Planet Forward: Coming Together

Frank Sesno is an internationally recognized journalist with over 30 years of experience reporting from around the world. Well known as anchor, White House correspondent, interview host and Washington bureau chief with CNN, he is currently Professor of Media and Public Affairs at the George Washington University. At GW, he is Director of The Public Affairs Project at the Center for Innovative Media. The Project’s goal is to create a hub for highly innovative production, teaching and symposia in emerging media and public policy. Planet Forward is a production of the Public Affairs Project.

As a CNN special correspondent, Sesno produced and reported several documentaries and special broadcasts. Among them was the dramatic 2007 documentary, We Were Warned-Tomorrow’s Oil Crisis, and an updated release in 2008, We Were Warned-Out of Gas. He focused the lens on then-Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld in Rumsfeld: Man of War and his reporting on the Iran nuclear threat was featured in a one-hour special in December 2007, Iran: Fact or Fiction.

Sesno’s other work on Public Broadcasting includes the public television series, Sesno Reports, a series of one-hour programs presented through WETA on such topics as underage drinking, cancer research and the war in Iraq. In 2003, he hosted Worldtalk, a special WETA series on the international reaction to the war in Iraq, which won a regional Emmy award. Other major documentaries to his credit include Avoiding Armageddon, which aired on PBS and examined terrorism, weapons of mass destruction and failed states, and Ronald Reagan: A Legacy Remembered for the History Channel.

Sesno has interviewed political and business leaders from around the world, including five U.S. presidents. He has covered history-making stories, from presidential elections and political conventions, to 9/11, superpower and Mideast summits, to the disputed U.S presidential election of 2000 and the impeachment of President Bill Clinton.

Sesno has won many prestigious journalistic awards including a national and regional Emmy, several Cable Ace awards, a Clarion Award, Cine Golden Eagle awards, a Lincoln Unity award, and an Overseas Press Club Award for Best Spot News Reporting from Abroad.

Sesno joined CNN in 1984 and for seven years was a White House correspondent, after which he moved to the anchor chair. From 1996 through 2001, he served as the Washington, D.C., Bureau Chief and Senior Vice President.

At the George Washington University, Sesno teaches courses in documentary filmmaking and journalistic ethics. Prior to his current academic appointment, Sesno was University Professor of Public Policy and Communication at George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia.