Retro Report
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Mission Statement
Retro Report is an Emmy Award-winning documentary news organization dedicated to examining history’s connection to the present. It is non-partisan, independent, and non-profit. Retro Report was founded on the conviction that without an engaging and forward-looking review of high-profile events and the news coverage surrounding them, we lose a critical opportunity to understand the lessons of history. Our work is meant to inspire critical thinking and discussion on a variety of subjects, including history, civics, and science. Our staff comes from news organizations including 60 Minutes, Frontline, CBS News, ABC News, and the New York Times. Our 250 short documentaries have reached tens of millions of viewers through longstanding partnerships with The New York Times, PBS, The New Yorker and others. We’ve been recognized with multiple Emmy Award nominations, Edward R. Murrow Awards, Webbys, a Gerald Loeb Award and more, and our documentaries have been showcased at film festivals across the country.
About This Cause
Retro Report was launched in 2013 to serve as a counterbalance to the 24-hour news cycle, acknowledging the problem that the incentives driving the news industry were no longer aligned with the public good. We use investigative reporting and narrative storytelling to provide historical context to today’s important stories. Our 250 short documentaries have reached tens of millions of viewers through multiple distribution channels, including long-standing partnerships with The New York Times and The New Yorker. We’ve also partnered with Vox, PBS Frontline, Time Magazine, Politico, The Atlantic, NewsHour, Univision, NBC News and others. We recently expanded our reach with a prime-time television series on PBS and a partnership with Vice News, and we cultivate an active following on YouTube and other social channels. We’ve been recognized with an Emmy Award, multiple Edward R. Murrow awards, Webbys, a Gerald Loeb Award and others. Our documentaries have been showcased at film festivals across the country. Retro Report in the Classroom is an exciting new development in our newsroom. Teachers have told us that our videos help them solve a growing problem in their classrooms: Bringing history to life for their students at a time when an understanding of American History and civic literacy is diminished. We've created robust supplemental resources including lesson plans and student activities for teachers, hired a Director of Education, and we are making strides in building our direct-to-teacher outreach. We’re currently reaching an audience of about 17,000 teachers a month. Today, six out of 10 Americans don’t trust the media to report the news accurately – at a time when two-thirds of Americans don’t know enough basic history to pass the U.S. citizenship test. The solutions to these two problems are intertwined: News reporting is more accessible with historical context, and history curriculum can be more relevant if infused with current events. Our nonprofit newsroom is dedicated to injecting history and context into the news cycle and, at the same time, creating engaging content for the classroom. With the benefit of hindsight, we analyze current events that have a historical counterpart — stories that have developed through a succession of events that, taken together, are more easily understood, and therefore more trusted. We’re building a resource for students, teachers, journalists and the general public that illuminates connections between the past and the present. Our work fosters critical thinking and civic-mindedness, working to counteract partisan politics and the rancor of social media. Over the last year, we developed a robust curriculum package to mark the 20th anniversary of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, a vital support for teachers who were introducing events that took place before today’s high school students were born. The package includes videos chronicling the lingering effects of the World Trade Center attacks on first responders, and the military action in Afghanistan that turned into America’s longest war. It also sheds light on related themes, including the controversy over the torture of war prisoners and the experiences of Muslims and Arab Americans after 9/11. In an online seminar, David Olson, the Director of Education at Retro Report, led a conversation with Vicky Pasquantonio, Education Producer with PBS NewsHour Extra, and Dr. Jeremy Stoddard from UW- Madison on teaching strategies for addressing the anniversary. Also in 2021, we revisited the site of a horrific massacre that continues to shape Central America. Across four days in December 1981, during El Salvador’s long civil war, Salvadoran soldiers, trained and equipped by the United States, slaughtered nearly 1,000 civilians in and around the village of El Mozote. It was the largest massacre in recent Latin American history. Among the dead were hundreds of children. New York Times correspondent Raymond Bonner was one of the first journalists to bear witness to the carnage. His reporting was roundly – and wrongly – assailed at the time by the Reagan administration, but history has borne out the truth of his first-hand accounts. In a collaboration by Retro Report, Frontline and ProPublica, Bonner revisited El Mozote as an investigation and trial of high- ranking military officers in command at the time were at risk. Retro Report’s short documentary “Bringing Midwifery Back to Black Mothers,” released in partnership with The New Yorker, explores the decline of midwifery, examining how Black midwives in particular were marginalized over the decades, and illuminates the practice’s renewed appeal. This documentary showed the increasingly important role Black midwives play in addressing problems that have resulted from systemic racism and inequality. This video was the foundation of a community screening event that attracted more than 200 health care workers and birth and maternal health specialists. It is not widely understood that the roots of today’s special education system were planted 50 years ago, by parents whose children were often denied the right to go to school at all. Our 2021 documentary “Special Education: The 50-Year Fight for the Right to Learn” is a human interest story that takes place over five decades and reveals a little-known connection between the present and the past. Its main characters are two mothers who have devoted their lives to fighting for the assistance their children with disabilities are entitled to under federal law – a law that would not exist if not for another set of parents who advocated on behalf of their severely disabled children back in the 1960s and 1970s. NYU Education Professor Mark Alter, interviewed in the story, is using the video in his teaching to inform students of the historical context of today’s special education policy.