Murrow Award is icing on the cake for PBS's Frontline; Program's executive producer will accept honor for excellence at WSU tonight

MOSCOW - David Fanning knows from awards.

Over the past two-plus decades, the executive producer of the venerable Public Broadcasting Service documentary series "Frontline" has seen the show's trophy case bulge with honors, including 32 Emmys, 22 duPont-Columbia University Awards, 12 Peabody Awards, and nine Robert F. Kennedy Journalism Awards.

But Washington State University's Edward R. Murrow award for excellence in broadcasting will hold a special place among the accolades, Fanning said Monday during a visit to the University of Idaho and Idaho Public Television station KUID-TV.

"He said television matters, and it can do great things," Fanning said of Murrow, the legendary television newsman and WSU alumnus. "Murrow said it all in 1958. He called it."

Fanning will accept the Murrow award on behalf of "Frontline" at 7:30 tonight at WSU's Beasley Coliseum. The event is free and open to the public.

He said Murrow himself may tune in. "I'd like to think he'd be watching."

Fanning said he followed Murrow's example of hard-hitting, credible journalism to help build "Frontline" into one of the most respected programs on television today. And its founders did it at a time when the long-form TV documentary wasn't a respected commodity, especially shows that were produced on the public dime, Fanning said.

After the Watergate scandal led Richard Nixon to resign the presidency, public television often produced documentaries that were at best poorly made, and at worst espousing a particular point of view, he said.

Fanning and others wanted to reapply the tenets and ethics of journalism to the documentary, and did so with what some have called the most controversial film in the history of public television, 1980's "Death of a Princess."

The film, which was produced for "Frontline" predecessor "World," told the story of a Saudi princess who was publicly executed for committing adultery, Fanning recalled.

The resulting uproar, which included threats from the Saudi government to break off diplomatic relations and suspend oil shipments to England (the reporter on the story was British), plunged public broadcasting into controversy.

But Fanning said it was able to survive because of its journalistic integrity.

"It became the test that said public television can withstand those sorts of pressures," he said.

"World" formed the template for "Frontline," which debuted in 1983. The series hauls in between 4 million and 5 million viewers each week, Fanning said.

Joined at KUID by another "Frontline" producer, UI grad Michael Kirk, the South Africa native also lamented the current state of TV journalism, which he said has become a wasteland of instant but meaningless 24-hour news.

Kirk agreed.

"I have very little good to say about the television journalism landscape," said Kirk, who Fanning called the most prolific producer in "Frontline" history. He said producers, directors and reporters who work with "Frontline" are lucky to work without financial or political considerations.

"I feel none of the pressure that some of the people I know in commercial TV feel," Kirk said. "They want to do it (produce unfettered documentaries), but less and less of them are able to do it."

Kirk made a name for himself after his graduation by producing investigative reports for KUID, which was then owned by the UI. "We were sent out with a mandate to cause trouble," Kirk recalled of the days when he and others had to build up KUID's audience from a base of "200 cows."

After one program that dug into how much money the UI was spending on a losing football program, Kirk said he was confronted in the studio by a livid booster who wanted to punch his lights out. "You learned a whole lot about how to handle pressure," he said with a wry smile.

Kirk now has his own award at the UI. Presented each year to an outstanding senior in the School of Journalism and Mass Media, the Michael Kirk Award in Broadcast News was given this year to Darren Gerger, 22, of Osburn.

"It's really amazing to just be here meeting them in person," Gerger said of Kirk and Fanning. "They pretty much invented the kind of media I want to go into."

Mills may be contacted at jmills@lmtribune.com or (208) 883-0564.