Video: OPC Panel with Emmy-winning Filmmakers on ‘Firestone and the Warlord’

How do you turn 6 years of research and 44 pounds of documents into an Emmy-winning documentary?

On Thursday, Oct. 1, the OPC hosted a panel with Firestone and the Warlord filmmakers Jonathan Jones and Marcela Gaviria. Attendees watched clips from the film and heard behind-the-scenes insights on how they spun this investigation into a gripping narrative.

The film, aired on Frontline and produced by Gaviria’s company, Rain Media, won Emmys for Outstanding Investigative Journalism – Long Form, and for Outstanding Research.

This year the film also won a citation for the OPC’s Edward R. Murrow Award, and won the Robert F. Kennedy Journalism Award in the new media category and an Investigative Reporters and Editors Award.

Jones first began investigating the American tire company Firestone and its activities in war-torn Liberia in 2007. Two years later, he wrote an essay about his findings for the OPC Foundation’s I.F. Stone scholarship, which he won.

With help from a UC Berkeley Fellowship, he began to dig. He made a Freedom of Information Act request in February 2009 for cables and documents about Firestone’s activities during the civil war. Jones also conducted more than 100 oral history interviews with current and former Firestone employees in Liberia.

The documents, which included company cables and the pages of a manager’s journal, arrived a year later. Among those documents were what Gaviria called “three smoking guns.”

Jones said the story started to gel when he stumbled on an insurance case in Ohio involving Firestone’s claims for losses as a result of the war. They included a formal agreement between Firestone and Charles Taylor, who at the time was the rebel leader.

“It was incredible to me that it was the story of executives from Arkon, Ohio, stuck in a rubber plantation in Africa in the middle of a civil war, with an army of child soldiers and a lunatic called Charles Taylor – and of course you’ve got the makings of a brilliant narrative,” Gaviria said.

OPC Board of Governors member Martin Smith moderated. He is a producer at Frontline, a founder of Rain Media, and is married to Gaviria. He asked what the company’s reaction was to the film.

“I feel that one of the ways we had an impact was that they did have to come forward and tell their side of the story, which was what the Liberians had been asking for,” Jones said, noting that Liberia had been asking for Firestone to clarify its role since the early 90s.

Firestone responded to the film in a statement that is available on the Frontline website.

The project included a 20,000-word print piece published on ProPublica’s site.

Click the windows below to see clips from the program, or click the link below to see an archive of our live stream on YouTube.

Watch the entire program >>


Jonathan Jones and Marcela Gaviria talk about how they turned a mountain of documents into a compelling narrative in Firestone and the Warlord.


Jones and Gaviria talk about the reaction from Firestone to their investigation into the company’s operations in Liberia during the brutal civil war.