BOSTON, MA — Tue., Sept. 17, 2024 — FRONTLINE (PBS) welcomes Refael Kubersky as its 2024-25 journalism fellow from Columbia Journalism School this fall.

Kubersky represents FRONTLINE’s 10th round of journalism fellows from Columbia University. His year-long fellowship, generously supported by The Tow Foundation, aims to expose emerging investigative journalists to FRONTLINE’s award-winning approach to documentary storytelling, immersing fellows into all phases of the series’ reporting and production process.

Joining FRONTLINE as a Tow Journalism fellow, Kubersky holds a master’s degree from Columbia University’s School of Journalism with a specialization in documentary filmmaking. Earlier this year, he released his first documentary, Allies Left Behind, which focuses on Afghan journalists, women’s rights activists and military personnel stuck in limbo as they await visa processing to come to the U.S. His film was featured on Voice of America’s Dari broadcast. 

Previously, Kubersky worked at the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction, where he assisted with investigations into U.S. funding for reconstruction programs in Afghanistan. He also obtained a master’s degree in international relations from Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service, and earned a CASA Fellowship to study Arabic and Middle Eastern studies at the American University of Cairo in 2020.

“For nearly a decade, our FRONTLINE/Columbia fellows have been an integral part of our newsroom, contributing to both our digital and documentary reporting processes. We are so pleased to welcome Refael to our newsroom and look forward to working with him over the next year,” said Raney Aronson-Rath, editor-in-chief and executive producer of FRONTLINE. “We are deeply grateful to The Tow Foundation and Columbia Journalism School for supporting this fellowship for ten years — and as a result, offering hands-on experience to talented, emerging journalists,” added Aronson-Rath, who is an alumna of the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism herself.

“Frontline has consistently distinguished itself as a forum for exceptional journalism and we could not be happier to see Refael as the latest Frontline/Columbia fellow,” says Jelani Cobb, dean of Columbia Journalism School.

Over the course of his fellowship, Kubersky will have the opportunity to work alongside FRONTLINE’s filmmaking teams and aid in the development of the series’ acclaimed documentaries. This work will include contributing to the research and development of stories, reporting out leads, wrangling and analyzing data, helping set up interviews and shoots, as well as various tasks as documentaries undergo editing, vetting and post-production. He will also have opportunities to contribute to FRONTLINE projects on other platforms — including pursuing and crafting digital stories for FRONTLINE’s website and working with the series’ Local Journalism Initiative partners — local news outlets producing investigative journalism projects.

About FRONTLINE
FRONTLINE, U.S. television’s longest running investigative documentary series, explores the issues of our times through powerful storytelling. FRONTLINE has won an Academy Award® as well as every major journalism and broadcasting award, including 106 Emmy Awards and 34 Peabody Awards. Visit pbs.org/frontline and follow us on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and YouTube to learn more. FRONTLINE is produced at GBH in Boston and is broadcast nationwide on PBS. Funding for FRONTLINE is provided through the support of PBS viewers and by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. Additional support for FRONTLINE is provided by the Abrams Foundation, Park Foundation, the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, and the FRONTLINE Journalism Fund, with major support from Jon and Jo Ann Hagler on behalf of the Jon L. Hagler Foundation, and additional support from Koo and Patricia Yuen.

About The Tow Foundation
The Tow Foundation was established in 1988 by Leonard and Claire Tow as a way to give back to the communities that shaped them. Its five primary impact areas are equity and justice, medicine and public health, arts and culture, higher education, and civic engagement. Grounded in its decades of work in Connecticut and New York and based in New Canaan, CT, the foundation supports visionary leaders and nonprofit organizations to find and enact innovative solutions to persistent inequality. It works to ensure people can become full participants in their communities, achieve transformative and lasting progress, and develop approaches that allow everyone to reach their full potential.

About Columbia Journalism School
For 112 years, the Columbia Journalism School has been preparing journalists in programs that stress academic rigor, ethics, journalistic inquiry and professional practice. Founded with a gift from Joseph Pulitzer, the school opened in 1912 and offers Master of Science and Master of Arts degrees, as well as a Master of Science in Data Journalism, a joint Master of Science degree in Computer Science and Journalism, The Knight-Bagehot Fellowship in Economics and Business Journalism and a Doctor of Philosophy in Communications. It is home to the Columbia Journalism Review, and several world-class research centers, including the Brown Institute for Media Innovation, The Tow Center for Digital Journalism, The Ira A. Lipman Center for Journalism and Civil and Human Rights, The Simon and June Li Center for Global Journalism, the Craig Newmark Center for Journalism Ethics and Security, and the Dart Center for Journalism and Trauma. The school also administers many of the leading journalism awards, including the Alfred I. duPont-Columbia University Award, the Maria Moors Cabot Prize, the John Chancellor Award, the John B. Oakes Award for Distinguished Environmental Journalism, the Dart Awards for Excellence in Coverage of Trauma, Paul Tobenkin Memorial Award, the Mike Berger Awards and the WERT Prize for Women Business Journalists.