Emmy-winning documentary filmmaker Ken Burns was a keynote speaker at the College of Communication’s annual Power of Narrative conference and received COM’s Hugo Shong Lifetime Journalism Achievement Award.

Film & TV

For Filmmaker Ken Burns, the Best Answer Is Usually: “It’s Complicated”

The award-winning documentarian was a keynote speaker at COM’s Power of Narrative conference and received the school’s Hugo Shong Lifetime Journalism Achievement Award

In a society seemingly obsessed with binaries—young or old, rich or poor, red state or blue state—even the best arguments in the world won’t change someone’s point of view. “The only thing that can do that is a good story,” award-winning documentary filmmaker Ken Burns told those attending this year’s Power of Narrative conference at Boston University. 

Burns, who was paraphrasing a quote by novelist Richard Powers, was also summarizing his life’s work: the pursuit of stories that bring some nuance back into the all-or-nothing thinking that has come to dominate our culture. 

“Our obligation is to have a dedication to very, very complex narratives,” Burns said. “For many, many years, in the main editing room where I work, I have had a neon sign, in lowercase cursive, that says, ‘It’s complicated.’ There are lots of layers to that, but essentially, it means that the facts have to win out over the art.” 

Burns, who was a keynote speaker at the College of Communication’s annual Power of Narrative Conference on March 27, also received the school’s Hugo Shong Lifetime Journalism Achievement Award. The award, presented each year by the journalism department, “honors the journalist whose body of work and contributions to the field exemplify the highest quality of reporting and analysis, outstanding accomplishments, and ethical standards of the journalistic profession,” said Mariette DiChristina (COM’86), dean of the College of Communication. 

Also during the conference, Marcus Yam, a photojournalist and foreign correspondent with The Globe and Mail, received the Hugo Shong Reporting on Asia Award. This award is presented to someone who has displayed “the highest standards of international journalism in a series of reports on matters of importance specific to Asia,” DiChristina said. Both awards are named after current Board of Trustees member Hugo Shong (COM’87).

For almost 50 years, Burns has painstakingly created documentaries that prioritize the whole truth, in all its messy complexity, about a variety of American historical and cultural touchstones, including the Brooklyn Bridge, the Civil War, baseball, jazz, country music, and more recently, the Revolutionary War. The three-part docuseries on Henry David Thoreau which he executive produced, premiered on PBS March 30. 

Burns’ films have been honored with dozens of major awards, including 17 Emmy Awards, 2 Grammy Awards, and 2 Oscar nominations. He was honored by the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences with a Lifetime Achievement Award in 2008. And in 2022, he was inducted into the Television Academy Hall of Fame.

“The thing is, everybody—left, right, and center—gets caught up in a good story,” Burns said at the conference. “Everybody gets caught up in the complexity of who we are.”

Researching and presenting that complexity, however, is no mean feat. Burns said he and his team worked on the recent Revolutionary War documentary, which premiered on PBS in November 2025, for nearly 10 years. In the process, they peeled back the layers on the marquee figures of the era, shading in nuance for people such as Thomas Jefferson, a slave-owner who was also the primary author of the Declaration of Independence, or George Washington, a general who made a whole lot of bad tactical decisions and yet led the United States to victory during the war. 

“People always ask me, ‘What was the thing that really surprised you?’ And my answer is: how little I knew and how every day was a surprise,” Burns said.