Posts Tagged News media

Filmmaker takes center stage in surveillance story

In this Sept. 20, 2012 file photo originally provided by the Chicago-based John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, Laura Poitras, a documentary filmmaker and recipient of the MacArthur Foundation genius grants, is shown in Berlin. Poitras' role as the first point-person for disclosures about U.S. surveillance programs has drawn  attention to the independent filmmaker who, abruptly, has pushed documentaries deeper into the realm of journalistic immediacy. For peers and backers of Poitras, the 2012 recipient of a $500,000 "genius grant" from the MacArthur Foundation, it's unsurprising that she has seized a story worth telling. However, her crucial involvement with a confidential source and two newspapers breaking elements of the same big exclusive is extraordinary. (AP Photo/Courtesy of the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, Sean Gallup)

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Laura Poitras’ skill and boldness as a documentary filmmaker have gained her Oscar and Emmy nominations, Sundance Film Festival honors and a public TV showcase, even if her work fell short of making a “Super Size Me” splash.

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Prize-winning writer working on surveillance book

NEW YORK (AP) — A Pulitzer Prize-winning author and investigative journalist is working on a book about the “surveillance-industrial state” that emerged after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

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