Raney Aronson-Rath, a Lexington resident and the executive producer of FRONTLINE, PBS’s investigative journalism documentary series, is slated to speak at Cary Hall in Lexington on Saturday as part of the Cary Lecture Series.
Aronson-Rath has been working in journalism for about 30 years. She started as a reporter in Taipei, Taiwan, where she covered the country’s first ever democratic election.
“I was in Taiwan at the perfect time to really understand the importance of journalism,” she told the Observer in an interview about her career and the state of journalism. “So many of the stories we told really documented history and that’s what I love to do…I like us to be a factual record of our times.”
She later returned to the States to get her master’s degree in journalism at Columbia University in New York. In school, she worked the overnight shift as a translator on a documentary film to make some extra money. That’s when she fell in love with documentary filmmaking.
She got a job as a production assistant at ABC News, rose through the ranks, and then got a job making documentary films for FRONTLINE. That was 20 years ago.
“Every FRONTLINE you see is really journalistically driven — we’re filmmakers, but we’re journalists first,” Aronson-Rath said. “Our main goal is to be fair, factual, and we really hope to show all sides of a story so we really strive for nuance.”
LexObserver sat down with Aronson-Rath to ask her about the state of journalism, misinformation, how to appeal to younger audiences, and more.
(This interview has been edited for length and clarity)
Q: Why is this such a challenging time for journalism?
A: Journalism has always had challenges. Right now there’s the combined challenge of the business models transitioning and changing and having to really, truly reinvent ourselves as the journalism ecosystem changes, with, obviously, the onset of the Internet, but also the platforms and all of the different changes in business firms. I think also politically speaking, right now there are a lot of questions about truth and veracity, so I think we’re all trying to hold our ground on facts and being fair. We’re up against an ecosystem of really powerful disinformation. For journalists right now, you want your work to be trusted, you are doing trustworthy work, but then there are also forces at play that are really driving disinformation. We’re right at the center of that storm.
Q: Why is the country seeing fewer investigative programs like FRONTLINE?
A: I’m not really sure if that’s the case. I think there’s a lot of journalism being produced right now all across the country. In fact, I think the local journalism ecosystem is often overlooked. There are so many growing, small, nonprofit news organizations that practice investigative journalism — like the Lexington Observer. I see a lot of growth on the nonprofit journalism side, which is what I practice. We’re a nonprofit investigative journalism outlet. Obviously, there’s a consolidation on the commercial side, and we haven’t seen that have huge impact locally yet — I think the local investigative journalism ecosystem on the commercial side is pretty strong. The question about the future for national and global investigative work, well, where we’re going to see that unfold. We don’t know what that story is going to be until we really see how and what happens in the next few years.
Q: I get to do some investigative work every now and then, but of course, we don’t have a dedicated investigative team because as a small newsroom, we don’t have the capacity for that.
A: You just raised a really important point — sometimes investigative journalism is in a shop that has two people, sometimes it’s like FRONTLINE where there are multiple teams that are investigative, but my opinion is any investigative journalism is a good thing. And I do see the nonprofit ecosystem is growing investigative journalism as the commercial newspaper industry is struggling, especially on the newspaper side. I don’t think nonprofits have truly solved all the problems, but I do think there is a growing appreciation for investigative journalism across the country.
Q: The president recently took funding away from PBS and NPR. How has that affected your newsroom?
A: Being defunded was very difficult for everyone in public media on both the PBS side and the NPR side. For FRONTLINE, we are fundraising now. I think everyone in journalism, including public media, needs support, and we’re not afraid to say we do need philanthropic support. Being in the nonprofit space is good because people do want to support our work. We’ve been very encouraged by people coming forward and really wanting to help support us.
Q: A lot of young people get their news on social media. How do you think that’s affecting the news landscape?
A: We can’t understate enough that younger people are getting most of their news on social platforms. I have two teenagers myself and I’m well aware of where they get their news. So for us at FRONTLINE, our biggest goal right now, in terms of reaching younger people, is producing content that they might want to watch. We’re not assuming they’re going to watch a two hour film about Ukraine, but we’re saying, ‘in what form are young people watching the news and making sure we’re producing stories for people in those environments and working with younger people to tell our stories. I care deeply about reaching young people. FRONTLINE is not just for people who are 50 and up. FRONTLINE is for everyone.
My goal, as a parent and as a person who leads FRONTLINE, is to make sure that on these platforms there is some good information. Right now, it’s a fight for facts to survive. Facts are under assault more than journalism. Disinformation is flooding our zone. All people who know how to create fact-based stories should be in the game of also publishing on these platforms so that people have access to real information. There’s a place for a long article that you’re going to write, but then you need to figure out — how do we then translate that onto Instagram, TikTok, LinkedIn, Facebook — like literally everywhere. That’s the approach we’re taking at FRONTLINE. We still are making our long-form films, but we’re saying, ‘hey, we also have to be in these other environments’ because if we’re not, then it’s just flooded with misinformation, or commercial media, or media that you can’t trust that maybe is propaganda. You can’t tell the difference. Trusted brands like the Lexington Observer or FRONTLINE or Nova should be publishing on those platforms.
Q: A few years ago, you started the Local Journalism Initiative, working with partner newsrooms on investigative reporting projects. Why is local news important?
A: Local news is literally why people trust journalism. When studies have been done, trust starts local. You all are the bedrock of trust even when it comes to a big national brand like FRONTLINE. If people don’t trust their local journalists, people are certainly not going to trust national media. If you think about the role that you all play in communities across the country and the globe, oftentimes we’re finding the most important stories are local and then they grow nationally.
You can always find a home for your story that has local roots, even if you’re like me and you’re telling the story of Putin’s genesis. Well, he comes from a hometown and his ideas were formed in that hometown as well. For me, local journalism is everything. We support local journalism now as a series. We support five newsrooms a year, usually on a big investigative journalism project. What I’ve been doing lately, as often as I can, is making documentary films based on the local journalist’s work, which is really awesome. I love that combination of us as filmmakers coming in and showing journalists working. That’s one of my favorite genres of filmmaking and it works really well. We just did a big film on the PFAS industry with carpets. That was a local journalism project. We’ve done a lot of local journalism projects that then turn into very compelling documentary films.
Q: What does the future of news look like in the U.S?
A: I don’t think journalism is going away. There are a lot of forces at play that wish that journalism would go away, but what I do know, and I’m looking at this across the globe, is that journalists are alive and well —we’re working, we’re reporting on the most important issues of our time, we’re a record of what happens, and there is no replacing us, because without journalism, how are we going to know what’s real and what’s fake? I’m very optimistic about the future of journalism. I’m very optimistic that our field is going to grow.
The other thing that I see, which is so inspiring, is that young people are coming into our field, despite all of the economic pressures we’re under, saying, ‘hey, we’re showing up for work, we want to be here,’ and you guys are inspiring me. I feel like young people coming into the field are going to really reignite our own sort of inspiration around, ‘what does it mean to be a journalist?’ And ‘why is it so important?’ My thought is that we will be strong as long as we’re all working together across generations.
Journalism is the only thing that’s truly independent, that’s truly separate from companies and the agendas of politicians. I think young people want something authentic to do with their lives, they want to read authentic, actual, real analysis. I think we’re going to be okay as long as we keep working hard.