Daffodil J. Altan

Lecturer

Alumni

Daffodil Altan is an Emmy-winning director, producer and correspondent. Most recently she directed, produced, and was the correspondent for the Peabody-nominated documentary COVID’s Hidden Toll (2020), which aired on FRONTLINE, PBS’s flagship investigative documentary series. The film was the latest installment in her award-winning body of work exposing the hidden realities facing low-wage immigrant workers in the U.S., many of whom are undocumented. She directed, produced and was the correspondent for the Emmy-winning,Kids Caught in the Crackdown (2019), a collaboration with the Associated Press that examined the lasting impact on children held in U.S. custody, and Trafficked in America, (2018), which told the inside story of Guatemalan teens who were forced to work against their will on an Ohio egg farm, and was a finalist for the Goldsmith Prize for Investigative Reporting. She directed and produced the FRONTLINE/Univision documentary, “Rape on the Night Shift,” a film, radio and print collaboration between the JSchool’s IRP, Reveal, and KQED, which investigated the hidden reality of sexual assault on the job for women janitors in the U.S. The film won the Investigative Reporters and Editors award for best Broadcast/Video, led to the passage of a new state law in California, and was nominated for two national Emmys. Previously she was a producer at Reveal for the Center for Investigative Reporting, where she co-produced the Emmy-nominated Telemundo/MSNBC documentary, “Batalla en La Frontera/Clash at the Border,” and where her multimedia reporting on teen solitary confinement at Rikers Island earned her an Emmy nomination and was part of a wave of renewed coverage that led to the banning of solitary confinement for teens at the New York City jail. Daffodil is also a print and radio journalist, and her credits include: KQED, Reveal, the PBS NewsHour, The Los Angeles Times, Mother Jones, and the OC Weekly (where she was a staff writer), among others. She has received awards for her work from Investigative Reporters and Editors, Inc., the Society of Professional Journalists, The Third Coast Audio Festival, the Los Angeles Press Club and the Imagen Foundation. She has received grants for her work from the MacArthur Foundation, the International Documentary Association, and Latino Public Broadcasting. She has a master’s degree in journalism from UC Berkeley’s Graduate School of Journalism, where she is also a lecturer.

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