FRONTLINE: Rules of Engagement airs Tuesday, February 19 at 10pm on WPBT/Channel 2 in Miami.
FRONTLINE cuts through the fog of war to reveal the untold story of what happened in Haditha, Iraq — where 24 of the town’s residents were killed by U.S. forces in what many in the media branded “Iraq’s My Lai.” With accusations swirling that the Marines massacred Iraqi civilians “in cold blood,” the Haditha incident has led to one of the largest criminal cases against U.S. troops in the Iraq war. But real questions have emerged about what really happened that day and who is responsible. Through television interviews with Iraqi survivors and Marines accused of war crimes, FRONTLINE investigates this incident and what it can tell us about the harrowing moral and legal landscape the U.S. military faces in Iraq.
The eyes of Haiti was a difficult segment for me to shoot.
Prior to the footage on the organization itself Patrick Valme, its founder, shared his personal experiences with violence in Haiti. He explains how in December 2005, while living in Boston, he received the news of his parents’ kidnapping in Haiti.
A few days after, he arrived on the island where he identified the body of his father who was shot and left for dead in the street. His mother was missing, and he was left to negotiate with the kidnappers for several weeks.
On the day when he was supposed to have her back in exchange for a ransom, the kidnappers instead delivered a burned corpse to a garbage dump. He identified the body as that of his mother’s by recognizing a scar she had on her foot.
Valme’s life changed that day. Instead of channeling his anger and rage towards vengeance and hatred, he chose to catalyze those feeling and created The Eyes of Haiti, an organization where that aids Haitian children through education and love.
You can already watch Valme talking about his organization and the driving force behind it by clicking here.
The world invoked the vow “never again!” after the genocide in Rwanda and atrocities in Srebrenica. Then came Darfur. Over the past four years, at least 200,000 people have been killed and 2.5 million driven from their homes, and mass rapes have once more been used as a weapon of war in a brutal campaign by Janjaweed militias and the Sudanese government against civilians in Darfur. FRONTLINE producer Neil Docherty asks why the international community and the United Nations have once again failed to stop the slaughter. You can see a clip from FRONTLINE: "On Our Watch" here. Watch the program on WPBT/Channel 2 in Miami on Tuesday, November 20 at 10p.m. or stream the entire episode online here anytime after the initial broadcast on Tuesday.
Big Media is pushing the FCC to relax ownership rules again to give conglomerates more control over what Americans read, see, and hear. What most Americans don’t know is that the FCC plans to fast track the rule changes and cut off public comment in December. Who wins and who loses? On Friday, November 2 at 9 p.m. on WPBT, Bill Moyers Journal reports on the real-world consequences of media policy through the lens of how it affects minority media ownership in America. “We have got to…believe that what we bring to our listening audiences everyday across this country is real,” says Melody Spann-Cooper, who runs WVON, the only black-owned radio station in Chicago, a city with more than one million African Americans. “Because we said it was real, not because Fox said it was real or Clear Channel said it was real.” The program examines how critics say media ownership rules have shut minorities out of the media and looks specifically at the current moves in Washington to adopt rules that could further diminish any accountability that broadcasters serve the public interest and their communities. “I personally think that more media concentration and further deterioration of localism is the wrong way to go,” says Senator Trent Lott (R-MS). “If the [FCC] chairman [Kevin Martin] indicated that he intends to do media ownership by the end of this year, there is going to be a firestorm of protest, and I am going to be carrying the wood,” says Senator Byron Dorgan (D-ND).
Bill Moyers interviews investigative journalist Jeremy Scahill about Blackwater -- in this clip Scahill tells the incredible story of armed Blackwater troops being sent into New Orleans on the order of Blackwater CEO Erik Prince in the aftermath of Katrina.
Bill Moyers Journal, airing Friday, October 19th at 9 on WPBT/Channel 2 in Miami, examines what's behind Prince's recent blitz of television interviews defending his private security firm when officials in Iraq said they wanted the company out of their country in the wake of the shooting deaths of Iraqi civilians on September 16. Scahill is the author of the bestselling book: Blackwater: The Rise of the World's Most Powerful Mercenary Army.
FRONTLINE’s Season Premiere Investigates Cheney’s Efforts to Expand the Power of the Presidency –
For three decades Vice President Dick Cheney conducted a secretive, behind-closed-doors campaign to give the president virtually unlimited wartime power. Finally, in the aftermath of 9/11, the Justice Department and the White House made a number of controversial legal decisions. Orchestrated by Cheney and his lawyer David Addington, the department interpreted executive power in an expansive and extraordinary way, granting President George W. Bush the power to detain, interrogate, torture, wiretap and spy –– without congressional approval or judicial review.
Now, as the White House appears ready to ignore subpoenas in the wiretapping and U.S. attorneys cases, FRONTLINE’s season premiere, “Cheney’s Law,” airing Tuesday, October 16 at 10:00 p.m. on WPBT/Channel 2, examines the battle over the power of the presidency and Cheney’s way of looking at the Constitution.
As leader of the politically powerful group Christians United for Israel (CUFI), Pastor John Hagee wants to bring millions of Christians together to support Israel. But some say his message is dangerous: "It is time for America to...consider a military preemptive strike against Iran to prevent a nuclear holocaust in Israel and a nuclear attack in America." Bill Moyers Journal reports on CUFI and then gets theological and political context from Rabbi Michael Lerner, editor of Tikkun, a Jewish journal of politics, culture, and spirituality, and Dr. Timothy P. Weber, an evangelical Christian, historian, and the author of On The Road to Armageddon: How Evangelicals Became Israel's Best Friend.
Also on the program, a year after the tragic shooting, Bill Moyers looks at what the Amish can teach us about healing.
The program airs Friday, October 5 at 9 p.m. on WPBT/Channel 2 in Miami
Bill Moyers on the fate of the authors of "The War as We Saw It." The program aired Friday, September 28 at 9 p.m. on WPBT/Channel 2. To watch online visit here.
Last night, I was able to attend an advanced screening of the file Kite Runner, which will make a general release later this year.
I usually find that feature films based on best selling books are disappointing when transfered to the big screen, but this was not the case with Kite Runner but judge for yourself when the film makes it's debut in a wider distribution. It isn't my intent to review the film.
The reason for the screening is really my purpose for writing today is to explain how and why I was able to get a chance to see Kite Runner at all and that was thanks to an organization called Generation Engage. I have written about them before but as a refresher, they are a nonpartisan youth-civic-engagement initiative that connects young Americans to political leaders, to other civic organizations, and to meaningful debate about the future they will inherit. And last evening was another example of the good work they do presenting difficult and important issues to these young Americans.
The screening marked the launch of anew national partnership between GenerationEngage and the United Nations Development Programme. This Why Democracy? Initiative uses topical films to set up discussions on larger global issues and that is exactly what happened last night and WPBT through our video sharing site uVu was able to play a small part in the process.
On Sunday, September 16th at 11 am -- concurrent with delivery of General David Petraeus' Iraq assessment report -- NOW on WPBT/Channel 2 in Miami airs a one-hour show on the soldiers of the Third Infantry Division at Georgia's Ft Stewart, many of whom have been deployed an unprecedented third time to the battlefields of Iraq. We profiled their deployment in a NOW program earlier this year. Watch it for free
This time, NOW follows the soldiers as they attempt to carry out the new policy of "clear, hold, build" in towns and villages across the province of Anbar. It's a tall order. The U.S. Army has formed an uneasy partnership with Sunni tribal leaders, who had previously been fighting the Americans. They're allied against Al Qaeda insurgents, but can it be successful?
Christians and the environment. As proposed new rules may allow coal companies to expand mountain top removal mining, Bill Moyers Journal takes viewers to the mountains of West Virginia, which are being stripped for their coal with often disastrous environmental consequences for surrounding communities, to report on local evangelical Christians who are turning to their faith to help save the earth.
While rumors of Castro's death have begun to grow again, the South Florida community waits for confirmation in either case. All Miami residents are anxious for the news.
The bigger question in the days that will follow that eventuality is what would the Post-Castro world look like?
Recently ISSUES host Helen Ferre sat down with acclaimed writer and journalist Carlos Alberto Montaner to explore that question.
The two segments can be seen here (part1/part2). They are conducted in Spanish but with English subtitles.
Local news is the
heartbeat of democracy, so why is it disappearing from many communities
around the nation? Media consolidation isn't widely covered by the
mainstream press, but potential changes being considered to the rules
governing the nation's big media companies could have far reaching
effects on democracy.
Bill Moyers Journal devotes an hour to
this important issue with a report on the disappearance of local news
and community radio and in-depth interviews with journalist Rick Karr,
media activist Hannah Sassaman, and FCC Commissioner Michael Copps.
The program airs Friday, August 24 at 9 p.m. on WPBT/Channel 2 in Miami.
On Thursday night, August 16th, in an auditorium on the Miami-Dade College Wolfson Campus, uVu had a front row seat for a conversation between Miami Mayor Manny Diaz and the members of Genertion Engage in South Florida. Generation Engage (or GenGage) is a nonpartisan youth-civic-engagement initiative that connects young Americans to political leaders, to other civic organizations, and to meaningful debate about the future they will inherit.
The organization is built on the belief that young people suffer not from a lack of interest, but from a lack of access and access was what the evening was all about.
I covered the NCLR convention one week ago at the Convention Center on Miami Beach. Since I was there working for uVu I was positioned on the platform for six consecutive hours, but I had the chance to shoot presentations by both Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama.
Wide Angle airs on Tuesday, July 31 at 10pm on WPBT/Channel 2 in Miami
This week, "Dishing Democracy" goes behind the scenes at Arabic television channel MBC in Cairo and its hit all-female talk show, KALAM NAWAEM. Similar in style to ABC's THE VIEW, the top-rated program is hosted by four presenters of different ages, nationalities, and points of view who tackle such sensitive issues as homosexuality, domestic violence, women voting, and social and political equality between the sexes. WIDE ANGLE demonstrates how the satellite television revolution is bringing unexpected voices for social reform into living rooms throughout the Middle East -- in primetime.
This past week, Bill
Moyers Journal tooks an in-depth look at the heated talk of impeachment
taking place across the country. To explore the issue, Bill Moyers was
joined by Bruce Fein, a constitutional scholar, who was Associate
Deputy Attorney General under President Reagan and is a weekly
columnist for THE WASHINGTON TIMES and John Nichols, a Washington
correspondent for THE NATION magazine and author of THE GENIUS OF
IMPEACHMENT: The Founders' Cure for Royalism.
Friday, July 13 at 9pm on WPBT/Channel 2 in Miami.
In the wake of President Bush’s commutation of I. Lewis ‘Scooter’ Libby’s prison sentence, talk of impeachment is gaining steam as a new opinion poll says that nearly half of Americans favor impeachment of the President and more than half believe Vice President Cheney should be impeached.
This week on WIDE ANGLE, Tuesday, July 10 at 10pm on WPBT/Channel 2 in Miami.
Dominating the field of Olympic boxing for the past quarter-century, Cuba’s gold medal-winning athletes have propelled their tiny nation onto the world stage and served as an unconventional tool of foreign and domestic policy. Now, for the first time ever, the legendary Havana Boxing Academy
With the National Hurricane Center and NOAA in the news these days for non-weather related reasons, it is important that we remember the hard work these men and women do, especially for the residents of South Florida. WPBT produced a program called ANATOMY OF A HURRICANEwhich took a fly on the wall type look at the inner workings of the Center during the 2004 Hurricane season. WPBT/Channel 2 in Miami will run this program again on July 22 at 10:30pm
Online Videos by Veoh.com NOW Host David Brancaccio
sits down with Michael Moore on the eve of the release of "Sicko" to
find out what makes him tick, and why our health care system ticks him
off. Watch the entire interview here.
I went to the naturalization ceremony on June 29th in Miami, to see a man who at 105 years old wanted to become an American citizen. He was a Cuban political refugee who spent 30 years in a Cuban jail and finally came to the US where he realized his "American" dream
.
The People's Court takes
viewers inside the courtrooms and law schools of China to provide an
unprecedented and unexpected portrait of its rapidly growing legal
system. The documentary follows itinerant judges, law students, a human
rights lawyer, and ordinary Chinese citizens seeking justice as the
country tackles the massive task of establishing a legal framework for
its new market economy.
Bill Moyers Journal airs Friday, June 29 at 9pm on WPBT/Channel 2 in Miami.
With U.S. mortgages entering foreclosure at a record pace, the crisis has far reaching implications, from the financial markets to the financial health of ordinary Americans. For the latest, Bill Moyers interviews assistant business and financial editor at The New York Times Gretchen Morgenson, who has been covering the story. Also on the program: Lori Wallach, Director of Public Citizen's Global Trade Watch, on the secret trade deal negotiated by leaders of the Democratic Party and its implications for labor unions, consumer groups and the environment; life-long GOP insider Victor Gold on the current state of the Republican Party; and Bill Moyers on Rupert Murdoch and The Wall Street Journal.
These two live presidential forums, airing in primetime on WPBT/Channel 2 in Miami and moderated by Tavis Smiley, host of TAVIS SMILEY, PBS’ late-night talk show, kick off an ambitious line-up of content on multiple platforms for PBS Election 2008.
The programs mark the first time that a panel composed exclusively of journalists of color will be represented in a primetime presidential forum. The candidates will be asked about issues ranging from healthcare and housing to Katrina relief, the economy and the environment, among others outlined in Smiley’s #1 The New York Times best-seller, The Covenant With Black America.
The Democratic presidential forum will be held Thursday, June 28, 2007, at 9 p.m., at Howard University in Washington, DC. Confirmed Democratic presidential candidates include Joe Biden, Hillary Clinton, Christopher Dodd, John Edwards, Mike Gravel, Dennis Kucinich, Barack Obama and Bill Richardson.
The Republican presidential forum will be held Thursday, September 27, 2007, at 9 p.m., at Morgan State University in Baltimore, Maryland.
Returning July 3rd at 10pm on WPBT/Channel 2 in Miami
This acclaimed series delivers up-to-the-minute reports from global hotspots to give American television viewers a unique forum for understanding the complex, often dramatic, sometimes explosive and always relevant stories that are shaping the present and future of the world. Each program focuses on a single subject, bringing to life international events and issues that matter to Americans today — from global epidemics to economic development and matters related to the war on terrorism. WIDE ANGLE offers character-driven narratives while eschewing on-camera correspondents, think-tank analysts or talking heads. At the end of each documentary, anchor Daljit Dhaliwal conducts an interview or presents a short essay to “connect the dots” and offer greater insight into how the subject matter of the program affects Americans.
When Harper’s Magazine editor Ken Silverstein went undercover to recruit Washington lobbyists to help improve the image of Turkmenistan, a corrupt foreign government with appalling human rights abuses, K-Street firms laid-out plans to get the job done. What does it say about the state of influence peddling in Washington? Bill Moyers gets the inside story from Silverstein. Also on the program, Imam Zaid Shakir has been called a voice of conscience for American Muslims, but his views on Islam in America put him at the center of a heated debate about faith and culture.
FRONTLINE Investigates the Troop “Surge” In Iraq — Is It America’s Last Chance for Success? –
On December 19, 2006, President George W. Bush said for the first time that the United States is not winning the war inIraq. It was a dramatic admission from a president who had insisted since the war began that things were under control. Now, as the U.S. begins what the administration hopes is the final effort to secure victory through a “surge” of troops, Gen. Jack Keane, Col. William Hix, Col. H.R. McMaster, Maj. Thomas Mowle, State Department Counselor Philip Zelikow and other military and government officials talk to FRONTLINE about both the military and political events that have led up to the current “surge” strategy in “Endgame,” airing Tuesday, June 19, at 10:00 p.m. on WPBT/Channel 2 in Miami. Shot in high-definition, “Endgame” is the FRONTLINE season finale and the fifth film in a series of Iraq war stories from FRONTLINE producer Michael Kirk, including “Rumsfeld’s War,” “The Torture Question,” “The Dark Side” and “The Lost Year in Iraq.”
When the United States initially invaded Iraq, the plan was to be out within three months; there was no long-term strategy for battling the growing insurgency that was destabilizing the country. In a surprising public admission, Gen. Jack Keane, the Army’s second in command at that time, tells FRONTLINE, “I think it’s driven in part by my own failures when I was there as a senior military leader contributing to Gen. [Tommy] Franks’ plan that we never even considered an insurgency as a reasonable option.”
In 2004, in the wake of the Abu Ghraib prison scandal, the American withdrawal from Fallujah and worsening violence, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld dispatched four-star Gen. George Casey to Iraq to take control of the situation. Both Casey and Rumsfeld believed that maintaining a “light footprint” — minimizing the role of the American forces while building up the Iraq security forces — would ensure security for the upcoming elections.
When Iraqis went to the polls in January 2005, the administration pointed to the election as a sign of success. But with an almost complete Sunni boycott of the election, the resulting government had, as one officer described it to FRONTLINE, “tenuous legitimacy.”
In many ways it was the definitive moment in the Iraq war. “The die was cast once the Sunni Arabs did not participate in the elections. Everything that has followed that has been a logical consequence,” Casey strategist Maj. Thomas Mowle tells FRONTLINE.
Sectarian violence in Iraq was growing and came to a head in February 2006, when Sunni insurgents bombed the golden dome of the Askariya shrine in Samarra. “The Shi’a begin to fight back with the Sunni,” author Lawrence Kaplan tells FRONTLINE. “And what was one-sided insurgency becomes a two-sided civil war.”
As Rumsfeld and Casey continued to insist that things were going well, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice sent State Department Counselor Philip Zelikow to Iraq to assess the situation. Col. H.R. McMaster’s “clear, hold and build” effort conducted in Tal Afar was one of the rare successful operations Zelikow could find. After U.S. troops cleared insurgents from the city by seeking them out door to door, an ongoing troop presence in each neighborhood helped the residents feel secure, and the rebuilding by U.S. troops could begin. “What is amazing is how once you are able to lift the pall of fear off these people, how life just flows back into these cities,” McMaster says. “But what’s important is to keep security there.”
Rice went to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee to report on and advocate for the “clear, hold and build” strategy, but Rumsfeld publicly criticized the strategy and held fast to the “light footprint” plan, in which Iraqi forces are depended upon to perform the “hold and build” portions of the endeavor.
In summer 2006, Casey mounted Operation Together Forward II, relying heavily on Iraqi troops to maintain security in areas of Baghdad that American troops had cleared. Keane tells FRONTLINE, “We had made up our minds that we were going to clear, but we didn’t have the resources to hold. As soon as I saw that we didn’t have the resources, I knew that the operation would fail. … Our chances to succeed in Iraq were slipping past us. We needed to change the strategy, or else this thing was going to go off the cliff.”
Following what President Bush called a Republican “thumpin’” in the November 2006 elections, the president replaced Donald Rumsfeld with Robert M. Gates. The White House publicly launched a review of the Iraq strategy and ultimately called in Gen. Keane, who proposed “clear, hold and build” in Baghdad with a “surge” of new troops. But for the military’s strategists, the nagging question is whether it is already too late.
Watch "Endgame" again as well as the rest of Michael Kirk’s FRONTLINE films about Iraq on CHANNEL 2’s On-Demand Website, following the broadcast.
You may want to set your VCR or DVR this week to catch Bill Moyers Journal. The program will return to the regular Friday night spot in two weeks, but for now, you can catch Bill on Saturday at 1am (early Sunday Morning).
Driving to work this morning I (along with much of South Florida) listened to Rick Shaw for the last time on Majic 102.7 http://www.wmxj.com/ radio. Today is the "official" retirement bash for Rick. Listening to Donna, Joe, Mindy and all of the other folks talk about their memories of Rick reminded me of the fun I have had over the years listening to Rick on the radio and feeling like he is an old friend.
And indeed Rick has been a great friend to Channel 2 - - From the old days of the Channel 2 Auction - where he first wore his trademark hat - to recent years working with the station for the Auction and during our on-air pledge campaigns. In fact one of the greatest parts of our most recent Channel 2 Auction was when Rick decided he would auction off his hat to the highest bidder. It was a tremendous success and lots of fun that night
Thanks for the memories and good times Rick. You are THE BEST. And we will miss you.
- David Mullins (on behalf of the Channel 2 staff)
Last
night I spoke with my good friend, Jo, in Virginia. She described
the amazing spirit of support and care within the Blacksburg community
in the aftermath of the VA Tech shootings.
Jo
told me that many people have expressed deep sorrow over the 23-year old Cho
Seung-Hui, and see him as a psychologically troubled young man filled with
tremendous rage who slipped through the system. She said it was
interesting that people were humanizing the killer, not typically the case. I
asked if she thought it would be the same if the killer had been a grown man
rather than a student, slightly over the legal age.
Interestingly,
next Tuesday, May 8 at 10 p.m., Channel 2 presents Frontline:
“When Kids Get Life.” The U.S. is one of very few countries in the
world that allows children under eighteen to be prosecuted as adults and
sentenced to life without parole. Human Rights Watch reports that more
than 2,200 inmates are currently serving life without parole in the U.S.
for having committed murder when in their teens, with only 12 serving the same
sentence in the rest of the world.
Colorado was an
early pioneer in juvenile justice, focusing on the rehabilitation of the child
rather than punishment. But in the late 1980s and 1990s, when a sharp increase
in violent crimes by young offenders attracted enormous press, legislators
nationwide found it easy to clamp down. In Colorado, between 1992 and 2005,
45 juveniles between fifteen and eighteen were sentenced to prison without the
hope of ever being released. Last spring, the state's legislature eased its
tough laws targeting juvenile offenders. The state passed a bill that made
parole possible after 40 years in prison, but the measure did not apply
retroactively to the 45 former juveniles now in Colorado's prison system.
Producer Ofra Bikel visits
five young men in Colorado sentenced to life without parole to
examine their crimes and punishment, the laws that sanctioned their
convictions, and the prospect of never being free again.
A
fascinating and complex subject, taken on only as Frontline can.
...or being Mayor of the City of Miami either, I imagine.
But today I had a chance to hear Mayor Diaz speak about his vision of a sustainable city of tomorrow and his hopes for the future of Miami and the entire region.
I don't intend to get political in this space, but it was a fascinating and compelling portrait of where all major cities might be heading and it is easy to understand why the world will look to Miami as a blueprint for redesigning large population centers.
You may have caught a few moments of the Mayor's State of the City Address on the evening news, but if you would like to see the entire presentation, it is available on uVu (search for "sustainable city") or you can follow these links:
Two items that seem to be on everyone’s mind these days, Global Warming and the War in Iraq, are explored in depth this week on Channel 2.
First on Tuesday at 10pm, a new episode of FRONTLINE called "Hot Politics."
FRONTLINE and the Center for Investigative Reporting go behind the scenes to explore how bi-partisan political and economic forces prevented the U.S. government from confronting what may be one of the most serious problems facing humanity today. The film examines some of the key moments that have shaped the politics of global warming and how local and state governments and the private sector are now taking bold steps in the absence of federal leadership.
Then on Wednesday at 9pm, Bill Moyers makes his return to Public Television with a special edition of BILL MOYERS JOURNAL "Buying the War."
In the lead-up to the invasion of Iraq, the government’s claims about weapons of mass destruction and terrorist ties to Saddam Hussein went mostly unchallenged by the media. Four years after “shock and awe,” how the government sold the war has been much examined, but a big question remains: how and why did the press buy it? Bill Moyers and his team piece together the reporting that shows how the media were complicit in shaping the “public mind” toward the war, and ask what’s happened to the press’ role as skeptical “watchdog” over government power. The program features the work of some intrepid journalists who didn’t take the government’s word at face value, including the team of reporters at Knight Ridder news service whose reporting turned up evidence at odds with the official view of reality. “Buying the War” includes interviews with journalists Dan Rather, formerly of CBS; Tim Russert of “Meet the Press”; Bob Simon of “60 Minutes”; Walter Isaacson, former president of CNN; and John Walcott, Jonathan Landay and Warren Strobel of Knight Ridder newspapers, which was acquired by the McClatchy Company in 2006.
BILL MOYERS JOURNAL will then settle in for a regular Friday night broadcast at 9pm as a continuing series.
It was day 13 of Henri Petihomme’s hunger strike when I arrived at the church in Little Haiti. It was the first time I have covered this type of news and I did not know what to expect. When I saw him enter the church in a wheelchair because he did not have enough strength to walk, I felt guilty for having eaten a bagel and a bowl of soup for lunch.
Henri wanted to show the world that something has to be done, and bring enough media attention to the subject in the hope of pressuring the government. Even if they struggle here in Miami, Haitians make the dangerous voyageto build a new life away from their island where kidnappings, murders, and violence are the everyday challenges to face.
I'm really excited about the new PBS documentary series airing this week, "America at a Crossroads." Not necessarily because I agree with all the opinions expressed in the series, but I firmly believe that deepening human understanding among cultures is at the heart of peaceful co-existence.
Perhaps because we witness rampant violence and are deadlocked in so many relations, we've accepted the premise that there's no way to breakthrough. This translates as hopelessness. Which just leads to more of the same. But a means can always be found, if we're willing to challenge ourselves. If we're willing to explore our humanity.
As I watched Tuesday night's presentation of "In The Case for War: In Defense of Freedom," I learned something about those whom I've judged. Those who hold an opposing point of view to mine, particularly on the war, and why it makes sense to them. Without contact or exposure, we form impressions of others that are based only on supposition and colored, to some extent, by whatever negativity exists in the world.
Which is why I love documentaries. They provide access to a world we can't always reach - inside a person, a part of the world or a culture. I salute the filmmakers who took the risk of bringing these stories into our homes. And my hope is that viewers will come away with an enriched state of mind and an open heart. From here, we can counter the tragedies of post-9/11.
FRONTLINE cuts through the fog of war to reveal the untold story of what happened in Haditha, Iraq — where 24 of the town’s residents were killed by U.S. forces in what many in the media branded “Iraq’s My Lai.” With accusations swirling that the Marines massacred Iraqi civilians “in cold blood,” the Haditha incident has led to one of the largest criminal cases against U.S. troops in the Iraq war. But real questions have emerged about what really happened that day and who is responsible. Through television interviews with Iraqi survivors and Marines accused of war crimes, FRONTLINE investigates this incident and what it can tell us about the harrowing moral and legal landscape the U.S. military faces in Iraq.
It was day 13 of Henri Petihomme’s hunger strike when I arrived at the church in Little Haiti. It was the first time I have covered this type of news and I did not know what to expect. When I saw him enter the church in a wheelchair because he did not have enough strength to walk, I felt guilty for having eaten a bagel and a bowl of soup for lunch. 
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