Summary: Have security tactics damaged our individual liberties? How much independent power should we give the FBI? And do the FBI abuses of Americans’ rights during the Cold War prove that its power must be counterbalanced by the courts? Security versus Liberty, a part of the PBS America at a Crossroads series, is a post 9/11 look at “questionable security practices” - and those who challenge them. ...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2007
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Summary: Following World War II, the parks were overwhelmed as visitation reached 62 million people a year. This final episode describes how a billion-dollar campaign, Mission 66, was created to build facilities and infrastructure to accommodate the growing flood of visitors. Biologist Adolph Murie introduced the revolutionary notion that predatory animals deserved the same protection as other wildlife....
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2009
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Summary: As the war in Iraq continues, the first measures of its psychological toll are appearing. This episode of Frontline tells the stories of soldiers who have come home haunted by their experiences and asks whether the military and the government are doing enough to help. A medical study estimates that more than one in seven returning veterans are expected to suffer from major depression, anxiety,...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2005
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Summary: This episode tells how, by the end of the 19th century, industrialization had left many Americans worried about whether the country would have any pristine land left. Poachers in the parks were rampant, and visitors were littering or carving their names in wilderness sites. Congress had yet to establish judicial authority or set aside appropriations for protection of the parks. This sparked a...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2009
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Summary: This episode follows the growth of the NPS after the advent of the automobile gave more people than ever the ability to travel to visit the parks. Stephen Mather embraced this opportunity and worked to build more roads in the parks. In North Carolina, Horace Kephart, a reclusive writer, and George Masa, a Japanese immigrant, launched a campaign to protect the last stands of virgin forest in the...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2009
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Summary: In the early 20th century, America had a dozen national parks, but they were a haphazard patchwork of special places under the supervision of different federal agencies. This episode traces how the conservation movement pushed the government to establish one unified agency to oversee all the parks. This led to the establishment of the National Park Service in 1916. Its first director, Stephen...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2009
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Summary: In 1991, Rick Walker was wrongly convicted of murder and spent the next 12 years in prison. This program tells the story of his exoneration and the political struggle to secure financial compensation for him from the state of California. In addition to an interview with Walker himself, the film presents detailed conversations with key players in his case and the partisan budget battle over...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2009
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Summary: Each year, more than one million people try to cross the U.S.-Mexico border, contending with dangerous forces that prey on their hopes and exploit their gullibility. This program exposes the most painful, disturbing, and hidden dimension of illegal immigration: the growing black market trade in human beings. Shedding light on the poverty that causes so many to risk everything by leaving their...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2008
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Summary: America's frenzied debate over government health insurance has eclipsed another, no less challenging, national health care crisis-the plight of people with serious mental illnesses like schizophrenia and bipolar disorder. This Fred Friendly Seminar sheds light on barriers to treatment, ethical and legal dilemmas, and fragmented social policies that are creating a nightmare for families, filling...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2009
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Summary: Pro-life advocates have waged a successful campaign to reduce abortions throughout the country, using state laws to regulate and limit the procedure and creating clinics offering alternatives. This Frontline documentary investigates the steady decline in the number of physicians and facilities carrying out abortions and focuses on local political battles in the states-particularly Mississippi,...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2009
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Summary: America's unions have bet on Barack Obama to initiate a recovery that will revive not only the economy, but the organized labor movement as well. In this program, Bill Moyers and United Steelworkers International's Leo Gerard address topics ranging from economic justice for workers, to the future of American manufacturing, to Gerard's hopes for how unions will fare under the Obama...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2009
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Summary: One government service after another has been turned over to private business for a profit. In this program, Bill Moyers Journal and Expose: America's Investigative Reports examine a whistleblower's tale of military housing contracts gone awry as Seattle Post-Intelligencer reporter Eric Nalder reveals what happens when one private contractor drops the ball. In addition, Bill Moyers talks with...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2009
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Summary: How far can a President go to defend the nation? This program examines the unprecedented presidential power that some say has been amassed by the Bush administration-and wielded, often secretly, in the name of national security. Bill Moyers gets perspective from two experts on the limits and abuses of federal power: Charles Fried, who teaches Constitutional law at Harvard Law School and served...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2009
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Summary: This Frontline program examines the current controversy surrounding the issue of childhood vaccination in America. Young parents are concerned over the sheer number of shots - up to 26 inoculations for 14 different diseases by age 6. Advocacy groups, such as Generation Rescue, view vaccines as responsible for rising rates of autism and ADHD. Yet public health officials tout vaccines as one of...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2010
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Summary: In 1932, the United States had almost no provision by which the federal government could offer a helping hand to the victims of economic collapse. But with a staggering number of Americans out of work, soup kitchens and private charities were simply overwhelmed. Enter Franklin D. Roosevelt-a leader ready to act, armed with a New Deal for the country. Bill Moyers explores America's...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2010
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Summary: During the 1980s, a new civil rights movement got underway-for people with disabilities. In this program, Larry Paradis, executive director of Disability Rights Advocates, speaks with NewsHour correspondent Spencer Michels about the importance of litigation in pressuring companies and communities to comply with the 1990 Americans with Disabilities Act. But are such legal actions actually...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2005
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Summary: Almost one-fifth of the world's electricity comes from nuclear power. Supporters claim it is safe, cheap, and the answer to global warming. Critics call it dangerous, expensive, and hardly the solution to climate change. This program presents arguments for and against nuclear energy while exploring scientific concepts behind it. Topics include: the disposal or storage of radioactive waste; the...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2009
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Summary: Why have America's health care costs skyrocketed? In this NBC News program, Tom Brokaw follows several cases at Staten Island University Hospital as he explores reasons behind financial turmoil in the U.S. health-care system. Among the patients: a 24-year-old man with no insurance who lost both legs in the Staten Island Ferry accident of October 2003. Another victim: a 62-year-old woman with a...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2008
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Summary: America's healthcare system frequently leaves patients feeling shortchanged, while physicians are forced to overdose on paperwork and managed care companies are helpless to cap their soaring costs. What is the future of this system, as the tidal wave of Baby Boomers surges toward retirement? This program analyzes the symptoms of America's healthcare ills and suggests a prescription for...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2006
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Summary: It all began on a fateful weekend in September of 2008 when the American economy was on the verge of melting down. Then-Secretary of the Treasury Henry Paulson, his former protege John Thain, and Ken Lewis, one of the most powerful bankers in the country, secretly cut a deal to merge Bank of America and Merrill Lynch. This episode of Frontline draws on high-profile interviews with key players...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2009
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Summary: When it comes to today's important public policy issues, the opportunity to be heard depends on whether you can afford it. In this program, Bill Moyers and key legal and public interest advocates examine how industries with deep pockets use their access to the media to overwhelm the public debate, from North Carolina's hog industry to the defeat of the McCain Tobacco Bill to the passage of the...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2005
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Summary: Do Americans still hold certain truths to be self-evident? Do all human beings possess inalienable rights endowed by their creator? Are all lives of equal value? And if so, how do those core beliefs translate into public policy on issues such as healthcare, poverty, abortion, capital punishment, and euthanasia? This program explores what the late Joseph Cardinal Bernardin called a "consistent...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2006
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Summary: Is the war on drugs in the U.S. causing greater societal harm than the problem of drug abuse itself? This provocative program features interviews with Bruce Benson and David Rasmussen, co-authors of Illicit Drugs and Crime; Eric Sterling, former Counsel to the House Judiciary Committee; Joanne Page, director of the Fortune Society; and others. Together they indict flawed initiatives that have...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2006
View online at AVOD
Summary: Currently, three-quarters of all U.S. healthcare dollars are spent on 100 million people with chronic illnesses and conditions. Will a cost-conscious healthcare system, increasingly driven by the market and oriented toward acute care, give them the proper care? This program examines how the chronically ill are faring today in seeking the high-quality, long-term care they need. Special reports...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2005