Season 23

FRONTLINE takes an in-depth look at the multibillion-dollar “persuasion industries” of advertising and public relations and how marketers have developed new ways of integrating their messages deeper into the fabric of our lives. Through sophisticated market research methods to better understand consumers and by turning to the little-understood techniques of public relations to make sure their messages come from sources we trust, marketers are crafting messages that resonate with an increasingly cynical public.

FRONTLINE offers two starkly contrasting images: one of empty storefronts in Circleville, Ohio, where the local TV manufacturing plant has closed down; the other--a sea of high rises in the South China boomtown of Shenzhen. The connection between American job losses and soaring Chinese exports? Wal-Mart. For Wal-Mart, China has become the cheapest, most reliable production platform in the world, the source of up to $25 billion in annual imports that help the company deliver everyday low prices to 100 million customers a week. But while some economists credit Wal-Mart's single-minded focus on low costs with helping contain U.S. inflation, others charge that the company is the main force driving the massive overseas shift to China in the production of American consumer goods, resulting in hundreds of thousands of lost jobs and a lower standard of living here at home. https://www.pbs.org/video/frontline-wal-mart-good-america/

The surprising history and clever tactics of an industry few Americans fully understand.

Al-Qaeda's New Front is PBS documentary on Islamic terrorist network in Europe and its relationship to Islam and Al-Qaeda.

The military teaches soldiers how to fight, how to kill, how to survive. But who teaches them how to live with themselves? Examining an underreported story of the Iraq war: the psychological cost of those who fight it.

A shocking documentary about the growing number of Jewish extremists in Israel.

A report on the new reality for the mentally ill in America: Nearly 500,000 are serving time in U.S. jails and prisons. How did we get here, and are we doing anything to help them?