First Aired: January 17th, 1983
Status: Continuing
Network: PBS
Summary: Since it began in 1983, Frontline has been airing public-affairs documentaries that explore a wide scope of the complex human experience. Frontline's goal is to extend the impact of the documentary beyond its initial broadcast by serving as a catalyst for change.
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Season 2006
Episode 1: Country Boys - Part 1
Air Date: January 9th, 2006
Summary: Part 1 of 3. David Sutherland, acclaimed producer of The Farmer's Wife, returns to rural America with Country Boys, an epic tale of two boys coming of age in eastern Kentucky's Appalachian hills. In Part 1, Chris, who lives in a trailer with his working mom and terminally ill dad, tries to begin a school paper, while Cody, an orphan living with a step-grandmother, wants to start a Christian music group.
Episode 2: Country Boys - Part 2
Air Date: January 10th, 2006
Summary: Part 2 of 3. David Sutherland, acclaimed producer of The Farmer's Wife, returns to rural America with Country Boys, an epic tale of two boys coming of age in eastern Kentucky's Appalachian hills. In Part 2. A friendship slowly develops after Chris returns to school and starts a choir, which Cody joins. Also, Chris's parents separate; Cody wonders about his his inheritance money; Chris gets a job at a fast-food restaurant and his schoolwork suffers; Cody's girlfriend's parents argue, as he and Jessica consider marriage in the future.
Episode 3: Country Boys - Part 3
Air Date: January 11st, 2006
Summary: Part 3 of 3. David Sutherland, acclaimed producer of The Farmer's Wife, returns to rural America with Country Boys, an epic tale of two boys coming of age in eastern Kentucky's Appalachian hills. Conclusion - Chris tries to get a GED and visits a college, while Cody learns more about becoming a preacher and achieves a perfect attendance record at school; Chris moves into an apartment by himself; and Cody's band plays its first gig outside Kentucky.
Episode 4: Sex Slaves
Air Date: February 7th, 2006
Summary: An estimated half-million women are trafficked annually for the purpose of sexual slavery. The women are kidnapped -- or lured by traffickers who prey on their dreams of employment abroad -- then they are "exported" to Europe, the Middle East, the United States, and elsewhere, where they are sold to pimps, drugged, terrorized, locked in brothels, and raped repeatedly. In Eastern Europe, since the fall of communism, sex trafficking has become the fastest growing form of organized crime, with Moldova and Ukraine widely seen as the centers of the global trade in women and girls. On Feb. 7, FRONTLINE presents a unique hidden camera look at this world of sexual slavery, talking with traffickers and their victims, and exposing the government indifference that allows the abuses to continue virtually unchecked. Sex Slaves also follows the remarkable journey of one man determined to find his trafficked wife by posing as a trafficker himself to buy back her freedom.
Episode 5: The Meth Epidemic
Air Date: February 14th, 2006
Summary: Speed. Meth. Glass. On the street, methamphetamine has many names. What started as a fad among motorcycle gangs in the 1970s has become big business, largely due to the efforts of two Mexican drug runners who began smuggling ephedrine -- the same chemical used to make over-the-counter cold remedies -- into California by the ton. Hundreds of illegal meth labs are now operating in the western United States, and the effects are sweeping the nation. From coast to coast, meth abuse is on the rise, but who's responsible? Is the government doing enough to crack down on this latest drug craze? On January 31, in a reporting partnership with The Oregonian, FRONTLINE investigates America's addiction to meth and exposes the inherent conflict between the illegal drug trade and the legitimate three-billion-dollar cold remedy business.
Episode 6: The Insurgency
Air Date: February 21st, 2006
Summary: Kidnappings. Suicide bombers. Beheadings. Roadside bombs. The Iraqi insurgency continues to challenge the most highly trained and best-equipped military in the world. FRONTLINE peels back the layers and gets beyond the propaganda to take a complex look inside the multi-faceted insurgency in Iraq. The investigation includes special access to insurgent leaders, as well as commanders of Iraqi and U.S. military units battling for control of the country and detailed analysis from journalists who have risked their lives to meet insurgent leaders and their foot soldiers. On February 21, FRONTLINE explores the battle for one Iraqi town and presents vivid testimony from civilians whose families were targeted by the insurgents.
Episode 7: The Tank Man
Air Date: April 11st, 2006
Summary: On June 5, 1989, one day after Chinese troops expelled thousands of demonstrators from Tiananmen Square in Beijing, a solitary, unarmed protester stood his ground before a column of tanks advancing down the Avenue of Eternal Peace. Captured by Western photographers watching nearby, this extraordinary confrontation became an icon of the fight for freedom around the world. On April 11, veteran filmmaker Antony Thomas investigates the mystery of the tank man -- his identity, his fate, and his significance for the Chinese leadership. The search for the tank man reveals China's startling social compact -- its embrace of capitalism while dissent is squashed -- designed to stifle the nationwide unrest of 1989. This policy has allowed educated elites and entrepreneurs to profit handsomely, while the majority of Chinese still face brutal working conditions and low wages, and all Chinese must endure strict political and social controls. Some of these controls regulate speech on the Internet -- and have generated criticism over the involvement of major U.S. corporations such as Yahoo!, Cisco, Microsoft, and Google.
Episode 8: Can You Afford to Retire?
Air Date: May 16th, 2006
Summary: The baby boomer generation is headed for a shock as it hits retirement - boomers will be long on life expectancy but short on income. In addition to Social Security, the pillars of retirement income for Americans have been either lifetime corporate pensions or employee-contribution plans such as 401Ks. But both retirement strategies are in trouble. Buffeted by pension cuts, corporate bankruptcies, and the 2001-2002 stock market crash, most boomers now expect to be working into their retirement years.
Episode 9: The Age of AIDS - Part 1
Air Date: May 30th, 2006
Summary: After a quarter-century of political denial and social stigma, of stunning scientific breakthroughs, bitter policy battles and inadequate prevention campaigns, HIV/AIDS continues to spread rapidly throughout much of the world. Through interviews with AIDS researchers, world leaders, activists, and patients, FRONTLINE investigates the science, politics, and human cost of this fateful disease and asks - What are the lessons of the past, and what can be done to stop AIDS? In Part 1, ?The Age of AIDS? traces the pandemic over the past 25 years, beginning with the virus's eary cases. Included - political denial; social stigma; the contamination of blood supplies; and the virus's personal toll. Dr. Jim Curran, who headed the CDC's AIDS initiative in the1980s, recounts the story of a Florida family whose house was burned down because their children were hemophiliacs with AIDS. Also - the impact of the deaths of Rock Hudson and Ryan White.
Episode 10: The Age of AIDS - Part 2
Air Date: May 31st, 2006
Summary: After a quarter-century of political denial and social stigma, of stunning scientific breakthroughs, bitter policy battles and inadequate prevention campaigns, HIV/AIDS continues to spread rapidly throughout much of the world. Through interviews with AIDS researchers, world leaders, activists, and patients, FRONTLINE investigates the science, politics, and human cost of this fateful disease and asks - What are the lessons of the past, and what can be done to stop AIDS? In the conclusion, of ?The Age of AIDS? Dr. David Ho's development of an AIDS drug ?cocktail,? and his belief (with five million new cases each year) that neither he nor his children will live to see the end of AIDS. Also - the efforts of Rev. Franklin Graham; Bono's activism and how the rock star got Sen. Jesse Helms to change his views on AIDS; the disease's impact in South Africa, Uganda, Brazil, China and Russia.
Episode 11: The Dark Side
Air Date: June 20th, 2006
Summary: On September 11, 2001, deep inside a White House bunker, Vice President Dick Cheney was ordering U.S. fighter planes to shoot down any commercial airliner still in the air above America. At that moment, CIA Director George Tenet was meeting with his counter-terrorism team in Langley, Virginia. Both leaders acted fast, to prepare their country for a new kind of war. But soon a debate would grow over the goals of the war on terror, and the decision to go to war in Iraq. Cheney, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, and others saw Iraq as an important part of a broader plan to remake the Middle East and project American power worldwide. Meanwhile Tenet, facing division in his own organization, saw non-state actors such as Al Qaeda as the highest priority. FRONTLINE's investigation of the ensuing conflict includes more than forty interviews, thousands of pages of documentary evidence, and a substantial photographic archive. It is the third documentary about the war on terror from the team that produced Rumsfeld's War and The Torture Question.
Episode 12: Return Of The Taliban
Air Date: October 3rd, 2006
Summary: FRONTLINE reports from the lawless Pakistani tribal areas along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border and reveals how the area has fallen under the control of a resurgent Taliban militia. Despite the presence of 80,000 Pakistani troops, the Taliban and their supporters continue to use the region as a launching pad for attacks on U.S. and coalition forces in Afghanistan. Off limits to U.S. troops by agreement with Pakistan's president and long suspected of harboring Osama bin Laden and his deputy Ayman al-Zawahiri, the area is now considered a failed state. President Pervez Musharraf tells FRONTLINE reporter Martin Smith that Pakistan's strategy, which includes cash payments to militants who lay down their arms, has clearly foundered. In a region little understood because it is closed to most observers, FRONTLINE investigates a secret front in the war on terror.
Episode 13: The Enemy Within
Air Date: October 3rd, 2006
Summary: Five years after the attacks on 9/11 and the massive, multibillion-dollar reorganization of government agencies which followed, FRONTLINE and New York Times reporter Lowell Bergman investigates the domestic counterterrorism effort and asks whether we are any better prepared to prevent another catastrophic attack. Relying on interviews with high-level sources in the U. S. government, Bergman looks into the major cases brought inside the United States and reveals troubling flaws in what has been the largest reorganization of the government in half a century. The documentary focuses on who is the real enemy within the United States and whether we are prepared to defeat him.
Episode 14: The Lost Year in Iraq
Air Date: October 17th, 2006
Summary: In the aftermath of the fall of Saddam Hussein, a group of Americans led by Ambassador L. Paul Bremer III set off to Baghdad to build a new nation and establish democracy in the Arab Middle East. One year later, with Bremer forced to secretly exit what some have called "the most dangerous place on earth," the group left behind lawlessness, insurgency, economic collapse, death, destruction--and much of their idealism. Three years later, as the U.S. continues to look for an exit strategy, the government the Americans helped create and the infrastructure they designed are being tested. FRONTLINE Producer Michael Kirk follows the early efforts and ideals of this group as they tried to seize control and disband the Iraqi police, army and Baathist government--and how they became hardened along the way to the realities of postwar Iraq. The Lost Year in Iraq is based on numerous first-person interviews and extensive documentation from the FRONTLINE team that produced Rumsfeld's War, The Torture Question and The Dark Side.
Episode 15: A Hidden Life
Air Date: November 14th, 2006
Summary: On May 5, 2005, the residents of Spokane, Washington, awoke to one of the strangest headlines in the town's history - "West Tied to Sex Abuse in '70s, Using Office to Lure Young Men." The popular, socially conservative Republican mayor of Spokane, Jim West, had been outed by the town's newspaper The Spokesman-Review. The paper told the sordid story of a man with two lives - in public, he had once sponsored legislation forbidding gays from teaching in public schools, while in private, the paper alleged, he was trawling for young men online, using the trappings of his office to lure them into sexual relationships. But as bizarre as the revelations were, so too were the newspaper's methods. For months, a middle-aged "forensic computer specialist" had posed as an 18-year-old boy online, engaging the mayor in a relationship that became more and more intimate, ultimately exploding on the front page of the newspaper. In a media climate where sexual scandals dominate the headlines, FRONTLINE producers Rachel Dretzin and Barak Goodman investigate the complex relationship between politics, sexuality, fear, and judgment in one all-American town.
Episode 16: Living Old
Air Date: November 21st, 2006
Summary: With 35 million elderly people in America, "the old, old" -- those over 85 -- are now considered the fastest growing segment of the U.S. population. While medical advances have enabled an unprecedented number of Americans to live longer and healthier lives, this new longevity has also had unintended consequences. For millions of Americans, living longer also means serious chronic illness and a protracted physical decline that can require an immense amount of care, often for years and sometimes even decades. Yet just as the need for care is rising, the number of available caregivers is dwindling. With families more dispersed than ever and an overburdened healthcare system, many experts fear that we are on the threshold of a major crisis in care.
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