David Fanning, ‘Frontline’ Executive Producer, Graduate School of Journalism Wins 2004 Columbia Journalism Award Honors Distinguished Alumni
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C olumbia U niversity RECORD May 19, 2004 9 David Fanning, ‘Frontline’ Executive Producer, Graduate School of Journalism Wins 2004 Columbia Journalism Award Honors Distinguished Alumni associate dean for academic PBS, initially with KOCE-TV in our distinguished alumni received the BY CAROLINE LADHANI affairs. Huntington, Calif. Graduate School of Journalism’s highest Fanning has been executive WGBH first hired Fanning in Falumni honor during the Alumni Associa- avid Fanning, executive producer of Frontline, which 1980 to develop a weekly pro- tion’s recent spring meeting. The awards, producer of PBS’ Front- originates from Boston PBS sta- gram called World. He then pro- which are presented annually, recognize jour- Dline, is the 2004 recipient tion WGBH, since the program’s duced and cowrote the docudra- nalistic excellence, a single outstanding jour- of the Columbia Journalism inception in 1983. The investiga- ma Death of a Princess with nalistic accomplishment or a contribution to Award, the highest honor award- tive documentary series has aired director Antony Thomas, and in journalism education. The following are this ed by the Columbia Graduate for 21 seasons and won major 1982, also with Thomas, the year’s winners. School of Journalism faculty. awards for broadcast journalism, Emmy Award-winning inves- The award recognizes singular among them, 29 Emmys, 16 tigative documentary Frank Ter- Kenneth Best, Journalism’67, is editor in journalistic performance in the duPont-Columbia University pil: Confessions of a Dangerous chief of West Africa’s first independent newspa- public interest. Awards and 11 Peabody Awards. Man. per, the Daily Observer, of Monrovia, Liberia. “David Fanning and his signa- More than a decade before his That same year, Fanning During that country’s Doe regime, Best was Best ture program, Frontline, have tenure began at Frontline, Fan- began developing Frontline for arrested and the offices of his newspaper burned turned a commitment to probing ning, a South Africa native, pro- WGBH, and soon after, two down. After periods of exile in both Gambia and journalism and public service duced films on religious and shorter PBS series, Adventure the United States, Best is planning to return to into an enduring national con- racial issues in that country, and Ring of Fire, a four-part Liberia and resume publishing the Daily versation, without which far too including programs for BBC-TV. travel series exploring Indone- Observer. many important issues would In 1973, he came to the United sia. In 2001, his desire to remain veiled or hidden alto- States and began producing local increase coverage of foreign Michele Montas-Dominique, Journalism’69, gether,” said David Klatell, and national documentaries for news in America led to the birth spent 20 years as director and co-anchor of of a magazine-style TV series Radio Haiti. Her husband was gunned down in called Frontline/World. front of their radio station in 2000, and she has Fanning is also the Journalism received threats against her own life. In 2002, Montas-Dominique School’s commencement speak- Montas-Dominique won a Maria Moors Cabot er this year, and Walter Pincus, a Prize. She later came to the United States and well-known staff writer for the currently is spokeswoman for the president of Washington Post, is the Henry F. the United Nations General Assembly. Pringle Memorial Lecturer on national affairs for the school’s Rita Henley Jensen, Journalism’77, is founder Journalism Day event on cam- and editor in chief of Women’s eNews. This pus. online news service, established in 2000, dis- Pincus is a co-recipient of the patches stories of interest to women around the 2001 Pulitzer Prize for national world. The Web site now offers an Arabic lan- reporting for his stories on guage service that reaches out to audiences in Jensen Osama bin Laden. He also won a North Africa and the Middle East. George Polk Award in 1978 for his Post stories on nuclear Lewis (Lew) Simons, Journalism’64, a con- weapons. tributor to National Geographic magazine, has Pincus has written on a multi- won several top prizes in journalism, including a tude of national news subjects, Pulitzer Prize in 1986 and a George Polk Award including arms control, the in 1985. A former Washington Post and Associ- American hostages in Iran, the ated Press reporter, he also wrote a book about Iran-Contra affair and investiga- Philippine politics, Worth Dying For, which PHOTO BY DAVID LUTCH tions of Congress and the gov- details the departure of Ferdinand Marcos and ernment’s executive branch. rise of Corazon Aquino. —Caroline Ladhani “Frontline” Executive Producer David Fanning Simons Rosalind Rosenberg, in History Lecture, Describes Era of Diversification at Columbia (Continued from Page 1) excluded groups went on to intellectual battle against sexism religion emerita, and Monica doorsteps of the campus as they argued that the University served make enormous contributions and racism. Many of Boas’s stu- Miller, Barnard assistant profes- were by attending Columbia. as a haven for the white Protes- not just to the University but to dents—Ruth Benedict, Margaret sor of English. Miller spoke elo- “They wanted access to Colum- tant elite up until the 20th centu- New York City and beyond. Mead, Zora Neale Hurston— quently about two of the first bia and Barnard networks as well ry even as New York City Barnard College opened in won broad audiences with their African American writers to as the opportunity to create their increased its vibrant cultural mix 1889 and became affiliated with writings and were widely influ- attend Columbia—Langston own networks—equally impor- of European immigrants, Jews, Columbia. Three years later, ential. “They made popular the Hughes and Zora Neale Hurston. tant extra-campus networks.” Catholics and African Ameri- another affiliated school was idea that not just race but also She noted that Columbia Lindt remarked that much cans. Rosenberg’s talk focused born: Teachers College. Both gender are social constructions,” administrators at the time per- remained to be done in the way on the breaking down of the Uni- colleges had their own boards of Rosenberg said. haps didn’t realize that people of equality and diversity at versity’s homogeneity, and its trustees, which included several There were two respondents like Hughes and Hurston were as Columbia. “There are still growing diversity, in the 1920s. women and Jewish and Catholic on the evening’s panel—Gillian inspired by the ongoing Harlem women that disproportionately The dike began to leak in leaders. Teachers College active- Lindt, Columbia professor of Renaissance taking place on the are found, at least in the faculty 1883, when a group of suffrag- ly recruited minorities, and their ranks, at the lower levels, and ists, including Susan B. Anthony, female and African-American often marginalized in all kinds of produced a petition with the students began to change the ways,” she said. names of some 1,300 prominent demographic profile of Colum- Rosenberg agreed that there is New Yorkers asking that women bia’s graduate schools. The still work to be done. “The story be admitted to Columbia. While transformation accelerated, of inclusion at Columbia is a then-President F.A.P Barnard Rosenberg pointed out, so that story about process, one that is supported the move, the faculty by the 1920s Columbia was pro- not fully complete even today.” and students were by and large ducing the largest number of As that process of diversifica- opposed. black doctorates in the country tion goes forward, its context has The arguments were pre- and the greatest number of changed. The University is a dictable: women would distract female Ph.D.s. very different place today. the male scholars from their Still another important step in Women were admitted to work. This sentiment, Rosenberg Columbia’s diversification was Columbia College 20 years ago noted, was expressed in an achieved through the leadership and now make up 50 percent of extreme—and homophobic— of anthropology chair Franz the University’s total student way by mathematics professor Boas. Boas, a Jewish socialist, population, while ethnic and John Howard Van Amringe, who hired two women, Gladys racial minorities also comprise a said, “You can’t teach a man Richard and Ruth Benedict, to significant part of the student mathematics if there’s a girl in join the faculty, unusual at the body. Nearly 20 percent of the room. And if you can, he isn’t time. Between the world wars, Columbia students are currently worth teaching.” with the Ku Klux Klan on the from foreign countries. Columbia and its affiliates rise in the United States and PHOTO BY EILEEN BARROSO For more information on Nazism metastasizing in Ger- Columbia’s history, visit the eventually did diversify, seeking From left, speaker Rosalind Rosenberg, moderator Robert Mc- many, Boas and his students, C250 Web site at www.c250. and welcoming students from a Caughey and respondents Gillian Lindt and Monica Miller at the more than half of them women columbia.edu/history. broad range of racial and ethnic third lecture in the Columbia 250 history series. backgrounds, and the previously from Barnard, began a fierce.