Summary: While politicians grapple with reforming welfare, those who receive benefits worry about how welfare reform will affect their lives. Critics of welfare argue that it has created a psychology of dependency, and that it is rife with fraud and abuse. This program traces the history of welfare beginning with the Depression, then examines the complex issues involved in reforming it. Experts discuss...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2005
View online at AVOD
Summary: How much do American and Canadian citizens really understand about the personal, social, and economic struggles of undocumented workers? This program deepens that understanding, providing an intimate look inside the lives of two non-status migrant laborers. Geraldo, a Costa Rican construction worker, and Angela, a Caribbean domestic employee, describe their experiences with labor exploitation...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2006
View online at AVOD
Summary: This program weighs the financial savings of a reformed welfare system against our responsibility to those who need help. Political and religious leaders discuss the feasibility of establishing a new system that works to eliminate the problems of crime, drugs, poverty, and unwanted births. Critics and supporters of current reform efforts discuss their views. Those interviewed include a New...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2005
View online at AVOD
Summary: In this ABC News program, John Stossel sheds light on troubling issues involving sexual behavior and criminal justice. Case studies include the story of 18-year-old Jon, who spent a year in jail after having sex with a 14-year-old girl-although her father later regretted pressing charges and tried to have Jon removed from Florida's sex offender registry. Other reports concern an alleged sex...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2009
View online at AVOD
Summary: Pro-life advocates have waged a successful campaign to reduce abortions throughout the country, using state laws to regulate and limit the procedure and creating clinics offering alternatives. This Frontline documentary investigates the steady decline in the number of physicians and facilities carrying out abortions and focuses on local political battles in the states-particularly Mississippi,...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2009
View online at AVOD
Summary: America's healthcare system frequently leaves patients feeling shortchanged, while physicians are forced to overdose on paperwork and managed care companies are helpless to cap their soaring costs. What is the future of this system, as the tidal wave of Baby Boomers surges toward retirement? This program analyzes the symptoms of America's healthcare ills and suggests a prescription for...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2006
View online at AVOD
Summary: The year is 2015. A coalition of European countries has decriminalized most stimulants, narcotics, and hallucinogens. But has legalization made drug use-or the streets of London-any safer? This program depicts a future in which police officers, Big Pharma executives, and recreational drug consumers would, depending on one's perspective, either reap the benefits or suffer the consequences of a...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2007
View online at AVOD
Summary: Currently, three-quarters of all U.S. healthcare dollars are spent on 100 million people with chronic illnesses and conditions. Will a cost-conscious healthcare system, increasingly driven by the market and oriented toward acute care, give them the proper care? This program examines how the chronically ill are faring today in seeking the high-quality, long-term care they need. Special reports...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2005
View online at AVOD
Summary: Corporate cost-cutting, downsizing, temporary employment, and other business imperatives are making today's pricey health insurance either unavailable or unaffordable for 44 million Americans-of which 85 percent are in working families. With employers cutting back on offering insurance and with shrinking access to charity care as hospitals face their own funding shortfalls, where can America's...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2005
View online at AVOD
Summary: In 1991, Rick Walker was wrongly convicted of murder and spent the next 12 years in prison. This program tells the story of his exoneration and the political struggle to secure financial compensation for him from the state of California. In addition to an interview with Walker himself, the film presents detailed conversations with key players in his case and the partisan budget battle over...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2009
View online at AVOD
Summary: During the 1980s, a new civil rights movement got underway-for people with disabilities. In this program, Larry Paradis, executive director of Disability Rights Advocates, speaks with NewsHour correspondent Spencer Michels about the importance of litigation in pressuring companies and communities to comply with the 1990 Americans with Disabilities Act. But are such legal actions actually...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2005
View online at AVOD
Summary: Why have America's health care costs skyrocketed? In this NBC News program, Tom Brokaw follows several cases at Staten Island University Hospital as he explores reasons behind financial turmoil in the U.S. health-care system. Among the patients: a 24-year-old man with no insurance who lost both legs in the Staten Island Ferry accident of October 2003. Another victim: a 62-year-old woman with a...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2008
View online at AVOD
Summary: While poverty has traditionally been a problem only for the unemployed, a new demographic of Americans has emerged-the working poor. This program explores the disturbing realities that many people in low-wage jobs face every day-such as having to decide whether to pay the rent, buy groceries, or see a doctor. Viewers will learn how standards of living are often measured, how suburban areas have...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2008
View online at AVOD
Summary: For many teenagers in Mexico, heading across the U.S. border after high school is much more common than heading off to college. But as law enforcement continues to tighten security, that journey is growing more and more hazardous. Filmed on both sides of the border, this program briefly examines issues surrounding illegal immigration-particularly how much more a person can earn in America than...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2006
View online at AVOD
Summary: The United States continues to be the wealthiest country in the world, yet one in eight Americans-approximately 37 million people-live below the poverty line. This program analytically and sympathetically discusses the effects and implications of poverty, examining factors such as illiteracy, insufficient job skills, substance abuse, and crime. The phenomenon of multigenerational poverty is...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2007
View online at AVOD
Summary: Take a trip to historic Tombstone, Arizona, and relive Wyatt Earp's gunfight at the O.K. Corral-or watch 21st-century vigilantes scour the landscape for Mexican invaders. Modern pseudo-cowboys haunt Southwestern communities with growing frequency, and they represent one of several new trends examined in this documentary on America's immigration anxiety. Focusing on the porous U.S.-Mexico border...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2007
View online at AVOD
Summary: America's managed care system was designed to provide coordinated preventive and long-term healthcare better than individual doctors could in yesterday's fragmented fee-for-service system. Have HMOs lived up to that promise? In this program, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Hedrick Smith investigates Kaiser Permanente-the largest nonprofit HMO in the U.S.-and its social mission of lifetime...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2005
View online at AVOD
Summary: What is the most costly element of America's trillion-dollar healthcare system? Surprisingly, experts believe it is the medical quality gap and medical errors, which they estimate take more than 90,000 lives each year. In this program, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Hedrick Smith examines New York's tough performance reports on doctors and hospitals doing open-heart surgery; profiles a...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2005
View online at AVOD
Summary: For many Americans, the threat of sudden poverty has less to do with the nation's overall economy than it does with personal circumstances. This program discusses the hard facts of situational poverty with a focus on the four most common triggers: job loss, the fastest way to become impoverished; health issues, such as severe injury or long-term illness; the loss of a spouse through divorce or...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2009
View online at AVOD
Summary: Each year, more than one million people try to cross the U.S.-Mexico border, contending with dangerous forces that prey on their hopes and exploit their gullibility. This program exposes the most painful, disturbing, and hidden dimension of illegal immigration: the growing black market trade in human beings. Shedding light on the poverty that causes so many to risk everything by leaving their...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2008
View online at AVOD
Summary: The fictional locale known as Eagle Bay is breathtakingly beautiful. First home to a handful of modest houses, over the decades it has transitioned into a neighborhood of stately mansions-except for one 50-acre parcel, whose owners now want to sell it for subdivision. This Fred Friendly Seminar moderated by Harvard Law School's Arthur Miller explores the complexities that arise when a family's...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2006
View online at AVOD
Summary: As the 21st century unfolds, how are Americans adapting to urgent issues involving sustainable growth, quality of life, and community planning? Segment one of this NewsHour program examines the effect of urban sprawl on Atlanta's population, job and housing markets, the environment, and commuters. Segment two addresses the need for affordable housing in Burlington, Vermont, where the disparity...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2006
View online at AVOD
Summary: The United States, the world’s strongest economic power, is also the world’s largest debtor nation. Will America’s ever-increasing trade imbalance and economic deficit trigger a global economic calamity? This program travels from East Coast to West via the Rust Belt to check the financial pulse of the nation—and to capture in images the reality of an economic system spinning out of control....
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2009
View online at AVOD
Summary: To at least one resident of the fictional city of Metropolis, a new outer suburb being planned for some pristine farmland sounds like the American Dream come true. His brother, also a Metropolite but an advocate of smart growth, sees it as a nightmare. Moderated by Harvard Law School's Arthur Miller, this Fred Friendly Seminar seeks to understand the housing situation facing the U.S.-a...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2005