David Fanning
David Fanning, FRONTLINE’s founder, served as executive producer of the series from its first season in 1983 until 2015. He is now the series’ executive producer at large.
After 35 seasons and more than 600 films, FRONTLINE remains America’s longest-running investigative documentary series on television. The series has won all of the major awards for broadcast journalism: 82 Emmys; 34 duPont-Columbia University Awards; 20 Peabody Awards; 16 Robert F. Kennedy Journalism Awards; eight Television Critics Awards; and eight Banff Television Awards. In 1990 and in 1996, FRONTLINE was recognized with the Gold Baton — the highest duPont-Columbia Award — for its “total contribution to the world of exceptional television.” In 2002, the series was honored with an unprecedented third Gold Baton for its post-Sept. 11 coverage, a series of seven hour-long documentaries on the origins and impact of terrorism.
Fanning — who was awarded Harvard University’s 2010 Goldsmith Career Award for Excellence in Journalism and recently received the 2013 Lifetime Achievement Emmy Award — began his filmmaking career as a young journalist in South Africa.