DIMINISHED TRUST

Raney Aronson-Rath

Editor-in-chief and Executive Producer of FRONTLINE

Raney Aronson-Rath iseditor-in-chief and executive producer of FRONTLINE, PBS’ flagship investigative journalism series, and is a leading voice on the future of journalism. Under Aronson-Rath’s leadership, FRONTLINE has won every major award in broadcast journalism including News & Documentary Emmy Awards, the first Alfred I. duPont-Columbia Gold Baton to be awarded in a decade, and the series’ first-ever Peabody Institutional Award. The 2022 recipient of the New England First Amendment Coalition’s Stephen Hamblett Award and the 2019 Hearst Digital Media Lecturer at Columbia Journalism School, she is a member of the Board of Visitors for Columbia University’s journalism school, and serves on the Advisory Board of Columbia Global Reports. Aronson-Rath joined FRONTLINE’s staff as a senior producer in 2007 after producing notable FRONTLINE documentaries including News War, The Last Abortion Clinic, The Jesus Factor, Law & Disorder, and Post Mortem. She was named deputy executive producer by the series’ founder, David Fanning, in 2012, and then became executive producer in 2015. Prior to FRONTLINE, Aronson-Rath worked at ABC News and The Wall Street Journal, and she earned her bachelor’s degree from the University of Wisconsin and her master’s from Columbia Journalism School.

June Cross

Writer, Documentary Producer and Professor

June Cross, a native New Yorker, is a writer and documentary producer interested in the intersection of poverty, race and politics in the United States. She is a professor at Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism, where she founded a program in journalistic documentary. Her last film, Wilhemina’s War, about a South Carolina grandmother fighting for access to health care for her family, premiered at DOCNYC in 2015 and aired on PBS’ Independent Lens in February 2016. It was nominated for a national Emmy, her sixth nomination.

She is best known for an Emmy-winning documentary about her own family, Secret Daughter, which aired on FRONTLINE in 1996. She was an executive producer of the six-hour PBS series This Far by Faith. Cross also produced The Old Man and the Storm, which aired on FRONTLINE in 2009. She has worked for CBS News and PBS NewsHour. She has been exploring experimental documentary and performance pieces that use documentary elements at the MIT Open Documentary Lab. She lives in New York City's Washington Heights, with the jazz drummer Mike Clark.

Trey Kay

Creator of Us & Them

Trey Kay is creator of the radio and podcast program Us & Them, which is produced by West Virginia Public Broadcasting and PRX. For years, Trey has reported on culture war battles in America. In 2009, he produced the radio documentary “The Great Textbook War,” which was honored with Peabody, Murrow, and duPontColumbia Awards. In 2013, he produced “The Long Game: Texas’ Ongoing Battle for the Direction of the Classroom,” which he researched as a Spencer Fellow for Education Reporting at the Columbia School of Journalism. In 2005, he shared in another Peabody for his contribution to Studio 360’s “American Icons: Moby Dick.” He’s produced for This American Life, Reveal, The New Yorker Radio Hour, Marketplace, American RadioWorks, Morning Edition, Inside Appalachia and PBS Frontline. Trey has taught at the Columbia School of Journalism, Marist College and at the State University of New York at New Paltz. He splits his time living in New York’s Hudson Valley and the Kanawha Valley of West Virginia.