 2016
Season 2

"One of the things that I heard was, “You want to write about black people too much"... Have you ever told a white journalist they're writing about white people too much?"

Tagged: Investigative Reporting, Civil Rights

duPont-Columbia Awards
October 10, 2016
Season 2

Monica Alba on Covering the Hillary Clinton Campaign Trail

duPont-Columbia Awards
October 10, 2016
Season 2

We speak to NBC journalist and J-School alum Monica Alba about covering the 2016 Hillary Clinton campaign. Hint: “Stamina” is the word of the episode.

duPont-Columbia Awards
September 13, 2016
Season 1

The Producers of SERIAL: Sarah Koenig, Julie Snyder and Dana Chivvis

duPont-Columbia Awards
September 13, 2016
Season 1

""I needed editors saying, 'Watch yourself, look at what you’re doing...' Really forcing me to question, 'Are you on his side?'"

Tagged: Investigative Reporting, Audio Journalism, Editor's Pick

duPont-Columbia Awards
September 8, 2016
Season 2

Gabriel Sherman on Breaking the Roger Ailes Scandal

duPont-Columbia Awards
September 8, 2016
Season 2

"I think we are in the middle of one of the seismic shifts in the American media landscape."

Tagged: Investigative Reporting

duPont-Columbia Awards
September 1, 2016
Season 2

Kirsten Johnson on Failure, Narrative, and Filmmaking

duPont-Columbia Awards
September 1, 2016
Season 2

"We use our power, as filmmakers, in the ways we want to use it. We do it for our own purposes."

Tagged: Narrative Reporting, Documentary

duPont-Columbia Awards
August 9, 2016
Season 2

Kelly McEvers on Covering Conflict and Taking Risks

duPont-Columbia Awards
August 9, 2016
Season 2

"'If we know we could die, why do we keep doing it?' I didn't have an answer for it myself so I looked to other people to try to answer it."

Tagged: Conflict Reporting

duPont-Columbia Awards
May 30, 2016
Season 1

Ailsa Chang's Advice to Young Journalists

duPont-Columbia Awards
May 30, 2016
Season 1

"I thought I had figured it out, the hard part was over, I decided 'I'm not going to be a lawyer, I'm going to be a journalist."

Tagged: Investigative Reporting, Audio Journalism

duPont-Columbia Awards
May 25, 2016
Season 1

Lee Zurik on Confrontational Interviews and Local News Stories

duPont-Columbia Awards
May 25, 2016
Season 1

"The best question often is silence... It can tell you if someone's not telling the truth, it can tell you if they're hiding something."

Tagged: Investigative Reporting

duPont-Columbia Awards
May 21, 2016
Season 1

Filmmakers June Cross and Lisa Desai on Covering America's “Medical Apartheid”

duPont-Columbia Awards
May 21, 2016
Season 1

"When I first went down to South Carolina, I thought I knew what to expect. But I wasn’t prepared for it. Not at all."

Tagged: Documentary, Civil Rights

duPont-Columbia Awards
May 19, 2016
Season 1

Nicole Young's Most Important Interviewing Tip

duPont-Columbia Awards
May 19, 2016
Season 1

"The muscle in interviewing that so many people forget [is] not the question: it's the follow up."

Tagged: Investigative Reporting

duPont-Columbia Awards
April 10, 2016
Season 1

The “Spotlight” Journalists: Sacha Pfeiffer and Walter Robinson

duPont-Columbia Awards
April 10, 2016
Season 1

“On a story like this, you can’t be objective. I can’t recall a story we’ve ever had where the distinction between good and evil was so apparent.”

Tagged: Investigative Reporting

duPont-Columbia Awards
March 31, 2016
Season 1

Documenting Genocide: Joshua Oppenheimer on "The Look of Silence"

duPont-Columbia Awards
March 31, 2016
Season 1

“You can't divide the self into good parts and bad parts, good guys and bad guys... That's fiction."

Tagged: Documentary

duPont-Columbia Awards
February 18, 2016
Season 1

How Director Alex Gibney Took on The Church of Scientology

duPont-Columbia Awards
February 18, 2016
Season 1

"How is it that smart, discerning people fall into a belief system like this and get lost in it? And how do they get out?"

Tagged: Documentary

duPont-Columbia Awards
February 1, 2016
Season 1

Alissa Rubin in Conversation with Jill Abramson

duPont-Columbia Awards
February 1, 2016
Season 1

“It was sort of curiosity trumping fear. I think, for me, curiosity trumps fear a lot of the time.”

Tagged: Conflict Reporting

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On Assignment Podcast comes to you from the Alfred I. duPont-Columbia University Awards and the Columbia Journalism School, as well as our generous funder, The Jessie Ball duPont Fund.