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Editor-in-Chief and Executive Producer of FRONTLINE Raney Aronson-Rath presents an interactive talk on The Future of Investigative Journalism in an Evolving Media Landscape, at 8:00 PM on Saturday, May 2, at Cary Hall, Lexington. Sponsored by the Cary Lecture Series, the event is free and open to all ages.

O scar-winning film producer Raney Aronson-Rath takes on some of the toughest targets in journalism. As Editor-in-Chief and Executive Producer of FRONTLINE, PBS’ investigative journalism powerhouse, she oversees the production of hard-hitting documentaries that bring viewers fresh perspectives on subjects ranging from international conflicts and climate change to threats to democracy at home and abroad.

Under Aronson-Rath’s leadership since 2015, the FRONTLINE series produced in Boston at GBH has won every major award in broadcast journalism, including Peabody Awards and Emmys. She led the series’ expansion into feature-length documentaries for theatrical release, of which two received Academy Award nominations; Abacus: Small Enough to Jail (2018) and For Sama (2020). 20 Days in Mariupol (2023), shot by Associated Press journalists trapped inside the besieged Ukrainian port city during the devastating assault by Russian forces in February and March 2022, won the 2024 Academy Award for Best Documentary.

I do feel really hopeful, and I’m focused on making sure we not only survive, but can thrive into the future.”

Raney Aronson-Rath

 

A Champion of Media Independence

“The media’s under attack. PBS is experiencing funding cuts. We’ve got AI and deepfakes, making it hard for people to trust what they see, and yet FRONTLINE is covering so many important topics in depth, and giving people context for the news,” said Meryl Loonin, the newest member of the four-person Cary Lecture Committee.

A former researcher and producer in public television, the author of several non-fiction books for teens, and co-founder of the Library Initiative for Teens and Tweens (LITT), Loonin was keen to include Aronson-Rath in the line-up of distinguished speakers in the current Cary Lecture series.

Having long admired FRONTLINE’s “journalistic independence and integrity,” Loonin applauds Aronson-Rath’s commitment to give a platform to independent journalists from around the world, including Ukrainian journalist, who directed 20 Days in Mariupol. “She’s a leading voice on the future of journalism and the critical importance of a free independent press,” said Loonin, adding: “we’re so lucky that she also happens to be a longtime resident of Lexington!” Aronson-Rath and her family have lived in Lexington for 14 years. Her husband Arun Rath is a journalist and broadcaster well-known as the host of GBH’s All Things Considered.

Exclusive Preview of New Award-winning FRONTLINE feature

In a recent zoom conversation with Lexington Times, Aronson-Rath promised an interactive talk that will include sneak peeks at films from the upcoming season and exclusive clips from One in a Million (2026). This collaborative project by FRONTLINE Features, BBC Storyville Documentary and KEO Films premiered at the Sundance Festival in January 2026 and won both the Audience Award and the Directing Award in the World Cinema Documentary category.

“It’s a really remarkable film,” said Aronson-Rath, a story about migration and identity filmed over ten years, that follows one refugee girl’s epic journey from her home in Aleppo, Syria, to Cologne, Germany, and back again. “People [in Lexington] love to watch documentaries and talk to me about them, so I thought that would be the film to share,” she said.

Aronson-Rath also plans to give the audience insight into the complex collaboration behind the film: “I’ll talk about our process, what makes a FRONTLINE film, what goes into the decision-making about what we cover and who we cover, and how we tell these epic stories when there’s so much current affairs news around us,” she said.

Journalists in Peril

“One of the things I love most is to collaborate with investigative journalists, and especially investigative journalists who are under siege,” said Aronson-Rath. “Reporters can barely do their jobs at this point in multiple countries around the world,” she said, citing Saudi Arabia, China, Russia, The Philippines, Venezuela, and El Salvador among places that do not have freedom of the press.
FRONTLINE has chronicled what Aronson-Rath calls “the complex and evolving threat environment facing journalists” worldwide in several recent documentaries. A Thousand Cuts (2021) followed Nobel Peace Prize-winning Filipino-American journalist Maria Ressa’s battles against disinformation and intimidation during President Rodrigo Duterte’s violent crackdown on people living with drug addiction in her native Philippines.

Putin vs. the Press (2023) profiled Ressa’s fellow 2021 Nobel Peace-Prize winner independent Russian journalist Dmitry Muratov as he fought to keep his newspaper in business and his reporters safe in the face of government assaults on press freedom in Putin’s Russia.

In May 2025, FRONTLINE premiered Antidote, by filmmaker James Jones, who also made the FRONTLINE documentaries Secret State of North Korea and Saudi Arabia Uncovered. In a preview on the GBH website Aronson-Rath described Antidote as “a chilling story of an investigative journalist going up against Vladimir Putin, of assassins and spies and political activists, and of the costs of opposing the Russian leader.”

The release of Antidote coincided with the Trump administration’s attack on public media in the U.S., with an executive order – later deemed unconstitutional by a judge – followed by the passage of the Recissions Act of July 2025 that eliminated federal funding for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.

“These are troubling trends,” wrote Aronson-Rath. “If we don’t have journalists doing their jobs, we don’t have a record of the facts on the ground. The absence of that journalistic record harms us all, allowing disinformation, corruption and other abuses of power to proceed unchecked.”

Building a Sustainable Future

Now facing the reality of the “post-funding environment,” Aronson-Rath and the FRONTLINE team know that they and their colleagues at PBS and NPR are among the chief remaining standard-bearers for independent media in the U.S.
“For all of us in the last year, it’s been very difficult to see the dismantling of funding, of course” said Aronson-Rath. But the organization’s determination to develop new business models and stay the course is firm. “We’re truly independent still, we’re not commercially owned, we’re a nonprofit, so our journalism doesn’t have any other stakeholders involved that can lean into our work,” she said, noting that “PBS is still one of the most trusted brands in America.”

Several of Aronson-Rath’s major initiatives over the last decade will likely be critical in helping to assure FRONTLINE’s future. “Something I care deeply about is reaching younger generations,” she said, and with a teenage son and daughter, she is “well aware of the media environment that they swim in.”

A big part of her reinvention of FRONTLINE, she said, was moving to YouTube and developing short-form content for social media platforms popular with young people. Sixty per-cent of the audience on YouTube is now global, she noted, and it’s not unusual for shows to receive three or four thousand comments. Streaming can also disseminate the work of journalists whose work is forbidden in their own countries, as Aronson-Rath saw when FRONTLINE bought the rights to A Thousand Cuts, the film about Maria Ressa, and streamed it directly into the Philippines on YouTube.

In a time of rampant misinformation and disinformation, keeping an audience’s trust is both challenging and crucial. “We’re very aware of the environment we’re publishing into,” said Aronson-Rath, “and we work really hard at making sure we meet our editorial standards every day.” Fact-based journalism is unforgiving, she noted, “and when something’s not ready to publish, you just wait and you do it later.”

FRONTLINE has also been working to build trust with its audience through the Transparency Project, launched in 2017. This effort to share the source material behind the series’ reporting gives the public access to hundreds of interviews conducted by FRONTLINE filmmakers in a format easy to navigate and share on social media. “So you can check us,” said Aronson-Rath. “Who did we talk to? Did we edit people out of context?”

While FRONTLINE often tackles national and international stories, Aronson-Rath sees robust local journalism as equally crucial for the future of a healthy democracy. “Trust in journalism starts at the local level,” she said. The FRONTLINE Local Journalism Initiative she spearheaded supports local and regional news organizations to conduct investigative journalism projects in their communities, with funding from the Knight Foundation and Heinz Endowments. In 2025-26, the initiative is partnering with seven newsrooms from Alabama to Vermont. “We’re all part of an ecosystem that needs to be trusted for our work to be believed,” said Aronson-Rath.

As in all organizations, leadership is crucial. Aronson-Rath expressed great confidence in GBH board chair Martha Minow, an expert on constitutional law and human rights and the 300th Anniversary University Professor at Harvard University, and GBH president and CEO Susan Goldberg, a veteran journalist and former Editor in Chief of National Geographic.

Aronson-Rath feels fortunate, she said, to be supported by strong leaders who “believe in journalism, and believe in the First Amendment, and believe that we have to continue to publish.” For sure, she sees challenges ahead, but for now, she said: “I do feel really hopeful, and I’m focused on making sure we not only survive, but can thrive into the future.”