Cronkite Professor Aaron Brown Hosts PBS Series "Wide Angle"

Aaron Brown

Aaron Brown, the Walter Cronkite Professor of Journalism at Arizona State University and former CNN news anchor, is hosting the PBS international affairs weekly series “Wide Angle” this summer.

The series, which was created in 2001 by WNET/Thirteen in New York, focuses on in-depth international news coverage. “Wide Angle” is the only program exclusively dedicated to international current affairs documentaries, according to PBS. “For each broadcast, producers and journalists from around the globe report on an event, issue or trend through the eyes of the people who are living it day to day,” PBS said in a statement. "The show has traveled to more than 50 countries to “explore the forces that are shaping the world today, presenting global stories on a human scale and offering Americans uncommon and invaluable insight into today’s interconnected world.”

Brown, the former CNN anchor who teaches full time at ASU’s Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication as the Cronkite Professor of Journalism, travels the globe following the academic year to report. This is his second year as “Wide Angle” anchor.

Cronkite, the former CBS News anchor and the namesake of Brown’s school, has called the series “just good television. The series tells stories, portrays people and reveals places that are too often overlooked or neglected.”

“Wide Angle” can be seen in Arizona on Eight/KAET on Wednesdays at 10 p.m.
The following is this season’s lineup, reproduced from the Eight/KAET Web site:

July 1: Crossing Heaven’s Border
North Korean defectors take a life-threatening journey, traveling thousands of miles through China, Laos and Thailand in the hope of settling as free citizens in South Korea. Intrepid South Korean journalists risk their lives to capture the action and emotion.

July 8: Heart of Jenin
When 12-year-old Palestinian Ahmed Khatib was accidentally shot and killed by Israeli soldiers in the West Bank city of Jenin, the boy’s parents turned their sorrow into a gift of hope for six Israeli children by consenting to donate Ahmed's organs.

July 15: Birth of a Surgeon
“Wide Angle” travels to Mozambique where, for the first time, midwives are being trained in advanced life-saving surgery. Suffering from an acute shortage of doctors, Mozambique's bold grassroots initiatives have cut the maternal death rate in half.

July 22: The Market Maker
“Wide Angle” travels to East Africa to tell the dramatic story of an Ethiopian economist on a mission. Seeking a market-based solution to ending hunger in her famine-plagued country, she creates Ethiopia's first commodities exchange. What she didn't count on was a world financial crisis getting in the way.

July 29: Contestant No. 2
Duah Fares is an Arab-Israeli teenager and member of the Druze religion. When she sets her sights on the Miss Israel pageant, her tight-knit religious community balks. The pageant requires contestants to wear a bathing suit, an act that could disgrace her family and even put her in danger.

Aug. 12: Victory is Your Duty
“Wide Angle” gains intimate access to the Havana Boxing Academy on the outskirts of Cuba's capital. There, from the tender age of 9, boys hand-picked as future Olympians are molded into soldiers of the ring.

Sept. 2 and 9: Time for School Series
The show’s award-winning 12-year documentary project “Time for School” travels to seven classrooms – in Afghanistan, Benin, Brazil, India, Japan, Kenya and Romania – to offer a glimpse into the lives of seven winning children who are struggling to achieve what is not yet a global birthright – a basic education.