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Modern life is built on systems that we take for granted until they fail: financial markets, infrastructure, law enforcement, immigration processes, prisons. But the Great Depression and the 2008 financial crisis, Three Mile Island and Hurricane Katrina (more on that below) are among the many major system breakdowns that have shaped American history. Here are some Peabody-recognized works that explore what happens when our trusted systems break downâand how we can do better next time.
On Immigration
When President Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown began, PBS News Hour did what it does best, sending reporters to the scenes where news was happening, from raids to protests to press conferences. The organization’s ongoing coverage, Immigration Crackdown, also included deeper dives into the history of immigration policy in the United States and scrupulously documented the views of not only immigrants under scrutiny, but also the Trump administration and its supporters. Meanwhile, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution took an interactive approach to its local Immigration and Customs Enforcement sweeps, bringing viewers inside the operations through affectingly intimate social video and body-cam footage. The assembled series, ICE Sweeps Georgia, was viewed 2.8 million timesâcoincidentally, the same year the paper published its final print edition after 157 years. And finally, in HBO Max’s Critical Incident: Death at the Border, we learn about wrongdoing inside the U.S. Border Patrol, starting with the in-custody death of Anastasio Hernandez Rojas and exposing a wider culture of violence and impunity within the agency. Through shocking eyewitness footage and leaked internal documents, the film reveals the presence of secret teams created to shield agents from accountability, leading to multiple congressional investigations and underscoring the pressing need for oversight and reform in this influential law enforcement body.
Explore More on Peabody’s Website: Immigration Crackdown, ICE Sweeps Georgia and Critical Incident: Death at the Border
On Incarceration
In “The Strike,” PBS’s Independent Lens documents a 2013 hunger strike by 30,000 prisoners against solitary confinement in the super-max prison Pelican Bay. The film spotlights the strikers’ personal stories and, through interviews with incarcerated people and prison officials, looks at the effects of solitary confinement. HBO Documentary Films focused on a broader pattern of abuse in The Alabama Solution, which came about when, In 2019, filmmakers Andrew Jarecki and Charlotte Kaufman visited an Alabama prison for a sanctioned filming of a religious revival, but inmates off-camera revealed the brutal conditions and corruption they faced daily. Over the following years, incarcerated men risked their lives to provide Jarecki and Kaufman with stealth video recordings of the dire realities in Alabama prisonsâranging from drug overdoses and beatings to suicidesâultimately leading to legislative hearings aimed at reforming these conditions.
Explore More on Peabody’s Website: The Strike and The Alabama Solution
On Natural Disaster
The National Geographic documentary series Hurricane Katrina: Race Against Time from 2025 takes a retrospective look at the disaster, focusing on the experiences of Black communities in New Orleans during and after the storm, prioritizing personal stories over sensationalized media portrayals. It sheds light on systemic inequalities and government failures, illustrating how the storm worsened existing social injustices while offering local voices a platform to reclaim their narratives and share their resilience, grief, and wisdom for future generations.
Explore More on Peabody’s Website:Â Hurricane Katrina: Race Against Time
On Policing
Plans to improve the relationship between the police and the Black community in Louisville, Kentucky, collapsed with the fatal 2020 shooting of Breonna Taylor in her home, which became a national flashpoint. Louisville Public Media investigated what went wrong in 2021, during season 2 of its podcast Dig. Three years later, ABC15 Arizona produced a 32-part investigative project, “Policing Phoenix,” to break down a U.S. Department of Justice reportâitself a product of the news station’s previous reportingâthat showed systemic discrimination, excess use of force, and civil rights violations by the city’s police department.
Explore More on Peabody’s Website: Dig:The Model City and Policing Phoenix
Andrew Jareckiâs Peabody Acceptance for ‘The Alabama Solution’
“The truth is that the condition of people in prison in the United States is worse than you can imagine, and we don’t hear about it. The reason we don’t hear about it is that, even though we lock up more of our citizens than any democratic country at a cost of $116 billion a year, journalists like us, and many people in this room, are routinely denied access to U.S. prisons. So those of you who’ve been able to see The Alabama Solution were able to see inside because incredibly brave incarcerated men risked their lives, risked everything, risked bodily harm, to help us.”
Where to Watch:Â PeabodyAwards.com