Dawn Porter is set to direct a feature documentary on pioneering Black TV news anchor Max Robinson for Wise Child Studios. Titled Color Bars: The Story of the Black Journalist Who Broke the TV News Color Barrier, the film will trace the rise and fall of Robinson’s broadcast news career. CNN anchor Victor Blackwell is among the producers.
Robinson made history in 1978 when he joined ABC World News Tonight as one of its three co-anchors, becoming the first Black journalist to anchor a national nightly network newscast. He’d already broken ground a decade earlier, becoming the first African American local news anchor in Washington, D.C. in 1969, and went on to co-found the National Association of Black Journalists in 1975. His tenure at ABC was ultimately cut short by struggles with alcohol abuse, and he died of complications from AIDS in December 1988 at age 49, a death that, through his public disclosure, helped bring national attention to the disease’s impact on the Black community at a time when that connection was rarely discussed openly.
For Porter, the project carries personal weight tied directly to her own career path. She recalled watching Robinson as one of the very few Black faces on the evening news, and said that by the time she later joined ABC News herself, people in the newsroom still spoke about his impact. She described the Robinson story as essential viewing at a moment when truth and courage in journalism are under pressure. Blackwell drew an even more direct comparison, calling Robinson “my Sidney Poitier… my Thurgood Marshall, my Jackie Robinson,” and said Robinson’s life feels more relevant than ever given the current media landscape.
Porter, known for acclaimed documentaries including John Lewis: Good Trouble and Bobby Kennedy for President, will produce through her Trilogy Films banner, while Blackwell, who anchors CNN This Morning Weekend and hosts First of All with Victor Blackwell, produces through his Fresh Fruit Films. Jason Beekman, founder and CEO of Wise Child Studios, said Robinson was an exceptional journalist by any standard who deserves a firm place in American journalism history, crediting him with breaking barriers in front of a national audience while facing the pressure of simply doing his job.
Wise Child Studios, founded in 2023 by former RadicalMedia business and legal affairs head Jason Beekman, has built a slate that includes the Netflix docuseries Reality Check: Inside America’s Next Top Model and the 2025 feature documentary Asco: Without Permission, produced alongside Diego Luna and Gael García Bernal.
With a filmmaker whose own career was shaped in part by Robinson’s example now telling his story, Color Bars positions itself not just as a historical account but as a direct line connecting one generation of Black broadcast journalists to the one that came before them.