{"id":198992,"date":"2026-02-02T20:51:03","date_gmt":"2026-02-02T20:51:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/ken-burns-says-documenting-the-american-revolution-made-him-optimistic-about-the-countrys-future-nbc-news\/"},"modified":"2026-02-02T20:51:03","modified_gmt":"2026-02-02T20:51:03","slug":"ken-burns-says-documenting-the-american-revolution-made-him-optimistic-about-the-countrys-future-nbc-news","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/ken-burns-says-documenting-the-american-revolution-made-him-optimistic-about-the-countrys-future-nbc-news\/","title":{"rendered":"Ken Burns says documenting the American Revolution made him 'optimistic' about the country's future – NBC News"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Documentary filmmaker and historian Ken Burns has cemented his career on bringing history to life. In an interview with \u201cMeet the Press\u201d that aired Sunday, the filmmaker challenged how the nation remembers its founding and the Revolutionary War.
\u201cI think we have sanitized the war. And I think it\u2019s out of an understandable fear that if somehow we reveal how dark and bloody it is, that it will somehow diminish those big ideas in Philadelphia in \u201976,\u201d Burns told \u201cMeet the Press\u201d moderator Kristen Welker.
Burns has been making documentaries for 50 years, but his 1990 project \u201cThe Civil War\u201d put him on the map and earned him two Emmys, two Grammys and a Peabody Award. His newest series is a six-part documentary titled \u201cThe American Revolution,\u201d a project he began working on in 2015.
In his latest series, Burns dissects America\u2019s origin story and argues why democracy was an \u201cunintended consequence.\u201d
\u201cThe idea was to create a kind of aristocracy of these white, male property owners. But in order to win this revolution, other people are going to fight,\u201d he said. \u201cThe Continental Army, at the end, is filled with teenagers, ne\u2019er-do-wells, felons hoping for a pardon, recent immigrants, people who don\u2019t have property, second and third sons. And they fight the revolution, and they\u2019re going to need something at the end. So what they get is democracy.\u201d
Burns added that his documentaries often \u201crhyme\u201d with the future, and he drew parallels between the American Revolution and the present day, such as a push at the time to make Canada the 14th state.
\u201cThe rhymes to this moment are so particularly helpful because I think we can, as Chicken Little, say, \u2018The sky is falling,\u2019 you know, \u2018Everything is bad, we\u2019re so divided.\u2019 We are really divided, but we were way more divided then, way more divided during the Civil War, way more divided during the Vietnam period,\u201d he said.
When explaining why it was important to include the voices of women, Native Americans and African Americans, Burns said leaving those stories out creates an incomplete picture of history.
\u201cIf you edit things out, you have a myopic view of what actually happened. It doesn\u2019t diminish the big ideas. In fact, it makes them more interesting,\u201d Burns said.
Unprompted, Burns mused that the country\u2019s founders \u201cwould not be surprised at all, that somebody was seeking more authoritarian power,\u201d and that instead they\u2019d be \u201cabjectly disappointed\u201d that Congress \u201chas abdicated so much of the power.\u201d
He has spent years establishing a trademark filmmaking style: animating still photographs with subtle zooms and pans, a technique immortalized by the late Apple CEO Steve Jobs as the \u201cKen Burns effect.\u201d
\u201c[Jobs] said, \u2018All Mac computers starting in January 2003 will have this,\u2019\u201d Burns said, describing when he was first shown the preset in Apple\u2019s iMovie software. \u201cI mean, I know that that thing has saved lots of weddings and vacations and bar mitzvahs and, you know, memorial services.\u201d
As more filmmakers use artificial intelligence tools, Burns said he hopes the role of AI in documentary filmmaking will be \u201cminimal.\u201d
\u201cI hope it\u2019s a research tool that helps you find that document that you didn\u2019t know existed or that painting of Benedict Arnold, who doesn\u2019t have a good painting here for obvious reasons,\u201d Burns said. \u201cBut the idea that it might generate things is really unacceptable to me.\u201d
Burns also weighed in on federal cuts to the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which provided crucial funding for PBS, NPR and local radio and television stations. The organization officially shut down after Congress passed spending cuts that reduced its budget by more than $1 billion. Burns, a longtime supporter of public media, said the consequences will be far-reaching.
\u201cWe\u2019ll survive. The problem is, what about the filmmakers that are coming up? What about those rural stations that depend on much greater funding from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting than my 20%, which is a huge, big hit that we have,\u201d Burns said. \u201cI worry <\/strong>about them. There might be news deserts. Who will be covering the school board? Who will be at the city council meeting? And maybe that\u2019s the intention of it.\u201d
Throughout the interview, Burns reiterated his belief that \u201chistory is our best teacher\u201d and that, despite deep divisions, people can remain \u201coptimistic\u201d about America\u2019s future.
\u201cI live in a tiny town in New Hampshire, and people have various points of view \u2014 like, widely varying points of view \u2014 and we listen to each other and we talk to each other. And obviously things get frayed at times, but we have built in our system the mechanisms for repair and the restoration that I think are central to the response to this moment.\u201d
Juhi Doshi is an associate producer with NBC News' "Meet the Press."
© 2026 NBCUniversal Media, LLC<\/p>\n

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news AlertsThere are no new alerts at this timeDocumentary filmmaker and historian Ken Burns has cemented his career on bringing history to life. In an interview with \u201cMeet the Press\u201d that aired Sunday, the filmmaker challenged how the nation remembers its founding and the Revolutionary War.\u201cI think we have sanitized the war. And I think […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":198993,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-198992","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-us","8":"entry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/198992","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=198992"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/198992\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/198993"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=198992"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=198992"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=198992"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}