Tonight on FRONTLINE

“Reality has that effect on some people.

Narc-O-Lepsy?”

“No it's the glassy eyed repetitive recitation of the same old lefty bullchit that does it to me. Zzzzzzz.....”

“
FRONTLINE
http://www.pbs.org/frontline/

This Week: "The Undertaking" (60 minutes),
Tuesday, Oct. 30 at 9pm on PBS (check local listings)
Live Discussion: Chat with producers Karen O'Connor and Miri Navasky Wed., Oct. 31, at 11 am ET

Every so often we have the occasion to write a special note about a FRONTLINE program, and this is one of them.

Tuesday night's "The Undertaking" is a film about death and dying, grief and bereavement -- subjects we all are uncomfortable talking about, but not subjects we don't think about. And yet, this is not a depressing film. It is tender, poignant and life-affirming.

It features Thomas Lynch, a writer, poet and funeral director. For three generations he and his family have cared for the dead -- and the living -- in a small town in southcentral Michigan.

Producers Karen O'Connor and Miri Navasky obtained rare access into the world of Lynch & Sons. They interweave the details of their work caring for the dead -- the embalming, the dressing of the body -- with the intimate stories of the families who come to the funeral home to plan the rituals that will honor the life of a loved one. Throughout the program, O'Connor and Navasky include excerpts from Lynch's award-winning book, "The Undertaking: Life Studies From the Dismal Trade." In the end, their film beomes a deeply moving meditation on the journey that is taken between the living and the dead when someone dies, and how the rituals of a funeral help us, in the words of Lynch, "...to make some sense of life and living, dying and the dead."

A colleague of ours had an early look at it and wrote back the next day --

"I'm someone who has always been very fearful of death, and I can honestly say I haven't stopped thinking about the film. It has made me view my life and my little ones differently. My husband and I discussed afterward that we wanted to tell everyone we knew to watch it -- but it also seems like a difficult film to spread word-of-mouth..."

So we want to get the word out here: "The Undertaking" is an extraordinary film and we hope you will join us Tuesday night.

And don't forget that you can watch it anytime on our Web site, where you also can explore more about the Lynches and the stories of the individual families, and share your thoughts in our "Join the Discussion"area of the site.

Marrie Campbell
Editorial Director

--------------------------

+ Live Online Discussion on Washingtonpost.com ...

Producers Karen O'Connor and Miri Navasky will be online this Wednesday, Oct 31, at 11am ET, to discuss "The Undertaking"

For details, see:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/discussion/2007/10/24/DI2007102402178.html

”

“wow.”

“Excellent Frontline episode”

“I hope more people saw it.”

“
FRONTLINE/World
http://www.pbs.org/frontlineworld/

- This Week: "Extraordinary Rendition" and "A Second Opinion" (60 minutes),
Tuesday, November 6th at 9pm on PBS (check local listings)
- Live Discussion: Chat with investigative reporter Stephen Grey Nov. 7, at 11 am ET

This week, we turn our newsletter over to Stephen Talbot, series editor of our international news magazine, FRONTLINE/World --

-------

With all the debate in Washington about "waterboarding" -- and the upcoming vote on the nominee for attorney general -- our episode of FRONTLINE/World this Tuesday night is right on target.

Our lead story, "Extraordinary Rendition," is an investigation into the CIA's controversial, extra-legal practice of seizing terrorist suspects abroad and transporting them to third countries for interrogation in jails where torture is common.

Investigative reporter Stephen Grey has been pursuing this story for four years. The author of "Ghost Plane: The True Story of the CIA Torture and Rendition Program," Grey breaks new ground in this report, interviewing an Iraqi-born British resident who was flown on a CIA-chartered Gulfstream jet to a secret interrogation site in Afghanistan known as the "dark prison."

He also uncovers evidence of a rendition that took place earlier this year in the Horn of Africa, involving the detention of women and children in what appears to be a failed attempt to smoke out the mastermind of the 1998 bombings of the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania.

Grey interviews former CIA and FBI officials who were active in the hunt for Al Qaeda leaders and other suspected terrorists around the world. He finds that many U.S. agents who were involved in extraordinary renditions are now worried about the legal and political consequences of the program, which was denounced in a recent Council of Europe investigation that exposed CIA "black site" prisons in Romania and Poland.

It is a gripping and disturbing report. For those of you who have seen the new movie, "Rendition," it may seem eerily similar. But this is fact not fiction and President Bush has signed a new executive order allowing the CIA to continue to question terrorist suspects in secret jails.

"A Second Opinion"

In our second story, veteran reporter T.R. Reid takes a very different journey, seeking to cure his aching shoulder through the ancient Indian brand of medicine known as Ayurveda. At a clinic in Coimbatore in southern India, Reid submits himself to a regimen of oily massages, mud packs, caustic eye drops and bitter herbal concoctions. Other patients opt for leeches.

Known for his humorous commentaries on National Public Radio and his reporting for The Washington Post, the 60-something Reid is skeptical about the treatment, but he's eager to find an alternative to the high-tech shoulder surgery proposed by his doctor back home in Colorado.

In the end, Reid discovers something about faith, the placebo effect, and health care in another country at a time when Indian researchers have teamed up with the UCLA Medical School to see if their 3,000-year-old healing art is better than Western medicine for the treatment of rheumatoid arthritis.

"Rough Cut"

Our broadcast this week ends with a sampling of online videos we call "Rough Cuts." One of them, "Libya: Out of the Shadow" won an Emmy last month at the 28th Annual News and Documentary Emmy Awards in New York. (FRONTLINE/World also won an Emmy for our broadcast report, "Iraq: Saddam's Road to Hell.") We have made a special effort to debut original, high-quality video reports on our Web site, so we are pleased that the National Academy of Television Arts & Sciences chose to recognize our work.

Take a look at our latest "video dispatch" from Burma -- dramatic raw footage from the crackdown last month in Rangoon. And remember -- you can watch all our broadcast reports anytime on our Web site, where you also can explore in-depth features about the CIA's shadowy war on terror, and tell us what you think about our "stories from a small planet."

Sincerely,
Stephen Talbot
Series Editor

http://www.pbs.org/frontlineworld/

--------------------------
+ Live Online Discussion on Washingtonpost.com ...

Catch investigative reporter Stephen Grey online this Wednesday, Nov. 7, at 11am ET, to discuss "Extraordinary Rendition."

For details, see:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/discussion/2007/11/01/DI2007110101583.html

”

“
Well..... not TONIGHT..... but on Tuesday:


FRONTLINE
http://www.pbs.org/frontline/

This Week: "The Medicated Child" (60 minutes),
Tuesday, Jan. 8 at 9pm on PBS (check local listings)
Live Discussion: Chat with producer Marcela Gaviria, Jan. 9, 11am ET

This summer, FRONTLINE producer Marcela Gaviria set out to answer a question that has been troubling parents, doctors, and government regulators: Why are millions of American children being prescribed increasingly powerful, behavior-modifying drugs that have not been adequately tested in kids?

In "The Medicated Child," airing Tuesday night, Gaviria takes us deep inside the world of child psychiatry where a debate is growing about how early to diagnose mental illness in children, and which drugs are safe for treatment. At the heart of the story is the dramatic rise of a controversial new diagnosis--bipolar disorder--which, until recently was thought only to exist in adults, but now has been found in over one million children, including a growing number of toddlers. (Watch a preview at http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/medicatedchild/ ).

Gaviria finds many who challenge the validity of child bipolar disorder, and others who charge it's being overdiagnosed. But, ultimately, it's parents who are stuck with the hard choices about whether to treat their children with the potent psychiatric drugs prescribed for the disorder.

Meet Jacob Solomon, for instance. A preschool teacher urged his parents to medicate him for hyperactivity, but the diagnosis progressed to bipolar disorder and Jacob soon found himself on a cocktail of prescription drugs that came with serious side effects his doctors don't yet fully understand. "It all started to feel out of control," Jacob's father tells FRONTLINE. "Nobody ever said we can work with this through therapy and things like that. Everywhere we looked it was, 'Take meds, take meds, take meds.'"

Then there's four-year-old DJ whose parents reluctantly agreed to treat him with a new "anti-psychotic" drug for his extreme mood swings. "If he didn't take [the medicine], I don't know if we could function as a family," his mother tells FRONTLINE. "It's almost a do-or-die situation over here." DJ's doctor explains: "It's really to some extent an experiment, trying medications in children of this age. It's a gamble. And I tell parents there's no way to know what's going to work."

So who's monitoring this experiment on our children? How do doctors decide when a toddler's tantrums cross the line into mental illness? What are scientists learning about genetics and brain development that might one day remake the entire field of child psychiatry? Gaviria talks to a broad range of child psychiatrists and researchers, then heads to Washington where she learns something that's sure to give any parent pause at the pharmacy: The Food and Drug Administration knows shockingly little about the effects of most prescription drugs on children.

"Parents need to be aware that all products haven't been studied in children," one top doctor at the FDA tells FRONTLINE. "As a matter of fact, I'd say too high a percentage of time we don't know what we're doing, and we need to study it in kids and get the dosing right and know whether it works in them."

We hope you'll watch this important and timely program Tuesday night, and then visit us online to watch it again, explore the extended interviews with experts, read a parents' guide on psychiatric medications for children, or get answers to some "frequently asked questions." And, join our discussion at: http://pbs.org/frontline/medicatedchild/


Senior Editor
Ken Dornstein



--------------------------
+ Live Online Discussion on Washingtonpost.com ...

Producer Marcela Gaviria will be online this Wednesday, Jan. 9, at 11am ET, to discuss "The Medicated Child."

For details, see:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/discussion/2008/01/04/DI2008010402244.html

”

“
FRONTLINE
http://www.pbs.org/frontline/

This Week: "Growing Up Online" (60 minutes),
Tuesday, Jan. 22 at 9pm on PBS (check local listings)
Live Discussion: Chat with producers Rachel Dretzin and John Maggio Jan. 23, 11am ET


This Tuesday's FRONTLINE comes with a warning for everyone who's never made a "friend" on MySpace, chatted with someone online, or sent a text message from a cell phone: You live in a very different world than the one in which a new generation is growing up, and this widening digital divide is becoming much more profound than anyone might have once imagined.

In "Growing Up Online," producers Rachel Dretzin and John Maggio take us inside the private worlds that kids are making on the Web, often outside the view, and comprehension, of the adults in their lives.

A teenage girl creates a new name and persona for herself and becomes an Internet celebrity from the privacy of her own bedroom. A lunch room fight gets broadcast nationally on YouTube. A ninth grader is relentlessly teased online and, tragically, is pushed to suicide by a friend's instant messages, setting his father on a journey through his son's hard drive to figure out what went wrong.

These are some of the film's more extreme and dramatic stories, but perhaps more provocative are some of the smaller moments: A high schooler matter-of-factly reports that he never reads books ("If there were 27 hours in a day, I'd read Hamlet," he says), and he's pretty sure that most of his fellow students don't read either. A young woman privately confesses that she's slipped into an online world of anorexics that she doesn't know how to escape. A boy logs onto a new Web site that aspires to be MySpace for the kindergarten crowd.

Throughout the film, parents hover nervously around their children's computers, teachers try hard not to wag their fingers at students who'd rather watch a podcast than write an essay, and academics try to understand what may be the greatest cultural shift in American history. But if you think the answers predictable, be prepared for the surprise of a teacher who thinks cheating might not be such a bad thing and a father who comes around to supporting the risque photographs that his teenage daughter had been secretly posting on the Web.

We hope you'll tune in to see how it all plays out on Tuesday night, and then join us online to watch it again, explore interviews with teachers and experts on teens and new media, and join our discussion at: http://pbs.org/frontline/kidsonline/ .

Senior Editor
Ken Dornstein



--------------------------

+ Live Online Discussion on Washingtonpost.com ...

Producers Rachel Dretzin and John Maggio will be online this Wednesday, Jan. 23, at 11am ET, to discuss "Growing Up Online."

For details, see:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/discussion/2008/01/17/DI2008011702141.html

”

“[ bump ]”

“Thanks tilt. Looks pretty interesting so I tagged it for recording tonight.”

“Like we didn't know there are weirdos on the 'Net!     < grin >”

“Thanks for posting this, Tilt. This topic has been an ongoing discussion amongst me and friends. I think interpersonal skills amongst the next generation are going to suffer tremendously and I have noticed it already in younger generations, not to mention attention spans, the ability to make a deal, etc. Will be curious to see what Frontline has to say about it...”

“I'm passing this info along to my mom. She currently has custody of her 12 year old great-niece who has created a "myspace" account and sends text messages and emails to her boyfriend and might not always make good judgement calls (thanks to her mother's poor parenting skills). I think she'll enjoy watching this show.”

“It's been said many times that this portends a sea change comparable to the one after Gutenberg.   What it will look like in another twenty years we can only guess.”

“Last night American Experience on PBS was about Dr. Walter Freeman and the lobotomy. Some of the personal recounts of Dr. Freeman and his methods were down right scary. Did anybody see that one?

If I can stay awake long enough Frontline is on my to do list tonight.”

“Missed it, but saw the previews.   Seems like I saw that episode or another show like it some time ago.

I don't know about that icepick method!!”

“Scary dude. One time Dr. Freeman was called by the local police to the home of one of his patients. The patient had barracaded himself in the house threatening to kill etc etc. Dr. Freeman reportedly arrived and sternly told the guy to come out of the house...which the guy did. Dr. Freeman then told several deputies to hold him down (right there on the front porch!!) and out came the icepick..WOW! OUCH!

I think they said some days he would perform hundreds of these lobotomies in a DAY....I bet he could make a mean slushie with that icepick of his.

you need to try and catch that in a rerun or webcast.”

“Also ---- I don't know what's on the schedule in you guys' localities, but Georgia PBS is running NOVA at 8pm..... Supermassive black holes in the middle of your favorite galaxies.... < G >

If that blows your skirt up, check this out.”

“yaknow..... I might be old fashioned, but I think icepicks should just be used for ICE!”

“No supermassive black holes here...
UNC TV is rerunning the NOVA about the family that walks on all fours in a remote Turkish village. (that just ain't right)”

“It bothered me how they tried to equate their condition with primitive man. (I may have seen another show on the family)”

“Yep!   That's different!

They're showing that on South Carolina PBS, too.   That's an added benefit of being on the border..... we get both channels (GA and SC).”

“I may watch it...cause its about to come on. Looks like to me no matter how remote you live it just wouldn't be comfortable.
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/allfours/
it looks like it may be the same one Sarge...I read some mention of the role of genes in evolution. Still doesn't look comfortable.”

“Flipping between that and idol, looks like they explained it more than exploited that wrong assumption, so ignore my poor characterization from above.”

“ the family that walks on all fours in a remote Turkish village

MS PBS too.”

“well I think that was very good. the reverse evolution notion is interesting..however while they were explaining it, all I could think was "environmental"..then boom...they began talking about the environment. A nice well rounded look at it.”

“Hmmmm.

I wonder how these kids will relate to Their kids.......   LOL”

“Just as long as they don't have a hoss style relationship...........”

“Okay, now we're all mixed up.   The topic is now "Kids Online Who Walk On All Fours",   LOL”

“This thread reminded me that I need to One Spot my dogs!”

“Hey, glad to help ---”

“"I think interpersonal skills amongst the next generation are going to suffer tremendously..." -roseymonster

yep. i agree.

Some of the interviews w/ high school kids were pretty disturbing. What about the 14 yo girl who thought nothing of emailing a pic of her nearly nekkid self to a boy... "just cause it was something to do".

There is a false sense of anonymity online, for some. We see evidence of it every day in the people that post here. And, these are grown adult (well, most of 'em, anyway).

at any rate... interesting show.”

“We don't need further proof of wackos on the Interwebs, do we?     < VBG >

And the people who spend their formative years online?     Lord help 'em!”

“I wish I woulda thought to post this earlier. Last tuesday frontline did a story about the battle of haditha Iraq where marines allegedly slaughtered a bunch of civilians. It was called Rules of Engagement.

Excellent coverage. A must see if its replayed.”

“Thanks, Birch. I will have to check it out.”

“Yep ---- Interesting to compare it with the first Frontline episode on the incident.

It can be viewed online anytime if you've got the bandwidth.

As with many of their programs, there are more resources online: full interviews, discussions, etc.

”

“Tilt, I didnt see the first. Can it be reseen?”

“I went back through the archives and I think it must have been an episode of 60 Minutes.   Some of the same interviews were used, particularly with the soldiers.

The sense of it is captured in the first part of the Frontline episode when the story first broke. I believe that was before the Naval Criminal Investigative Service had completed their investigation, and charges hadn't yet been brought.

It seems like so many things progress that way.... from 'non-story' to 'heinous acts' and eventually it settles out as a complex situation with no easy answers.

”

“You'd think 'the little rascals' were running the Iraq invasion and occupation per last nights program. That they're still making a mess and grooming MyCane for four more is unbelieveable.
last edited: 3/26/08 6:28:26 AM”

“4 more wars!”

“Last night's Frontline was excellent. Was it a rerun? Basically the lead up to Iraq and the boundless mistakes made by the administration and their hired guns. It was EXCELLENT!!! Really well done. Interviews with all of the top dogs, including a lot of military heads who all RESIGNED during the first six months of the invasion, particularly when Bremmer came in and mucked everything up with his Bathist eddict and then disbanding the Iraq military.

This thing has been a fiasco from day one!”

“My wife was watching that upstairs last night and I heard her yell, "......#&%!$ing moron....." and other appropriate epithets during the show.”

“Those sneaky bastards snuck the first part past me, beginning their 2-part deal on Monday night instead of Tuesday,   < grrrrrrrr >

I just skimmed the email -----


FRONTLINE
http://www.pbs.org/frontline/

- This Week: "Bush's War" (270 minutes),
March 24th and 25th at 9pm on PBS (Check local listings)
- Live Discussion: Chat with producer Michael Kirk March. 26, 11am ET

In the Fall of 2001, with the campaign against Al Qaeda and the Taliban in full swing in Afghanistan, veteran producer Michael Kirk walked into FRONTLINE's Boston office with a stunning piece of news: In Washington, he'd learned, a small group of policy insiders had quietly begun planning for what they called "Phase 2" -- the invasion of Iraq and the toppling of Saddam Hussein.

Over the next six years, Kirk and a handful of other FRONTLINE production teams would pursue every major aspect of the Bush administration's "war on terror." On the ground in Iraq and Afghanistan, inside Pakistan's lawless tribal areas and the radical mosques of Europe, and behind closed doors in Washington, FRONTLINE has conducted some four hundred interviews on the war, often with administration insiders who reveal the anguished decisions, the bitter policy battles and the almost Shakespearean dramas that played out among the conflict's chief actors: Powell and Rumsfeld, Cheney, Rice, and Bush.

Now, on the fifth anniversary of the Iraq invasion, FRONTLINE presents "Bush's War," airing Monday and Tuesday night. Drawing on some forty hours of FRONTLINE films and incorporating significant new interviews, this two-part series may well become the definitive documentary analysis of one of the most challenging periods in our country's history.

Why watch four-and-a-half hours of a story whose broad outlines, and many unfortunate details, you think you already know? Because drawing the elements of this story into one rich and sweeping narrative enables us to better see and understand how we've gotten to where we are in this post-9/11 world, and where we might go from here.

We hope you'll join us Monday and Tuesday nights. If you can't, the full series is streamed on our site in an upgraded video player that embeds an array of related interviews and background material and offers full screen viewing. We also have an annotated master timeline comprised of 175 video clips and the full collection of interviews conducted on the war. And after watching "Bush's War," we invite you to join the discussion at http://www.pbs.org/frontline/bushswar/

Senior Editor
Ken Dornstein

--------------------------
+ Live Online Discussion on Washingtonpost.com ...

Producer Michael Kirk will be online this Wednesday, March 26, at 11am ET, to discuss "Bush's War."

For details, see:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/discussion/2008/03/16/DI2008031602418.html

”

“It was a good show. Whether you believed in the invasion or not it just shows how farcical the whole post-invasion situation was.

What really got me was the power struggle going on inside the administration, with Rumsfeld and Cheney vs Powell and in the end Rice.

Rumsfeld and Cheney have much to answer for in all this mess.

How dumb and arrogant have you got to be to think you can invade a country, topple a regime, then get out in a matter of weeks.

Rice was the one who seems to have come out of this with the most credibility. I've not had much time for her up to now, but she's gone up in my estimation. (Sure she'll be happy to hear that).”

“
          A cluster#&%!$ of mindbending proportions.

”

“Agreed Y2. They definitely painted Rice as butting heads with Cheney and particularly Rummy, who dismissed her and admittedly, didn't like her or what she had to say. Bush would have done better to dump Daddy's friends and listen to the scholar.”

“Great show about the biggest screw-up I've ever seen, and I've seen some big screw-ups. In a nutshell, all our worst fears were authenticated.”

“The other thing that became clarified was that for each screw-up, somebody got thrown under the bus, and it was never the person most responsible for the screw-up. Hell, I was waiting for Barney to get thrown under the bus too.”

“Another thing was how far they had to delve down through the military and policy wonks to find the yes men without the credibility to stand up to them.

They wanted yes men and they seemed to get them.

There was no interest in dealing with the reality of the situation - just blind persuit of a failing policy.”