The award-winning series was recognized with George Foster Peabody Award nominations in the News, Public Service, and Interactive & Immersive categories.

FRONTLINE, the acclaimed investigative documentary series housed at GBH in Boston, has received four more 2023 George Foster Peabody Award nominations in the Public Service and Interactive & Immersive categories, marking a record number of eight nominations for the PBS series.

FRONTLINE received the most nominations of any series this year.

The series’ major, multiplatform project Un(re)solved was recognized with two 2023 Peabody nominations. The project’s interactive web experience and augmented-reality installation, made in partnership with Ado Ato Pictures and StoryCorps, was nominated in the Peabody’s Interactive & Immersive category; and in partnership with Retro Report and with support from WNET’s Chasing the Dream, the project’s documentary component, American Reckoning, received a nomination in the Peabody’s Public Service category.

FRONTLINE received two additional nominations in the Public Service category; Putin’s Attack on Ukraine: Documenting War Crimes, a collaboration with The Associated Press, received a nomination, along with FRONTLINE’s three-part documentary series, The Power of Big Oil.

Earlier this week, four documentaries by FRONTLINE and partners were named 2023 Peabody Award nominees in the News category: Crime Scene: Bucha, in partnership with The Associated Press and SITU Research; Michael Flynn’s Holy War, in partnership with The Associated Press and with support from WNET’s Preserving Democracy; Putin’s War at Home; and Ukraine: Life Under Russia’s Attack. 

“That the George Foster Peabody Award jurors recognized the breadth of our work is beyond thrilling,” says Raney Aronson-Rath, editor-in-chief and executive producer of FRONTLINE. “We are humbled to see our in-depth reporting and innovative storytelling be acknowledged with a total of eight nominations and are deeply grateful to the Peabody Awards for this recognition.”

Aronson-Rath added: “These nominations reflect both our organizational commitment to serious investigative journalism and our public media mission to shed light on issues impacting communities around the world. We share these nominations with our filmmaking teams, our editorial partners — AP, SITU Research, Retro Report, Ado Ato Pictures and StoryCorps — and with GBH, PBS and CPB, who champion our work and help us to tell these critical stories.”

The Peabody Awards said in their official announcement from Tuesday, April 11 that the 2023 nominees “demonstrate the best of journalism and the best of storytelling.”

Of the 69 nominees selected by the Peabody Awards Board of Jurors this year, PBS led with 13 nominations.

Since 1940, the prestigious George Foster Peabody Awards have honored excellence in broadcasting. According to the nominee announcement, the winners of the 83rd annual Peabody Awards will be announced on May 9, 2023. Read the full list of 2023 Peabody Award nominees here.

Learn more about FRONTLINE’s nominees and explore all of our nominated storytelling below:

American Reckoning (credits)
In partnership with Retro Report, with support from WNET’s Chasing the Dream, the feature-length documentary investigates the unsolved 1967 murder of a local NAACP leader, Wharlest Jackson Sr., and follows the Jackson family’s search for answers. Directors, producers and journalists Brad Lichtenstein and Yoruba Richen reveal an untold story of the civil rights movement and Black resistance, drawing on rarely seen footage filmed by Ed Pincus and David Neuman more than 50 years ago in Natchez, Mississippi, and made available through the Amistad Research Center. (Aired on PBS February 2022)

Crime Scene: Bucha (credits)
In partnership with The Associated Press and SITU Research, this short documentary offers a visual investigation of the atrocities committed in the Ukrainian town of Bucha during Russia’s month-long occupation in early 2022. Drawing on hundreds of hours of CCTV footage, intercepted phone calls and a 3D model of Bucha, producers Jon Nealon, Erika Kinetz, Tom Jennings and Annie Wong map the scope of the carnage with forensic detail to show how Russian soldiers ran “cleansing” operations. (Aired on PBS December 2022)

Michael Flynn’s Holy War (credits)
In this collaboration with The Associated Press with support from WNET’s “Preserving Democracy,” director Richard Rowley, correspondent Michelle Smith and producers Paul Abowd and Jacqueline Soohen examine how retired three-star general Michael Flynn has emerged as a leader in a far-right movement that puts its brand of Christianity at the center of American civic life and institutions and is attracting election deniers, conspiracists and extremists from around the country. (Aired on PBS October 2022)

Putin’s Attack on Ukraine: Documenting War Crimes (credits)
A collaboration with The Associated Press, this documentary goes inside Russia’s war on Ukraine, tracing a pattern of atrocities committed by Russian troops with a focus on the Kyiv suburbs, such as Bucha, where some of the most shocking carnage was found. The joint documentary, directed by Tom Jennings and produced by Jennings, Annie Wong and AP global investigative reporter Erika Kinetz, draws on original footage, as well as interviews with Ukrainian citizens and prosecutors, top government officials and international war crimes experts. The documentary also includes detailed forensic analysis and a 3-D model carried out with the collaboration of SITU Research to help see the scope of the killings in Bucha. (Aired on PBS October 2022)

Putin’s War at Home (credits)
This documentary introduced audiences to some of the defiant Russians pushing back against President Vladimir Putin’s crackdown on critics of the war in Ukraine. Producers Gesbeen Mohammad and Vasiliy Kolotilov tell the inside stories of activists and journalists risking arrest and imprisonment to protest and speak out about the Kremlin’s war effort. (Aired on PBS November 2022)

The Power of Big Oil (credits)
An epic three-part documentary series, The Power of Big Oil investigates the decades-long failure to confront the threat of climate change and the role of the fossil fuel industry. With Dan Edge serving as series producer, Part One, directed by Jane McMullen, charts the fossil fuel industry’s early research on climate change and investigates industry efforts to sow seeds of doubt about the science. Part Two, directed by Gesbeen Mohammad, explores the industry’s efforts to stall climate policy, even as evidence about climate change grew more certain in the new millennium. And as leading climate scientists issue new warnings about climate change, Part Three, directed by Robin Barnwell, examines how the fossil fuel industry worked to delay the transition to renewable energy sources — including by promoting natural gas as a cleaner alternative. (Aired on PBS April/May 2022)

Part One: Denial

Part Two: Doubt

Part Three: Delay

Ukraine: Life Under Russia’s Attack (credits)
Ukraine: Life Under Russia’s Attack provides a dramatic and intimate look inside the Russian assault on Kharkiv. Directors Mani Benchelah and Patrick Tombola follow displaced families trying to survive underground, civilians caught in the war and first responders risking their lives amid the shelling of Ukraine’s second largest city. (Aired on PBS August 2022)

Un(re)solved
A major initiative that draws upon more than two years of reporting, thousands of documents and dozens of first-hand interviews, Un(re)solved tells the stories of lives cut short and examines a federal effort to grapple with America’s legacy of racist killings through the Emmett Till Unsolved Civil Rights Crime Act. The web interactive experience and touring, augmented-reality installation was made in collaboration with Ado Ato Pictures and StoryCorps and spearheaded by creative director Tamara Shogaolu. The broader Un(re)solved project — in partnership with Black Public Media, the Northeastern University Civil Rights and Restorative Justice Project, PBS and GBH — also includes a podcast and documentary. (Launched June 2021)

Roman Ducksworth Jr., Peter Francis, Jimmie Lee Jackson and Alberta O. Jones are four of the people whose lives and deaths are explored in ‘Un(re)solved,’ a multiplatform project examining cold case killings from the civil rights era and the federal government’s effort to right wrongs of the past.

FRONTLINE MEDIA CONTACT: Anne Husted | Manager, PR & Communications | 6173005312 | frontlinemedia@wgbh.org