It is Wednesday, the morning after our season premiere. I just wanted to take a moment to thank so many of you for your kind notes over the last few weeks and especially thank you for your support of WIDE ANGLE. We have seven more programs to go this summer and one especially great challenge ahead.

I leave on July 4th for Jordan to report and shoot a piece on the tens of thousands of Iraqi refugees who now live there, as well as the million or so in Syria. Their plight is a huge and complicated humanitarian story, and as a reporter, I am eager to see it and report on it and bring it home to air in mid-August. But the trip is more than just a reporting journey. The American in me knows and understands that we have a special responsibility to know about and offer assistance to these people. Whatever you may think about the ongoing war next door in Iraq, these refugees are victims and deserve both compassion and help. So the citizen in me is eager to tell the story as well.

And then there is the father in me. I am taking my 19-year-old daughter Gabby along. She wants to be a reporter these days and the opportunity to show her what we do and how we do it is exciting. I am hopeful that she will tell you her story in this space by blogging about her experience on our website. Hey, a dad can hope.

Again, thanks so much for your notes and either I or the kid will keep you up-to-date on our journey to the Middle East.

Aaron Brown
New York
July 2, 2008

Acclaimed international reporter and news commentator Aaron Brown joined WIDE ANGLE, the weekly primetime international affairs series on PBS, in 2008. With his engaging, award-winning brand of insight and analysis, Brown brings substantive understanding of worldwide issues to American audiences.

Among the topics to be explored: the ongoing humanitarian crisis in Darfur; the young Chinese generation poised to take the reins of an emerging superpower; pioneering midwives in Mozambique; and the re-emergence of Japan’s military.

There are very few stories in our lifetime that Brown has not covered. Beginning with the Vietnam protests and Watergate in the 1970s to the beginning of the Iraq war he has, quite literally, been there. But it is likely that he is best remembered for one story – the attack of 9/11. On his first day of work at CNN, he was on the air a half-hour after the first attack, broadcasting from a rooftop in lower Manhattan. Brown’s coverage has been called courageous, calming and insightful.

“The challenge of making global issues accessible and relevant is never easy,” says Brown. “WIDE ANGLE has successfully accomplished that goal for years. I am delighted to become a part of a team and a program with such a rich history of doing good and important work.”