''Wide Angle'' is an American documentary television program produced by Thirteen/

WNET WNET (channel 13), branded on-air as "Thirteen" (stylized as "THIRTEEN"), is a primary PBS member television station licensed to Newark, New Jersey, United States, serving the New York City area. Owned by The WNET Group (formerly known as the ...

New York for broadcast on

PBS The Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) is an American public broadcaster and non-commercial, free-to-air television network based in Arlington, Virginia. PBS is a publicly funded nonprofit organization and the most prominent provider of educati ...

and for worldwide distribution. The weekly one-hour program covered international current affairs and was last hosted by veteran journalist Aaron Brown. ''Wide Angle'' began broadcasting on PBS in 2002, and aimed to expand the awareness and understanding of Americans about the changing world in which they live. It was the only documentary program on American television devoted exclusively to reporting in-depth on international issues. Following its eighth and final season it was nominated for a 2010

International Documentary Association International Documentary Association (IDA), founded in 1982, is a non-profit 501(c)(3) that promotes nonfiction filmmakers, and is dedicated to increasing public awareness for the documentary genre. Their major program areas are: Advocacy, Filmm ...

Continuing Series award.

Production

''Wide Angle'' programs consist of long-form, character-driven documentaries exploring pressing international issues through human stories, often followed by an interview with a

foreign policy A state's foreign policy or external policy (as opposed to internal or domestic policy) is its objectives and activities in relation to its interactions with other states, unions, and other political entities, whether bilaterally or through mu ...

expert to connect the films’ themes to American concerns. The program completed its eighth season in 2009, and in that time it had produced more than 60 films in over 50 countries. ''Wide Angle'' also produced a companion website, still extant, and additional educational materials for each film. The program's website includes background information on the issues from the films, interactive features, exclusive video and audio, and full streaming versions of many programs. Additional educational materials are distributed to high schools and colleges. In 2006, ''Wide Angles online ''Window into Global History'' project earned the Goldman Sachs Foundation's Prize for Excellence in International Education. Previous anchors for the program include

Bill Moyers Bill Moyers (born Billy Don Moyers, June 5, 1934) is an American journalist and political commentator. Under the Johnson administration he served from 1965 to 1967 as the eleventh White House Press Secretary. He was a director of the Counci ...

, former Assistant Secretary of State

James Rubin James Phillip Rubin (born March 28, 1960) is an American former diplomat and journalist who served as U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for Public Affairs in the Clinton Administration from 1997–2000. He wrote a regular column on foreign affa ...

Mishal Husain Mishal Husain (born 11 February 1973) is a British newsreader and journalist for BBC Television and BBC Radio. She is the main Sunday presenter of the ''BBC News at Ten'' and ''BBC Weekend News'' and one of the main presenters of BBC Radio 4's ' ...

, and

Daljit Dhaliwal Daljit Dhaliwal (born 8 September 1962) is a British newsreader and television presenter. Dhaliwal is a former news presenter for the Al-Jazeera English news service that broadcast from Washington DC. Previously, she was the anchor chair of ...

. Previous interview guests include Senator

Hillary Clinton Hillary Diane Rodham Clinton ( Rodham; born October 26, 1947) is an American politician, diplomat, and former lawyer who served as the 67th United States Secretary of State for President Barack Obama from 2009 to 2013, as a United States senat ...

, UN Deputy Secretary-General

Mark Malloch Brown George Mark Malloch Brown, Baron Malloch-Brown (born 16 September 1953) is a British diplomat, communications consultant, journalist and former politician serving as president of Open Society Foundations since 2021, having previously served as ...

, Mexico’s former Foreign Minister Jorge Castañeda, former Ugandan government minister

Betty Oyella Bigombe Betty Oyella Bigombe, also known as Betty Atuku Bigombe (born October 21, 1952), served as the Senior Director for Fragility, Conflict, and Violence at the World Bank from 2014 to 2017. She was appointed to that position in June 2014. From May ...

, Nobel Prize Laureates

Joseph E. Stiglitz Joseph Eugene Stiglitz (; born February 9, 1943) is an American New Keynesian economist, a public policy analyst, and a full professor at Columbia University. He is a recipient of the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences (2001) and the J ...

and

Amartya Sen Amartya Kumar Sen (; born 3 November 1933) is an Indian economist and philosopher, who since 1972 has taught and worked in the United Kingdom and the United States. Sen has made contributions to welfare economics, social choice theory, economi ...

WHO Who or WHO may refer to: * Who (pronoun), an interrogative or relative pronoun * Who?, one of the Five Ws in journalism * World Health Organization Arts and entertainment Fictional characters * Who, a creature in the Dr. Seuss book ''Horton Hear ...

Director-General

Margaret Chan Margaret Chan Fung Fu-chun, (born 21 August 1947) is a Chinese-Canadian physician, who served as the Director-General of the World Health Organization (WHO) delegating the People's Republic of China from 2006–2017. Chan previously served a ...

, Women for Women International

CEO A chief executive officer (CEO), also known as a central executive officer (CEO), chief administrator officer (CAO) or just chief executive (CE), is one of a number of corporate executives charged with the management of an organization especiall ...

Zainab Salbi Zainab Salbi (Arabic: زينب سلبي; born 1969) is an Iraqi American women's rights activist and writer. She is the co-founder of Women for Women International and host of ''Through Her Eyes'' with Yahoo! News and '' #MeToo, Now What?'', PBS ...

, ''New York Times'' columnist

Nicholas Kristof Nicholas Donabet Kristof (born April 27, 1959) is an American journalist and political commentator. A winner of two Pulitzer Prizes, he is a regular CNN contributor and an op-ed columnist for ''The New York Times''. Born in Chicago, Kristof was ...

, writer

Arundhati Roy Suzanna Arundhati Roy (born 24 November 1961) is an Indian author best known for her novel '' The God of Small Things'' (1997), which won the Booker Prize for Fiction in 1997 and became the best-selling book by a non-expatriate Indian author. ...

and former U.S. Secretaries of State George Mitchell and James A. Baker III.

Episodes

The July 2002 pilot episode "Saddam’s Ultimate Solution" was hosted by former Assistant Secretary of State and chief

State Department The United States Department of State (DOS), or State Department, is an executive department of the U.S. federal government responsible for the country's foreign policy and relations. Equivalent to the ministry of foreign affairs of other nat ...

spokesman James Rubin. It focused on

Saddam Hussein Saddam Hussein ( ; ar, صدام حسين, Ṣaddām Ḥusayn; 28 April 1937 – 30 December 2006) was an Iraqi politician who served as the fifth president of Iraq from 16 July 1979 until 9 April 2003. A leading member of the revolution ...

’s biological and chemical weapons and the wider threat they imply. In a host interview broadcast immediately following the episode, resident fellow at the

American Enterprise Institute The American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research, known simply as the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), is a center-right Washington, D.C.–based think tank that researches government, politics, economics, and social welfare. A ...

Richard Perle Richard Norman Perle (born September 16, 1941) is an American political advisor who served as the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Global Strategic Affairs under President Ronald Reagan. He began his political career as a senior staff member to ...

stated that "the thing that is brought home so clearly in this film is the connection among terrorist organizations now implicating Saddam Hussein directly with

Al Qaeda Al-Qaeda (; , ) is an Islamic extremist organization composed of Salafist jihadists. Its members are mostly composed of Arabs, but also include other peoples. Al-Qaeda has mounted attacks on civilian and military targets in various countr ...

Reception

''Wide Angle'' programs have won numerous awards, including an

Emmy Award The Emmy Awards, or Emmys, are an extensive range of awards for artistic and technical merit for the American and international television industry. A number of annual Emmy Award ceremonies are held throughout the calendar year, each with the ...

, the

Sigma Delta Chi Award The Sigma Delta Chi Awards are presented annually by the Society of Professional Journalists (SPJ) (formerly Sigma Delta Chi) for excellence in journalism. The SPJ states the purpose of the award is to promote "the free flow of information vital ...

, the Chicago International Television Hugo award, the

Gabriel Award The Gabriel Awards are a Catholic honor awarded each year for excellence in broadcasting. They were started by the Catholic Academy for Communication Arts Professionals in 1965, and are currently administered by the Catholic Media Association. ...

, several top awards from the South Asian Journalists Association (SAJA), citations from the

Overseas Press Club The Overseas Press Club of America (OPC) was founded in 1939 in New York City by a group of foreign correspondents. The wire service reporter Carol Weld was a founding member, as was the war correspondent Peggy Hull. The club seeks to maintain a ...

, and 22

Cine Golden Eagle Ciné film or cine film is the term commonly used in the UK and historically in the US to refer to the 8 mm, Super 8, 9.5 mm, and 16 mm motion picture film formats used for home movies. It is not normally used to refer t ...

awards. ''

The New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid ...

'' had a mixed review of the first program "Saddam’s Ultimate Solution", especially concerning the interview of Richard Perle by host James Rubin:

Focal Point

In December 2008, ''Wide Angle'' launched, ''Focal Point'', a new online-exclusive documentary program. Like ''Wide Angle'', ''Focal Point'' offers a deeper understanding of forces shaping the world today through compelling human stories, with ''Focal Point'' providing a venue for shorter, less formal pieces. In the first episode of ''Focal Point'', "From Jihad to Rehab", Canadian journalist

Nancy Durham Nancy Durham is a Canadian journalist. Career Durham was born and educated in Canada at the University of Western Ontario and York University. She began her career in journalism at the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) in Toronto in the s ...

reports from a rehabilitation center in Saudi Arabia, where art therapy and religious re-education are being used to reform militant jihadists.

References

External links