Biography

Stephen Talbot is senior producer for video projects at The Center for Investigative Reporting, including stories for the PBS Newshour, Univision and KQED. He also oversees CIR's YouTube channel, The I Files. During a previous stint at CIR in the 1990s, Talbot wrote and produced a series of CIR documentaries for PBS Frontline, starting with "The Best Campaign Money Can Buy" and including investigations of General Motors, the gold mining industry, Rush Limbaugh, Newt Gingrich, the Washington press corps, and the influence of campaign money on judicial elections. All told, Talbot has written and produced more than 35 documentaries for PBS and won nearly every major broadcast journalism award, including Emmys, Peabodys, a DuPont, a George Polk, an Overseas Press Club Award, and a special Edgar Allan Poe Award for his biography of mystery writer Dashiell Hammett. From 2002 to 2008, he was the series editor of PBS Frontline/World, helping to launch and manage the TV program and website, commissioning and supervising over 100 broadcast and online videos, and producing his own reports from Lebanon and Syria. Talbot served as executive producer of Mimi Chakarova's expose of sex trafficking, "The Price of Sex" (2011) and two hour-long PBS specials, "Sound Tracks: Music Without Borders" (2010 and 2012). He began his television journalism career at KQED in San Francisco, where he was a staff reporter and producer for nine years and a PBS NewsHour correspondent. He has also taught television reporting and production at the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism.