Episode
Frontline: Newtown Divided / Raising Adam Lanza
Overview
In the aftermath of the Sandy Hook tragedy, President Obama called for a national conversation about guns in America. Nowhere is that conversation more intense than in Newtown, where FRONTLINE and The Hartford Courant find a town divided and explore how those closest to the tragedy are now wrestling with our nation’s gun culture and laws. In the wake of the mass killings at Sandy Hook Elementary School, FRONTLINE investigates a young man and the town he changed forever. Adam Lanza left behind a trail of death and destruction, but little else. He left no known friends, no diary. He destroyed his computer and any evidence it might have provided. His motives, and his life, remain largely a mystery. In collaboration with The Hartford Courant, FRONTLINE looks for answers to the central–and so far elusive–question: who was Adam Lanza?
Details
- Series
- Frontline
- Season
- Season 31
- Episode
- Episode 5
- Air date
- 2013-02-19
Episode context
Newtown Divided / Raising Adam Lanza is Episode 5 in Season 31 of Frontline. It aired on 2013-02-19.
Previous / Next
Episode 4: Cliffhanger
FRONTLINE investigates the inside history of how Washington has failed to solve the country’s problems of debt and deficit. Drawing on interviews with key players in Congress and the White House, the film shows how a clash of politics and personalities has taken the nation’s economy to the edge of the “fiscal cliff,” and now to a second round of standoffs over the debt ceiling and sequestration.
Episode 6: Kind Hearted Woman
In a special two-part series, acclaimed filmmaker David Sutherland (The Farmer’s Wife, Country Boys) creates an unforgettable portrait of Robin Charboneau, a 32-year-old divorced single mother and Oglala Sioux woman living on North Dakota’s Spirit Lake Reservation. Sutherland follows Robin over three years as she struggles to raise her two children, further her education, and heal herself from the wounds of sexual abuse she suffered as a child. Kind Hearted Woman is a special co-presentation of FRONTLINE and Independent Lens.
More episodes from this season
Episode 3: The Untouchables
FRONTLINE investigates why Wall Street’s leaders have escaped prosecution for any fraud related to the sale of bad mortgages.
Episode 7: Syria Behind the Lines
In Syria’s rural heartland, the bloody uprising against President Bashar Al Assad has taken a terrifying turn. The once-peaceful Orontes River valley is now a perilous sectarian front line where neighbor is fighting neighbor. Olly Lambert spent five weeks living on both sides, and his unprecedented film documents the everyday lives of rebels, government soldiers and the civilians who support them.
Episode 2: Inside Obama's Presidency
As Barack Obama is sworn in for his second term, FRONTLINE takes a probing look at the first four years of his presidency. With inside accounts from his battles with his Republican opponents over health care and the economy to his dramatic expansion of targeted killings of enemies, FRONTLINE examines the president’s key decisions and the experiences that will inform his second term.
Episode 8: The Retirement Gamble
The Retirement Gamble raises troubling questions about how America’s financial institutions protect our retirement savings.
Episode 1: The Education of Michelle Rhee
Examine the legacy of controversial former chancellor of Washington, DC, public schools, Michelle Rhee.
Episode 9: Never Forget to Lie
In the most recent of his critically-lauded autobiographical films, Marian Marzynski explores, for the first time, his own wartime childhood and the experiences of other child survivors, teasing out their feelings about Poland, the Catholic Church, and the ramifications of identities forged under circumstances where survival began with the directive “never forget to lie.”
Episode 10: Outlawed in Pakistan
In Pakistan, women and girls who allege rape are often more strongly condemned than their alleged rapists. Some are even killed by their own families. For this unforgettable documentary, filmmakers Habiba Nosheen and Hilke Schellmann spent years tracing one alleged rape victim’s odyssey through Pakistan’s flawed justice system—as well as her alleged rapists’ quest to clear their names.
Episode 11: Rape in the Fields
FRONTLINE and Univision partner to tell the story of the hidden price many migrant women working in America’s fields and packing plants pay to stay employed and provide for their families. This investigation is the result of a yearlong reporting effort by veteran FRONTLINE correspondent Lowell Bergman, the Investigative Reporting Program at UC Berkeley, and the Center for Investigative Reporting.
Episode 12: Two American Families
Since 1992, Bill Moyers has been following the story of two ordinary, hard-working families in Milwaukee — one black, one white — as they battle to keep from sliding into poverty. A remarkable portrait of perseverance, Two American Families raises unsettling questions about the changing nature of the U.S. economy and the fate of a declining middle class.
Episode 13: Life and Death in Assisted Living
More and more elderly Americans are choosing to spend their later years in assisted living facilities, which have sprung up as an alternative to nursing homes. But is this loosely regulated, multi-billion dollar industry putting seniors at risk? In a major investigation with ProPublica, FRONTLINE examines the operations of the nation’s largest assisted living company, raising questions about the drive for profits and fatal lapses in care.