David Fanning

South Africa

David Fanning has been executive producer of Frontline , America’s only regularly scheduled investigative documentary series on television, since its first season in 1983. The series has won all the major awards for broadcast journalism, including 34 Emmys, 23 duPont-Columbia University Awards, 12 Peabody Awards, and 11 Robert F. Kennedy Journalism Awards. In 2002, the series was honored with an unprecedented third Gold Baton from duPont-Columbia for its post September 11th coverage, a series of seven hour-long documentaries on the origins and impact of terrorism. In 2003, “A Dangerous Business,” a Frontline / New York Times joint investigation of the cast-iron pipe making industry, won the Pulitzer Prize for public service.

Fanning began his filmmaking career as a young journalist in South Africa. He came to the US in 1973 and began producing and directing local and national documentaries for KOCE, a public television station in California. In 1977, Fanning came to WGBH Boston to start the international documentary series WORLD.