David Fanning

David Fanning has been executive producer of Frontline , America’s only regularly scheduled investigative documentary series on television, since its first season in 1983. The series has won all the major awards for broadcast journalism, including 34 Emmys, 23 duPont-Columbia University Awards, 12 Peabody Awards, and 11 Robert F. Kennedy Journalism Awards. In 2002, the series was honored with an unprecedented third Gold Baton from duPont-Columbia for its post September 11th coverage, a series of seven hour-long documentaries on the origins and impact of terrorism. In 2003, “A Dangerous Business,” a Frontline / New York Times joint investigation of the cast-iron pipe making industry, won the Pulitzer Prize for public service. Fanning began his filmmaking career as a young journalist in South Africa. He came to the US in 1973 and began producing and directing local and national documentaries for KOCE, a public television station in California. In 1977, Fanning came to WGBH Boston to start the international documentary series WORLD.

Works

Documenting Police Use of Force

FRONTLINE and The Associated Press, in collaboration with the Howard Centers for Investigative Journalism, investigate deaths that occurred after police used tactics like prone restraint and other "less-lethal force." The documentary and accompanying reporting draw on police records, autopsy reports and body cam footage, offering the most expansive tally of such deaths nationwide.

Release Date:2024-04-30

Department:Production

Job:Executive Producer

Inside the Uvalde Response

Drawing on real-time, firsthand accounts and using official bodycam and audio, FRONTLINE, ProPublica and The Texas Tribune reconstruct the chaotic response to the Uvalde school shooting and examine the missteps.

Release Date:2023-12-05

Department:Production

Job:Executive Producer

America's Dangerous Trucks

Investigating deadly truck accidents and the fight over measures that could save lives.

Release Date:2023-06-13

Department:Production

Job:Executive Producer

After Uvalde: Guns, Grief & Texas Politics

A year after the Uvalde school shooting, FRONTLINE documents the community's trauma and the fight over assault rifles. Journalist Maria Hinojosa examines the police response, Uvalde's history of struggle and its efforts to heal.

Release Date:2023-05-30

Department:Production

Job:Executive Producer

Plot to Overturn the Election

An examination of the hidden origins of disinformation about the 2020 election and those responsible for some of the core narratives of election fraud.

Release Date:2022-03-29

Department:Production

Job:Executive Producer

Taliban Takeover

The Taliban take over Afghanistan, and the threat of ISIS and Al Qaeda intensifies. On the ground, reporter Najibullah Quraishi (Leaving Afghanistan, Taliban Country) investigates uncertainty and fear among the Afghan people and revisits the lead-up to the U.S. defeat and the Taliban’s return.

Release Date:2021-10-12

Department:Production

Job:Executive Producer

America After 9/11

From veteran FRONTLINE filmmaker and chronicler of U.S. politics Michael Kirk and his team, this documentary traces the U.S. response to the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks and the devastating consequences that unfolded across four presidencies. Drawing on both new interviews and those from the dozens of documentaries Kirk and his award-winning team made in the years after 9/11, this two-hour special offers an epic re-examination of the decisions that changed the world and transformed America. From the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq to the January 6 insurrection, America After 9/11 exposes the legacy of September 11 — and the ongoing challenge it poses for the president and the country.

Release Date:2021-09-07

Department:Production

Job:Executive Producer

The Healthcare Divide

FRONTLINE and NPR investigate the growing inequities in American healthcare exposed by COVID-19. The Healthcare Divide examines how pressure to increase profits and uneven government support are widening the divide between rich and poor hospitals, endangering care for low-income populations.

Release Date:2021-05-18

Department:Production

Job:Executive Producer

President Biden

FRONTLINE tells the story of how crisis and tragedy prepared Joe Biden to become America’s next president. Those who know him best describe the searing moments that shaped President-elect Biden and what those challenges reveal about how he will govern.

Release Date:2021-01-19

Department:Production

Job:Executive Producer

Vote Count:2

Frontline: America's Great Divide

A deep look into the growing divide in America from the Barack Obama era through the presidency of Donald Trump.

Release Date:2020-01-13

Department:Production

Job:Executive Producer

Vote Count:5

Frontline: In the Age of AI

A documentary exploring how artificial intelligence is changing life as we know it — from jobs to privacy to a growing rivalry between the U.S. and China. FRONTLINE investigates the promise and perils of AI and automation, tracing a new industrial revolution that will reshape and disrupt our world, and allow the emergence of a surveillance society.

Release Date:2019-11-05

Department:Production

Job:Producer

Vote Count:2

Bitter Rivals: Iran and Saudi Arabia

Bitter Rivals illuminates the essential history - and profound ripple effect - of Iran and Saudi Arabia's power struggle. It draws on scores of interviews with political, religious and military leaders, militia commanders, diplomats, and policy experts, painting American television's most comprehensive picture of a feud that has reshaped the Middle East.

Release Date:2018-02-27

Department:Writing

Job:Writer

Vote Count:2

Mosul

Described by some military commanders as the deadliest urban combat since World War II, the battle to drive ISIS out of Mosul as the terror group held civilians captive there was brutal and grueling. Shot over the course of the entire nine-month fight, this vivid documentary follows the experiences of four young soldiers in a team of Iraqi Special Forces tasked with leading the battle.

Release Date:2017-10-18

Department:Production

Job:Executive Producer

The Fish on My Plate

Paul Greenberg spends a year eating fish at breakfast, lunch and dinner to help answer the question: “What fish should I eat that’s good for me and good for the planet?” The Fish on My Plate chronicles Greenberg as he works on his book, The Omega Principle — and consumes over 700 fish meals in hopes of improving his health through a dramatic increase in his Omega-3 levels. As part of his quest to investigate the health of the ocean — and his own — Greenberg spends a year eating seafood for breakfast, lunch and dinner.

Release Date:2017-04-25

Department:Writing

Job:Writer

Out of Gitmo

The dramatic story of a Gitmo detainee released from the controversial U.S. prison after 14 years. With NPR, a report on the struggle over freeing prisoners once deemed international terrorists. Also, the untold history of the Guantanamo Bay prison.

Release Date:2017-02-27

Department:Production

Job:Executive Producer

Terror in Europe

FRONTLINE and ProPublica go inside Europe’s fight against terrorism — the missed warnings and the lingering vulnerabilities.

Release Date:2016-10-18

Department:Production

Job:Executive Producer

The Rise of ISIS

Release Date:2014-02-05

Department:Production

Job:Executive Producer

Vote Count:1

To Catch A Trader

Inside the government’s crackdown on insider trading, drawing on exclusively-obtained video of hedge fund titan Steven A. Cohen, incriminating FBI wiretaps, and interviews with both Wall Street and Justice Department insiders. In November 2013, hedge fund giant SAC Capital agreed to plead guilty to what prosecutors called “insider trading that was substantial, pervasive, and on a scale without precedent in the history of hedge funds.” “To Catch a Trader” goes inside the suspenseful and compelling story of this unprecedented government investigation, as correspondent Martin Smith traces how an insatiable search for trading “edge” ultimately doomed some of the most successful names on Wall Street.

Release Date:2014-01-07

Department:Production

Job:Producer

Snitch

Construction company owner John Matthews learns that his estranged son, Jason, has been arrested for drug trafficking. Facing an unjust prison sentence for a first time offender courtesy of mandatory minimum sentence laws, Jason has nothing to offer for leniency in good conscience. Desperately, John convinces the DEA and the opportunistic DA Joanne Keeghan to let him go undercover to help make arrests big enough to free his son in return. With the unwitting help of an ex-con employee, John enters the narcotics underworld where every move could be his last in an operation that will demand all his resources, wits and courage to survive.

Release Date:2013-02-21

Department:Production

Job:Executive Producer

Vote Count:2358

The Dancing Boys of Afghanistan

In Afghanistan many hundreds of boys, often as young as ten, are being lured off the streets on the promise of a new life.

Release Date:2010-04-20

Department:Production

Job:Executive Producer

Vote Count:6

Frontline: The Age of AIDS

After a quarter-century of political denial and social stigma, of stunning scientific breakthroughs, bitter policy battles and inadequate prevention campaigns, HIV/AIDS continues to spread rapidly throughout much of the world. Through interviews with AIDS researchers, world leaders, activists, and patients, FRONTLINE investigates the science, politics, and human cost of this fateful disease and asks: What are the lessons of the past, and what can be done to stop AIDS?

Release Date:2006-05-30

Department:Production

Job:Executive Producer

Frank Terpil: Confessions of a Dangerous Man

Frank Terpil, in flight from a 53-year sentence for supplying arms to terrorists, is interviewed from his exile in Beirut. Profiting from terror without suffering qualms takes a certain mentality. Terpil details the operations of the merchants of terror.

Release Date:1982-01-11

Department:Production

Job:Producer

Outlawed in Pakistan

Outlawed in Pakistan tells the story of Kainat Soomro as she takes her rape case to Pakistan's deeply flawed court system in hopes of getting justice. The 13-year-old Kainat accuses four men of gang rape and shortly after is ordered to be killed by her village elders. Spanning over five years, the story is told through the perspective of Kainat and the four men accused of her rape.

Department:Production

Job:Executive Producer

Predator on the Reservation

FRONTLINE and The Wall Street Journal investigate the decades-long failure to stop a government doctor accused of sexually abusing Native American boys for years, and examine how he moved from reservation to reservation despite warnings.

Release Date:2019-02-12

Department:Production

Job:Executive Producer

Dollars and Dentists

In a 2012 joint investigation by FRONTLINE and the Center for Public Integrity, correspondent Miles O’Brien uncovers the shocking consequences of a broken dental care system. Poor children, entitled by law to dental care, often cannot find a dentist willing to see them. Others kids receive excessive care billed to Medicaid, or major surgery for preventable tooth infections. For adults with dental disease, the situation can be just as dire and bankrupting. While millions of Americans use emergency rooms for dental care, corporate dental chains are filling the gaps in care, and in some cases have allegedly overcharged patients or loaded them with high priced credit card debt.

Release Date:2012-06-26

Department:Production

Job:Executive Producer

Vote Count:1

The New Asylums

There are nearly half a million mentally ill people serving time in America's prisons and jails.

Release Date:2005-05-10

Department:Production

Job:Executive Producer

The Killer at Thurston High

In May 1998, a year before the massacre at Columbine High, 15-year-old Kip Kinkel murdered his mother and father, and then opened fire at Thurston High School in Springfield, Oregon, killing two fellow students and wounding 25 others. In this first in-depth television examination of a school shooter, FRONTLINE reveals the intimate inside story of how the “shy and likeable” Kip Kinkel from a solid middle-class family became the boy police call “a cold-hearted killer.”

Release Date:2000-01-18

Department:Production

Job:Executive Producer

Nuclear Aftershocks

It’s been almost a year since a devastating earthquake and tsunami crippled Japan’s Fukushima Daiichi nuclear complex, leaving the country’s once popular energy program in shambles. In response, Germany decided to abandon nuclear energy entirely. Should the U.S. follow suit? FRONTLINE correspondent Miles O’Brien examines the implications of the Fukushima accident for U.S. nuclear safety, and asks how this disaster will affect the future of nuclear energy around the world. In particular, he visits one emerging battleground: The controversial relicensing of the Indian Point nuclear plant, located only 38 miles from Manhattan. What lessons can be learned from the disaster in Japan?

Department:Production

Job:Executive Producer

Beyond Baghdad

In the summer of 2003, violence against the U.S.-led coalition in Iraq spiked alarmingly. Traveling across Iraq, FRONTLINE reporters went to see how the U.S. plan to turn the country into a showcase for democracy in the Middle East was faring.

Department:Production

Job:Executive Producer

Lost in Detention

More than one million immigrants have been deported since President Obama took office. Frontline investigates Obama's enforcement strategies and journeys into the secretive world of immigrant detention, with a penetrating look at who is being detained and what is happening to these detainees.

Release Date:2011-10-18

Department:Production

Job:Executive Producer

The Released

Frontline examines the lives of mentally ill repeat offender who are struggling to make a life for themselves outside of prison.

Release Date:2009-04-28

Department:Production

Job:Executive Producer

Burden of Innocence

Billion settlement for securities violations, FRONTLINE investigates what New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer calls Wall Street's "corrupt business model" that cost American investors trillions.

Release Date:2003-05-01

Department:Production

Job:Executive Producer

Frontline

Since it began in 1983, Frontline has been airing public-affairs documentaries that explore a wide scope of the complex human experience. Frontline's goal is to extend the impact of the documentary beyond its initial broadcast by serving as a catalyst for change.

Release Date:1983-01-17

Department:Crew

Job:Creator

Episode Count:767

Vote Count:41

Bitter Rivals: Iran and Saudi Arabia

Department:Production

Job:Producer

Episode Count:2