episodes
- 1. Crisis at General Hospital Investor-owned for-profit hospital chains are aggressively marketing themselves to treat only the insured or wealthy patient. But most Americans assume government and charity programs enable everyone...
- 2. We Are Driven As American corporations begin to adopt a Japanese management style stressing worker involvement in a family-like corporate environment, Frontline looks at the darker side of Japanese labor relations...
- 3. The Old Man and the Gun Viewing the conflict in Northern Ireland through the eyes of Irish Americans who support the IRA and its strategy of violence. Profiles Michael Flannery, Grand Marshal of New York City's St. Patrick's...
- 4. Give Me That Big Time Religion Investigating whether the tens of millions of dollars raised through the appeals of television evangelists like Jimmy Swaggart goes more to doing God's work or to keeping the preachers on TV. Should t...
- 5. The Campaign for Page One On the eve of the 1984 New Hampshire primary, the first of four national election reports. Correspondent Richard Reeves looks behind the scenes at the presidential candidates and the political reporte...
- 6. The Mind of a Murderer (1) Kenneth Bianchi, who killed two women in Bellingham, Washington, and was one of the Hillside Strangler murderers in Los Angeles, almost escaped punishment for these crimes because he convinced a group...
- 7. The Mind of a Murderer (2) Amid questionable use of psychiatric evidence in criminal proceedings, Kenneth Bianchi is revealed to be an accomplished faker.
- 8. The Struggle for Birmingham A special election report focuses on Birmingham, Alabama -- famously a battlefield for black civil rights. Frontline correspondent Richard Reeves examines black political power today and the struggle...
- 9. Captive in El Salvador Filmmaker Ofra Bikel takes us into the heart of El Salvador -- a tiny Central America nation about which we know so much, and yet so little -- to examine the politics and the people the U.S. governmen...
- 10. Chasing the Basketball Dream Charlie Cobb looks at young men who make it big playing basketball, and many who will not. College recruiters promise an education in exchange for play, but 75% of players never obtain a degree. Are c...
- 11. The Other Side of the Track An insider's look at the 'sport of kings' focused on tracks at Belmont, NY, where the rich indulge their interest in horse-racing, and at Great Barrington in Massachusetts where infirm horses run for...
- 12. Return of the Great White Fleet Profiling Navy Secretary John Lehman and the growing debate inside the Navy establishment to build a multi-billion-dollar fleet which critics warn may not be suited to the kind of wars the nation is m...
- 13. Warning from Gangland Explores what Los Angeles is trying to do about its gang problem. It's the worst in the nation, killing more than 1,000 people over the past three years -- the majority of whom were not even gang memb...
- 14. Bread, Butter and Politics Examines findings from a presidential commission and several private advocacy groups on hunger in America, and the extent to which they capture the human story as well as the political environment sur...
- 15. Man's Best Friends Examining ethical arguments over the use of animal testing in American laboratories, hospitals, and medical schools. While some animal rights groups break into labs to 'liberate' research animals, man...
- 16. So You Want to Be President Following the 1984 presidential campaign of Gary Hart to reveal presidential politics as it has never before been seen on television -- from the early days of lonely ambition, through the months of pr...
- 17. Welcome to America The bittersweet story of four unforgettable people who flee repression in Poland to find a better life in Chicago. They succeed, fail, fight, love, laugh, and confront an America unlike anything they...
- 18. Not One of the Boys As more women are voting and running for elected office, correspondent Judy Woodruff looks at women and politics in 1984 through the eyes of accomplished women like UN Ambassador Jeane Kirkpatrick and...
- 19. Living Below the Line It could never happen to you. One day it happened to Farrell Stallings. After 28 years at the same job, he was laid off-a victim of the recession. Now he's broke, afraid, and at the mercy of the welfa...
- 20. The Arab and the Israeli Two men, a Palestinian and an Israeli, born thirty miles apart, journey to America. In synagogues and universities, on television talk shows and interviews, they try to project a message: that a solut...
- 21. Better Off Dead? Frontline goes inside the hospitals where every day doctors, lawyers, and parents face the agonizing choice: how far do we go with medical treatment for infants born so physically and mentally damaged...
- 22. Cry, Ethiopia, Cry In one of the first comprehensive reports broadcast in the U.S., Frontline presents the searing reality of the famine in Ethiopia. In desert camps described as 'the closest thing to hell on earth,' ne...
- 23. Red Star Over Khyber In 1979, the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan. On the fifth anniversary of the invasion, Frontline correspondent Richard Reeves reports from Afghanistan and Pakistan, examining the stalemate in the Pe...
- 24. Marshall High Fights Back Marshall High School is one of the poorest in Chicago-both academically and economically. But it is fighting back, trying desperately to upgrade academic standards and to make a difference in the live...