FRONTLINE Editor-in-Chief and Executive Producer Honored with the Overseas Press Club President’s Award

WED., JAN. 28 — The Overseas Press Club of America announced today that Raney Aronson-Rath, the editor-in-chief and executive producer of FRONTLINE, the PBS documentary series produced at GBH in Boston, will receive the OPC’s 2026 President’s Award.

The OPC President’s Award acknowledges Aronson-Rath’s lifetime achievement in journalism. She will be recognized with the prestigious award at the association’s 87th Annual Awards Dinner on April 20, 2026.

For more than 25 years, Aronson-Rath has worked across every facet of journalism — as a reporter, producer, director, correspondent, and now as the editorial leader of FRONTLINE — championing fair, rigorous, and in-depth reporting. An Oscar-winning producer, member of the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts & Sciences, and recipient of the prestigious 2024 John Chancellor Excellence in Journalism Award, Aronson-Rath has established herself as a thought leader in both documentary filmmaking and investigative reporting.

Aronson-Rath joined FRONTLINE in 2007 as a senior producer, following tenures at ABC News and The Wall Street Journal. She was appointed deputy executive producer in 2012 and elevated to executive producer in 2015 by David Fanning, the series’ founder and 2016 OPC President’s Award recipient.

In her role as editor-in-chief and executive producer of FRONTLINE, Aronson-Rath has propelled the PBS series forward while safeguarding its foundational commitment to fair, in-depth journalism. She has expanded FRONTLINE’s traditional broadcast reporting into the critically acclaimed documentary space, earning three Academy Award® nominations since 2018 — for Abacus: Small Enough to Jail, For Sama and 20 Days in Mariupol, with the latter winning the Academy Award® for Best Documentary Feature in 2024. She launched FRONTLINE FEATURES, a new initiative that brings FRONTLINE’s signature, trustworthy journalism to film festivals and theaters ahead of PBS broadcast and streaming premieres.

She also launched the series’ first original podcast, The FRONTLINE Dispatch; led an ongoing charge for transparency in journalism as an antidote to misinformation with the Transparency Project; and has made FRONTLINE’s storytelling more accessible than ever, reaching millions of viewers on YouTube, where one third of the channel’s audience is global, and exploring how to engage with younger audiences through the vertical video series For The Record. 

“I began my career as a journalist in Taipei, Taiwan — an experience that profoundly shaped how I see the world and the vital importance of global reporting. Twenty-five years later, this experience continues to inform my belief that rigorous, thoughtful journalism has the power to illuminate key issues communities across the world face” says Aronson-Rath. “I share this honor with my colleagues at FRONTLINE, as well as with PBS, GBH and of course CPB, whose enduring belief in our storytelling makes it possible to tell in-depth stories to audiences everywhere.”

“We are thrilled to honor Raney and recognize her important role in international journalism today,” says Scott Kraft, OPC president and editor-at-large at the Los Angeles Times. “She is a major force in documentary journalism, a pioneer in investigative storytelling and a champion of transparency in media.”

Under Aronson-Rath’s leadership, FRONTLINE has earned nine Overseas Press Club Awards for international reporting, in addition to an Academy Award, News & Documentary Emmy Awards, an Institutional Peabody Award and an Alfred I. duPont-Columbia Gold Baton. 

Press Contact: Anne Husted Blatt, Director of Marketing & Communications, FRONTLINE | frontlinemedia@wgbh.org