FRONTLINE Produces Its First ASL-Interpreted Podcast

Katrina Ávila Munichiello has been the editor of EXPLORE GBH since 2023. For the past fifteen years, she has worked as a writer, editor, fact checker, and proofreader for organizations including F+W Media, World Tea News, Dotdash Meredith, and America’s Test Kitchen. Her writing has appeared in publications such as Yankee Magazine, Boston Globe Sunday Magazine, and Tea Magazine. In 2011, her first book, A Tea Reader: Living Life One Cup at a Time, was released by Tuttle Publishing. Her favorite hobbies are reading, supporting local theater, volunteering for local youth organizations, and watching every MASTERPIECE program available.

December 18, 2024

In October 2023, a gunman entered a bowling alley and a bar in Lewiston, Maine, and carried out one of the United States’ deadliest mass shootings in recent history. Of the 18 people killed, four had been attending an event for people who were deaf or hard of hearing, making this possibly the largest shooting event in the Deaf community. FRONTLINE, along with their Local Journalism Initiative partners, The Portland Press Herald and Maine Public, developed a documentary about the tragedy, Breakdown in Maine. They continued reporting about the event, the related failures, and the aftermath, in a six-part podcast, “Breakdown: Turning Anguish into Action.” But there was still something missing.

Erin Texeira, a senior editor at FRONTLINE and director of the Local Journalism Initiative, said that a Maine-based journalist on the team had become close to sources who were deaf and hard of hearing. These sources reported that the community wanted podcasts but did not have access to them. For many Deaf people, English is not their first language; American Sign Language (ASL) is. These individuals were asking for podcasts in their native language. And so, for the first time, FRONTLINE embarked on a project to create ASL-interpreted videos to accompany their podcast.

“When we started to explore just how challenging and tragic this shooting was for people who were deaf and hard of hearing, it became clear that a lack of access to services and information was part of the problem in those moments, those first hours and days after the shooting,” says Texeira. “We didn’t want to be part of the problem, to not have this content be accessible, so we started to explore ideas for how to bring it to audiences.”

GBH’s Executive Director of Accessibility Donna Danielewski was immediately on board with providing the resources and support that the FRONTLINE team needed. As she noted, many GBH podcast developers had already been working on accessibility issues by providing transcripts. “But this goes right to the heart of the difference between ‘small d’ and ‘capital d’ Deaf communities where the primary language is American Sign Language. This project goes beyond captions or transcripts.”

Side-by-side headshots of two women: Erin Texeira, FRONTLINE senior editor and director of the Local Journalism Initiative — a middle-aged woman with medium skin tone and medium-length dark hair, wearing a coral button-down shirt. Donna Danielewski, executive director of accessibility — a middle-aged White woman with shoulder length dark hair, wearing a navy-blue sleeveless dress. — Left: Erin Texeira, FRONTLINE Senior Editor and Director of the Local Journalism Initiative. Right: Donna Danielewski, GBH's Executive Director of Accessibility

Texeira said FRONTLINE’s Executive Producer and Editor-in-Chief Raney Aronson-Rath was immediately on board with the idea. “Universally at FRONTLINE the response was, ‘I can’t believe we hadn’t thought of this before!’ They were excited to try. They saw it as an incredible opportunity.” The podcast episodes were released as soon as they were completed, and the video presentations were then filmed at GBH’s studios in Boston.

There was no blueprint, so the process involved a fair amount of trial and error with video design, editing, and production. It wasn’t enough to hire a sensitivity reader for the scripts and interpreters for the videos. Texeira also closely coordinated the work of the video editors and the ASL interpreters to ensure accuracy in the editing room. Some of the lessons learned during ASL video editing were helpful during the editing of the FRONTLINE documentary as well. For instance, Texeira was asked to have a film clip checked for ASL accuracy; she realized the frames were cropped to the point that the interpreter’s hands were not visible. “We know we’ll make mistakes,” says Texeira, “But we are just trying to work with as much intention and thoughtfulness as we can.”

Advancing accessibility in media is not new at GBH. Broadcast captioning on television was invented by the Caption Center at GBH in 1971. In the mid-1980s, GBH began the first tests of audio description for people who were blind or visually impaired. FRONTLINE is proud to be part of another big milestone.

“GBH has a long history in accessibility, and we have that expertise at our fingertips in a way that many media organizations don’t,” said Danielewski. “We have been living and breathing accessibility at GBH since the ‘70s. Every day is a new day to learn.”

Watch the Breakdown in Maine documentary here.
Listen to the “Breakdown” podcast here or wherever you get your podcasts.

The ASL-interpreted videos will become available starting in January.