FRONTLINE’s Most Impactful Moments of 2014

You can’t always judge the impact of a news story in a single year. Take The Anthrax Files, a documentary FRONTLINE aired in fall 2011.

A major breakthrough in the film came when FRONTLINE writer and producer Mike Wiser, reading through legal documents one Sunday, came across something that cast doubt on the FBI’s findings about who was behind deadly 2001 anthrax attacks.

“He noticed something in that filing that led him to understand the science of the anthrax cases in a way that nobody had ever really thought about before,” said FRONTLINE filmmaker Michael Kirk.

See also: Coming in January on FRONTLINE

Years later, on Dec. 19, the Government Accountability Office issued a report reiterating the doubts first raised by The Anthrax Files – and calling the FBI’s conclusions into question.

This year, FRONTLINE informed and advanced the debate on subjects ranging from insider trading (To Catch a Trader) to government surveillance (United States of Secrets) — and from school segregation (Separate and Unequal) to mass incarceration (Locked Up In America). Films including Syria’s Second Front, Losing Iraq and The Rise of ISIS told the West about the self-declared Islamic State behind brutality in Iraq and Syria. And nearly a year before the controversy over The Interview, Secret State of North Korea gave viewers a rare look behind Kim Jong-un’s information barrier.

While our priority and commitment to viewers is to fully explore and illuminate the critical issues of our times, it is gratifying to know when our stories have an impact. Here are a few ways FRONTLINE films made a difference in 2014.

• February’s Secrets of the Vatican was one of the most-watched FRONTLINE documentaries in years. But what meant even more to director Antony Thomas was that the film gave some survivors of abuse an opportunity to speak out. “The respectful and dignified way you portrayed my story assures me that there are a few good people left out there that are worthy of trust,” one abuse survivor told Thomas. “From the bottom of my heart, I thank you for treating my story with such care and tenderness.”
• FRONTLINE films were used in an number of educational efforts: After its March broadcast, Doctors Without Borders began using TB Silent Killer as an educational tool around the country. After the Sept. 9 airing of Ebola Outbreak, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention requested 200 copies of the documentary to help train health officials in Liberia, Guinea, and Sierra Leone. And teachers have played Generation Like in hundreds of classrooms to show students how corporations use social media to incorporate them into their marketing campaigns.

See also: Where the Ebola Outbreak Began (Exclusive Video)

• Hunting Boko Haram, which aired Sept. 9, prompted Nigeria’s top U.S. official to say the Nigerian government would launch an “intensive investigation” into the atrocities that were documented in the film.
• California enacted a bill to protect female farmworkers from sexual abuse in direct response to Rape in the Fields, FRONTLINE’s 2013 collaborative investigation with The Center for Investigative Reporting, the Investigative Reporting Program at the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism and Univision.
• Florida’s governor opened a new investigation into the case of Michelle O’Connell, who was found dead from a gunshot in the mouth with her police officer boyfriend’s service pistol nearby. O’Connell’s death was the subject of our 2013 investigation with The New York Times, A Death in St. Augustine.
• Following the Oct. 14 broadcast of The Trouble With Antibiotics, Sens. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), Tom Harkin (D-Iowa), Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY) and Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) urged the FDA to issue a rule to increase data collection on the use of medically important antibiotics in agriculture. In December, Feinstein, Gillibrand and Warren followed up with a letter to the interagency Task Force for Combating Antibiotic-Resistant Bacteria, asking for further attention on the issue.
• The day after the Oct. 28 premiere of The Rise of ISIS, a White House official defended the Obama administration against criticism that it was slow to respond to early warnings about the jihadist group. In November, the House Armed Services Committee Chairman, Rep. Buck McKeon (R-Calif.), cited the film while questioning the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Martin Dempsey.

You can watch all of these films — and many more — here. We hope you’ll join us when we return on Jan. 6.