vanguard blog 211 items | updated May 17 2012

It was a typical Thursday afternoon here in the Current LA office. All of us here in Vanguard were working on our monitor tans as we plugged away in front of our computers, enjoying the quiet under the white noise of the air conditioner.  Then Senior Producer Darren Foster walked in and said, "Guys, turn on CNN, the most incredible story is on right now!" We tuned in right away and watched live news coverage of what looked like a homemade hot-air balloon floating through the sky like it was a scene straight out of a Roald Dahl children's book.

Only, this was real. For a good 20 minutes, a dozen of us stood huddled around the television as we watched a homebuilt balloon fly 7,000 feet in the air holding what we believed was a little six-year-old boy inside. We were glued to the news and even as we each turned back to our computers to get back to work, we couldn't help but keep at least one ear open to hear the developments of this bizarre and captivating sequence of events.

The Balloon Boy story is not exactly what you'd call a Vanguard story--there are no huge global implications caused by this nor is this a look at how the people and places in our world are changing in pivotal ways. It's just kind of a freak show, and it's old news even as I write this. But it certainly did do something that we aim to do in each of our stories -- it grabbed people's attention. What's more, it made people curious not just about the incident itself, but about the little boy's family, their history, the connection this story has to the man who flew around Los Angeles in a lawn chair in 1982...you name it. My point is, Vanguard tries to be just as compelling, and it can certainly be a challenge when a lot of our subjects aren't the sexiest or most alluring.

But just like today's Balloon Boy headliner, we try accomplish the same kind of natural curiosity around our stories. We hope that after you watch one of our documentaries, you'll want to know more than just what you've learned in the episode and are motivated to do your own investigations.

We got off to a great start to our season with the premiere of "The OxyContin Express". If you missed it, you can watch it here:



I hope you tune in to the remainder of our amazing lineup and are inspired to learn more about the stories we explore. Only, don't expect any homemade flying saucers...just some quality journalism and compelling storytelling.

I’m sitting at my desk in Vanguard’s LA office wearing my Dodger blue t-shirt, because a friend got my son and me tickets to today’s opening game of the National League Championship Series. With apologies to those of you in Philadelphia, we’ll be in Dodger Stadium late this afternoon, rooting for our home team. Last year, we watched these same two teams play in the NLCS. The Dodgers lost. Starting for the Phillies today is ace Cole Hamels, whom the Dodgers find hard to beat. Opposing him, the Dodgers are starting 21-year old Clayton Kershaw, who only has a year and half experience in the Majors.

Why am I telling you this? I’m telling you because it’s important to many of us, not only here in southern California, but around the nation.

But also I wanted to talk a little bit about what we here in Vanguard think is important, which relates to why we do what we do, and why we want you to pay attention to us.

For example, if you glance down the list of documentaries in our new fall line-up, you’ll notice that covering sports isn’t something that we do. And, in fact, if you just read summaries of our docs, and don’t watch them, you might get the impression that often times here at Vanguard, we seem to be sitting around all day long worrying about how this or that is causing the fate of the world hang in the balance. We might seem like an over-earnest bunch of folks.

And yes, it’s true, what motivates us, our mission, is to try to keep track of important changes in the world, changes that affect us all, but might not get a thorough examination if we don’t look at them. We try to tell you important stories that otherwise might not get told—because we think it’s important for society that we know and understand. But that’s just why we do what we do, not why we hope that you’ll watch us.

In fact, we don’t expect you to watch us because we try to do important work.

We hope you’ll watch us because we’re interesting.

In contrast, who wins the NLCS is important. It’s important to me. But speaking as a Dodger fan who watched them lose the NLCS last year, watching them lose is not an experience I would describe as “interesting,” anymore than watching a candidate you back lose an election is “interesting.”

In contrast, there’s Vanguard. Although you’re learning important information when you go with Mariana to Sri Lanka later this season, or Adam to Cambodia, or Christof to Italy, or Kaj to America’s military R & D centers, we understand that you’re going along with them because you want to, because it’s an interesting experience—at least, we hope it’s interesting and we try our best to make it so. We hope you agree.


Vanguard Season Preview (Video)

Recently from the Vanguard blog:
Vanguard is here - Kaj Larsen
A big day for Vanguard - Lauren Cerre
A premiere dedication - Mariana van Zeller

You might think the Vanguard team is so serious, and we are. We take our work very seriously, and we cover some really serious subjects. But you can’t cover too much death, drugs, conflict, and destruction without a lot of levity to go around. So we are constantly joking around and giving each other a hard time.

I would like to say that overall the Vanguard team has a pretty good sense of humor. Case in point: An incident chronicled in this op-ed I wrote recently for the Huffington post.

I don’t want to give the impression that Vanguard is in the habit of stealing and tagging, more that we like to leave our mark from time to time.

I'm off to Mariana’s house to watch the new episode.  Yup, we are actually all friends in this department; it’s a pretty rare phenomena. The LA Times had an article this morning that talked about how we all get together and go to Laura’s house to play Rock Band.  That’s embarrassing, a 'lil nerdy, and totally true.  I bet Hannity and O’Reilly don’t get together and workout with the Wii.  (I'm actually not entirely sure they work out at all, but that’s beside the point.)

The point is that Vanguard is a unique place to be, because it’s a tight-knit team.  We think this helps our journalism, but at the very least we know we have a lot of fun doing our job.

--Kaj

I‘m not sure if there‘s an official Vanguard birthday, but today feels like a birthday of sorts. Why? Because we have a brand spanking new season of Vanguard launching tonight and we’ve been waiting weeks and weeks for this day!

You can always tell when we are launching a new season by the look of our office. The garbage bins are filled to the brim with take-away boxes and Yasu (Vanguard editor) has about a handful of empty coffee cups on his desk.

[caption id="" align="aligncenter" width="500" caption="Yasu's Coffee Cup Graveyard (photo by Mariana Van Zeller)"][/caption]

Despite the look (and smell) of our office, It’s an exciting time in the Vanguard and we can’t wait to show you what we’ve been working on. Our season launches with an amazing show on the Oxycontin epidemic. It’s a fantastic piece and you’ll be shocked to learn how prevalent prescription drug abuse is in this country. In fact, Dr. Phil just did a show on the topic and invited our very own Mariana van Zeller to discuss the issue.

You can watch the show here.

Tonight we all gather for a little celebration of the launch and tomorrow we’re right back to polishing, tweaking and editing the remainder of our shows set to air in the coming weeks.

Happy season launch day Vanguard!

Some previous episodes of Vanguard if you want to get caught up!

• - Rebels in the Pipeline - Mariana van Zeller reports from Nigeria


• - Narco War Next Door - Laura Ling reports from Mexico


• - I Heart Global Warming - Adam Yamaguchi reports from Greenland


• - From Russia With Hate: Vanguard's award-winning look at the rise of neo-Nazis in Russia


• - China's Wild West: Laura Ling covers the Uighurs in Xinjiang Province, China

This was a busy summer for me. I produced two stories, “Forest of Ecstasy” airing October 28  and "Cocaine Mafia" airing December 9.  I traveled to Cambodia with Adam Yamaguchi where we traipsed around a leech infested forest in search of secret factories where rare trees are harvested to make “ecstasy oil”.

Here's a sneak peek from the show:

Sneak Peek Vanguard Season 3: Leeches

I barely had time to unpack and repack when I was off to Italy where I met up with Christof Putzel to investigate one of Europe’s largest hubs for cocaine trafficking, a town just outside of Naples, Italy, called Castel Volturno. I spend most of my time on shoots looking through the viewfinder and filming. I love making images and hate being the center of attention so this is the perfect gig for me. But recently, I looked for some photos of myself in professional action—perhaps a shot of me hacking my way through the rainforest with some armed Cambodian forest rangers and realized I never got them.  I’m usually so busy trying to make sure I capture the story unfolding in front of me, that I rarely stop to ask someone to take a keepsake photo of me. So going through my digital camera, I didn’t have much luck in finding the quintessential “badass” producer shot.  Instead what I found was this classic snapshot of me,  hanging out in a sun-drenched piazza with some old Italian gents.  It was one of our last days of filming in Italy and we were trying to get some visuals that encapsulate the picture perfect Italian small town life.  Except we knew the town was a mafia stronghold and journalists were probably not super-welcome.  I felt like a lot of suspicious eyes were on us outsiders. So I played up, pretending to be a tourist and even asked someone to take my picture with some of the locals.  And  there you have it, visual proof of me on the job, as a Vanguard producer.



Also from the Vanguard blog:

• - Mitch Koss on Vanguard’s Documentary Origins


• - Laura Ling on Vanguard’s Mission


• - Vanguard goes to Dr. Phil by Darren Foster

Ten years ago this week, Laura Ling and I, along with Serena Altschul and producer Pat Lope, started working on a MTV documentary on the methamphetamine business that led, the following year, to the four of us creating the MTV doc series, “Breaking It Down with Serena.” Back in those days, this was a fairly new genre, and viewed a bit skeptically. The previous year, Serena had had to fight hard for the opportunity that she, and Pat, and Laura and I got in October of 1999. And at that point, we were on the spot to prove that what was then a fairly radical approach to journalism based documentary filmmaking would appeal to viewers.

MTV’s “Breaking It Down,” series went on to become one of the two documentary ancestors to Current’s Vanguard documentary series. The other was a series of PBS documentaries, starting in the mid-90s that first Anderson Cooper and I, and then Lisa Ling and I, and finally Laura and I did. Ten years ago, at the mainstream network news level, there was a degree of formula to the film-making. For trying to deviate from the prevailing standard, Anderson and Lisa and Serena were sometimes figures of controversy and consternation. Behind the scenes, people in power would ask me things like “Why do you let him be so informal?” “Why do you let her be in every shot?” “Why do you trust her?” And “why can’t you hold your f***ing camera steady?” To which I would answer something akin to “Well…” and wait for the subject to change. But the actual answer was that Anderson, and Lisa, Serena, and then Laura were radical. They weren’t interested in annoying the mainstream simply for the sake of pissing people off. But they were interested in using whatever new film-making techniques that they could if they thought this would make their journalism stronger and make their documentaries more illuminating and compelling.

In the ten years since, there has been a lot of change in what the mainstream of this business accepts. Serena is at CBS News, Anderson has his own show on CNN, and you can go into your local video store and rent the National Geographic docs that Lisa has made in recent years. And Laura is the vice president in charge of Vanguard, Current’s documentary making department.

Today, I still don’t hold my camera steady, but the approach to film-making that we use in Vanguard is no longer so controversial in the rest of TV. In this week’s premiere episode, The Oxycontin Express, I can’t imagine much criticism coming, say, because Darren Foster chose to shoot an interview without using a tripod. Similarly, Mariana Van Zeller did not have to get in a big fight behind the scenes with anyone here at Current to establish the freedom to ad lib on camera while shooting Oxy. But where we no longer have to fight so much for creative freedom, we still struggle and push ourselves to look for new innovations, for ever-better, ever more compelling and illuminating ways to tell stories that otherwise don’t get told. We really appreciate this opportunity. We hope that you appreciate the result, our new season of Vanguard.

Watch a few episodes of Vanguard:
- Rebels in the Pipeline - Mariana van Zeller reports from Nigeria
- Narco War Next Door - Laura Ling reports from Mexico
- I Heart Global Warming - Adam Yamaguchi reports from Greenland

Join us tonight at 10pm for a special preview of the upcoming Vanguard season.  Correspondent Adam Yamaguchi takes us through some of the best from the archive and all the great stories we have to look forward to in the weeks ahead.



Don't forget to mark your calendars:  Vanguard premieres next Wednesday at 10pm with "The OxyContin Express", correspondent Mariana van Zeller's powerful look into prescription drug abuse.

Channel guide:
In the U.S.
DIRECTV 358
Comcast Nationwide 107
Dish Network 196
Time Warner: NY 103
Time Warner: LA 142
Time Warner: Other Cities: check local listings
AT&T U-verse Nationwide 189
Verizon FIOS 130

In the U.K.
Sky 183
Virgin Media 155

In Italy
Sky Italia 130

Laura Ling opened Vanguard's live event in Italy with a great statement on Vanguard's mission.  Vanguard launches its new season on Oct. 14 at 10pm (9 central).

Vanguard correspondent Mariana van Zeller went to Dr. Phil today to tape an upcoming show about prescription drug abuse.  The show will feature "The OxyContin Express", Vanguard's powerful one hour doc on the issue which launches the new season on Oct. 14.   Dr. Phil's show will air earlier the same day.

The Vanguard page on current.com got a brand new make over and it's just in time for our new season, which launches Oct. 14.

A couple of things to point out :

You'll find a place to subscribe to the RSS feed for this blog so you can keep on top of all Vanguard news and events. (It's located just under the very Hollywood photo of our correspondents.  Yes, that's how they look after we shower'em up when they return from the field).  In the main player is the Vanguard season promo and below that in the "featured videos" section are a few sneak peaks at our upcoming episodes.



We're really excited for the new season and have been working hard to meet our deadlines, just ask our editor Yasu, who we're just barely keeping conscious with a steady feed of coffee and red bull.




Below is the line up.  All premieres are 10pm (9 central) on Current TV.  See you then!

The Oxycontin Express : 10/14/09
Mariana van Zeller travels to South Florida, the "Colombia of prescription drugs".

Cuba: Waiting for a Revolution : 10/21/09
Adrian Baschuk searches for seeds of a homegrown revolution in Cuba.

Forest of Ecstasy : 10/28/09
Adam Yamaguchi investigates how demand for the party drug is destroying Cambodian forests.

Notes from a War on Terror : 11/04/09
Mariana van Zeller examines how Sri Lanka put an end to its 25-year conflict.

Porn 2.0 : 11/11/09
Christof Putzel looks at how technology is reshaping the Porn industry.

Prison Contraband : 11/16/09
Janet Choi investigates the black market trade behind bars.

Remote Control War : 12/02/09
Kaj Larsen explores the future of battle.

European Coke Trail : 12/09/09
Christof Putzel steps into a turf war for control of the Old Continent's drug trade.

Just as we're getting ready to put the finishing touches on our Sri Lanka story for the upcoming season of Vanguard (premieres Sept. 30) comes video footage of what appears to be Sri Lankan troops summarily executing Tamils.  The video was apparently shot on a cellphone camera by a Sri Lankan soldier; obtained by "Journalists for Democracy in Sri Lanka", a group Sri Lankan journalists, writers and human rights advocates in exile; and passed along to Channel 4 News in the UK.



JDS says the video was shot in January during the height of the war between government forces and the Tamil Tigers.   And it has just surfaced now, 3 months after the government of Sri Lanka claimed victory in their 30 year conflict with the militant separatists.  During the last months of the war, independent journalists were banned from reporting in the conflict zone and there were many rumors and leaked videos of atrocities.  But this footage would seem to be the worst evidence of war crimes to have emerged thus far.

The Sri Lankan government has challenged the veracity of the footage, alleging that it's "doctored".

We'll be exploring this latest development and much more in our piece for the new Vanguard season.  In the meantime, for more on the video, check out Channel 4 correspondent Jonathan Miller's blog.

Click here for the raw video ***Warning: it's graffic***

Couldn't help but notice the juxtaposition on my Facebook feed of Christof's post of the NY Times obituary of 60 minutes creator Don Hewitt and another friend who posted The Daily Show segment on CNN's "Just Sayin'".

Do we need to comment?  Or does the contrast between Hewitt's creation and CNN's latest shtick speak for itself?

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
CNN's Just Sayin'
www.thedailyshow.com
Daily Show Full Episodes Political Humor Healthcare Protests

Here's a little "thank you" from our colleagues Laura and Euna to all of you who supported them while they were detained in North Korea.



We here in Vanguard also wanted to add our thanks again for all your help in bringing them home.

For as long as we blog, we know we'll never match the excitement of this one.  After being held in North Korea for almost 5 long months, our friends and colleagues Laura and Euna are finally home.  Needless to say, we're overjoyed.

Some really big thank yous --

To everyone - our fellow Currentians, viewers, the online community, family, friends and strangers -- for your thoughts, prayers, letters and petitions.

To Laura and Euna's families who showed unbelievable strength and courage during this whole ordeal.  You are an inspiration.

To President Clinton for bringing Laura and Euna home.   And also for this amazing image that we kind of want to put on our office wall but will obviously have to wait and see if Laura and Euna would be OK with that.



Most importantly, thank you, Al and Joel, who we know worked tirelessly behind the scenes for many months to make this happen.  Thank you for your leadership and constant support for the work we do.

But most, most, most importantly thank you to Laura and Euna for coming back, pumping your arms in the air, laughing, smiling and hugging your families.  That's just what we wanted. Welcome home, ladies.  We've missed you!

-- The Vanguard Team

President Obama made his first trip to sub-Saharan Africa this week. In his speech in Ghana, he called for a renewed relationship between the US and the continent. But he also sprinkled in a little tough love (fast becoming a trademark of the new president's overseas appearances). While accepting some blame on behalf of the West for some of Africa's problems, Obama also held up the mirror, calling on Africans to rid themselves of the corruption, conflict, dependence on oil and other commodities, etc that have stood in the way of meaningful growth. Here's a few Vanguard pieces that cover some of the issues that Obama addressed in his speech:

Oil and Corruption


HIV


Conflict




And for good measure, we'll throw in a little China...

MIA voices her frustration to Bill Maher about the lack of Sri Lanka coverage in the US media.

We got you covered, Maya.  A full Vanguard half-hour on the conflict is being cut as we speak.

We're all still a bit giddy here in Vanguard.

A lot of A-list stars have come through Current's stage, but nothing gets a bunch of documentary geeks screaming like teenage girls like a visit from Errol Morris.

[caption id="attachment_50" align="alignnone" width="500" caption="Errol Morris with most of the Vanguard team on stage."][/caption]

[caption id="attachment_52" align="alignnone" width="500" caption="Mariana interviewing Errol Morris"][/caption]

Vanguard correspondent Mariana van Zeller interviewed Morris about his film Standard Operating Procedure, which examines the story behind the photographs of abuse at Iraq's Abu Graib prison. (It's now out on DVD). Morris talked about President Obama's recent turnaround on the decision to release additional photos of abuse and humiliation of detainees in Iraq and Afghanistan and the challenges of making a film about such a politically charged event.

Of course, we couldn't let the master of non-fiction filmmaking leave without trying to glean some knowledge from him on what makes great story-telling. So the second part of the interview turned into a sort of "master class" in the craft of documentary. We're going to have all this available for you really soon. It's really great stuff. So stay tuned to Vanguard.

Plus, our friends over at the Rotten Tomatoes Show got Morris to name his top 5 films of all time. You're going to want to put all his choices into your Netflix queue. And we were also surprised to learn what is NOT the best American film ever made and what actually is. Guesses are welcome, but you'll have to stay tuned for the answer, at least the answer according to one of the greatest filmmakers of all time.

Alex Simmons -- the guy who makes all Current's awesome music docs -- was kind enough to take the photos for us. Check out Vanguard's facebook page for more!

It's hard to turn on the TV or flip through a newspaper these days without being reminded of our economic troubles. Safe to say, there's enough depressing news out there. But recently, Vanguard producer Tracey Chang and I went in search of some silver linings. We wanted to find some inspiration on how to cope with an economic crisis. The result is our film "Thank You Recession". In it we travel to Argentina -- the poster child for economic collapse -- and back to the US looking at how people survive and sometimes thrive in hard economic times. Enjoy!

[caption id="attachment_29" align="alignleft" width="600" caption="The body identified as Tamil Tiger leader, Vellupillai Prabhakaran, being carried through Sri Lankan troops."][/caption]

When Vanguard correspondent Mariana van Zeller and I set out a few weeks ago to cover what appeared to be the waning days of the 25-year conflict in Sri Lanka, we knew that the fighting could come to an end before we ever got our piece to air.

And so it did. On Tuesday, Sri Lanka’s president, Mahinda Rajapaksa, declared victory over the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, or the LTTE, a militant group that has been fighting for a separate homeland for Sri Lanka’s ethnic Tamil minority for nearly three decades.

Over the years, the war in Sri Lanka has received little attention in the US. It was a local conflict, and the US never really had a dog in the fight. That’s how it appears on the surface anyway. But dig a little deeper and you see that the war in Sri Lanka has had repercussions that extend far beyond the small island nation’s shores.

The LTTE are in many ways the original gangsters of modern day terror. They have been one of the most cutting-edge insurgencies the world has ever seen, and their tactics have served as a model and inspiration for terrorist organizations around the globe. Today, the Tiger’s influence can be seen from the battlefields of Iraq and Afghanistan to the streets of an increasingly fragile Pakistan.

Inventors of the suicide vest, the LTTE conducted more suicide operations than Hamas and Hezbollah combined. Innovators in international fund raising, they proudly boasted that they were the only militant group to have formed a navy and an air force.

But after Sept. 11, the mighty Tigers, who once controlled up to a quarter of Sri Lankan territory, quickly found themselves on the wrong side of history. And the once feeble government of Sri Lanka was emboldened by the Global War On Terror launched by the US and its allies.

We’ll examining this and much, much more in our piece, including if the conflict is truly over. We’ve seen at least one premature declaration of “Mission Accomplished” since the war on terror began. Major combat operations in Sri Lanka may have ended, but there’s a lot of hard feelings and the long road of reconciliation still lies ahead.