One of the more memorable media moments of 2012 was when Laura Ling sat down with former President Bill Clinton to discuss his experiences with high school bullying. It was for a special August 13 celebrity-tinged episode of Ling’s series E! Investigates, for which she also chatted with Lance Bass, Mike Tyson and Jillian Michaels.

There was Ling, three summers after being retrieved from North Korea by the 42nd Commander-in-Chief, discussing how he was ridiculed for being overweight and not wearing cool clothes to the dance. How did it all come about, we wondered?

“I had read about President Clinton being picked on as a young man, even “slugged” by a bully, and I knew that he would be able to offer some invaluable insight and perspective,” Ling tells FishbowlLA. “To think that this poor, self-described “band geek,” who was bullied growing up, could emerge to be one of the most powerful figures in the word – now that’s an inspiring story for young people.”

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Wiling away all those hours in 2009 as a prisoner of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, former Current TV producer-editor Euna Lee prayed for a better tomorrow. She was able to get to that place, move from LA to New York and complete the Master’s graduate documentary film program at Columbia University. This past weekend, she screened The Translator, her thesis film about Iraqi U.S. special-visa immigrant Taif Rady.

“The premiere was a part of DocFest at Columbia University, which featured ten documentaries overall,” Lee tells FishbowlLA via email. “About 100 people attended my screening.”

“The Translator is a 45-minute look at a formal, U.S. affiliated Iraqi translator and his 11 family members’ first three years in New York,” she continues. “The biggest compliment from this past Saturday for me was that the viewers were really able to see inside of what it is like to live in the U.S. as refugees and the tough life they really go through every day.”

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In a few weeks, former Current TV editor Euna Lee will quietly mark the third anniversary of her March 17, 2009 capture along the North Korea-China border. Much has transpired since then: Bill Clinton; a book; and a move from LA to New York last summer to attend Columbia journalism graduate school.

FishbowlLA caught up with Lee over the weekend upon her return to Manhattan from Washington DC, where she had traveled to film a scene for one of her class projects. Lee is slated to graduate in August from the one-year Master’s documentary program.

Since one of the very best things about Columbia is the caliber of the teachers, we asked Lee to tell us about some of hers. “This semester, I am taking the documentary class with June Cross,” she replies. “She cares for her characters in her films and reminds me of why I am making documentaries, a medium to give voice to the voiceless. She is very strict with journalism ethics, which I also love and respect a lot.”

“Another professor is Judith Matloff, who used to be a foreign correspondent for over ten years,” Lee continues. “Anyone looking to cover a war zone or conflict nations wants to take her class. One day, she brought her bulletproof vest to school. She is one a few people who is honest about how she felt covering dangerous zones. We, as female journalists, often feel the need to be a strong figure in public, but she doesn’t try. Still, her work shows how strong a person she is.”

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A few weeks ago, when Current TV chairman Al Gore welcomed Cenk Uygur to the ranks, he promised that the San Francisco based network would soon be announcing a third show to go along with The Young Turks and Keith Olbermann. This week, he revealed the latest piece of his dynamically evolving 2011 prime time puzzle to be The War Room with Jennifer Granholm.

Granholm (pictured) was the first woman to hold the office of governor in the state of Michigan. The two-term ex-politician joins a progressive network that not only espouses a lot of the same views as Michael Moore, but sometimes also welcomes him as a guest. That trend will surely continue on War Room. Per Tuesday’s release:

Granholm, a regular contributor to NBC’s Meet the Press, recently co-authored a new book, A Governor’s Story: The Fight for Jobs and America’s Economic Future, with her husband and leadership consultant, Daniel G. Mulhern.

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Before joining TheWrap, news editor Daniel Frankel was a writer at Variety, Mediaweek, and E! This afternoon, he faced the unfortunate task of filing a brief exclusive report about a murder apparently commited by one of his former E! co-workers:

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There was a bit of a gap between the second and third episodes of Laura Ling‘s E! Investigates series, but last Wednesday, the reporter debuted her newest installment, “Fatal Teen Triangle.” The show repeats tonight at 6 p.m. and Friday July 1st at 1:00 p.m.

Although the crime at the center of the episode is six years old, Ling’s report is part of a wave of renewed coverage of the horrific murder and disposal in January 2005 of 16-year-old American Idol hopeful Adrianne Reynolds (pictured). The Moline, Illinois teen was done in by a jealous girlfriend, Sarah Kolb, and male accomplice Cory Gregory.

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Echoing the majority of reader comments at press time to Meghan Daum‘s latest LA Times column, we don’t buy into her stand-alone concept of “hiker hate.”

Daum suggests that the disapproval articulated by the American populace over the actions of Iranian imprisoned hikers Sarah Shourd (since released), Shane Bauer, and Josh Fatal is “so vehement that it lends itself to its own coinage and category.” That’s a stretch. The same kind of reaction framed the 2009 North Korean detainment of Current TV journalists Laura Ling and Euna Lee, and in fact the amount of vitriol that has slammed the hikers is on par with just about any other Berkeley-Biloxi dividing topic (Sarah Palin, abortion, take your pick).

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Right around the time that Laura Ling was giving birth to daughter Li in June, older sister Lisa Ling was coming to terms with the terrible, opposite experience of a miscarriage. Lisa went public with the news on Tuesday as part of a return appearance on The View that airs today.

While the loss of an unborn child is obviously devastating, Ling got typically proactive in its aftermath. Discovering that many women who have miscarriages feel ashamed and don’t know where to turn to, she co-launched discussion forum website SecretSocietyofWomen.org.

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Former Current TV reporter and world famous North Korean hostage Laura Ling is the new host of E! Investigates on the E! Entertainment network, where she makes her debut tonight. Ling’s first show looks into the rash of teen suicides across the country.

Writes Ling of her premiere story, on E!’s website:

While the daily lives of Sacramento born globe-trotting sisters Lisa Ling and Laura Ling would make for a potent reality TV show in the style of Keeping Up with the Kardashians, E! Entertainment has decided to go in a different direction in this case, hiring on Laura as exclusive new host and contributor to their hour-long program E! Investigates. New York Times media columnist Brian Stelter broke the news, which was then quickly picked up by the likes of TV Guide, The Hollywood Reporter and TV Squad.

“The folks at E! approached me several months ago,” Laura told FishbowlLA exclusively this morning via e-mail after returning from the doctor’s office where she watched four-month-old daughter Li get vaccine shots. “I’d [also] had some informal conversations with other outlets.”

On the one hand, this has to be a bitter pill for Current TV, the cable TV network for whom Ling was reporting at the time of her apprehension on the China-North Korea border in the early morning hours of March 17th, 2009. The new E! show sounds a lot like the old Vanguard program, albeit with more of a domestic focus, and even the way the San Francisco based network quietly blogged in late January about Ling’s decision to leave her post there as Vice President spoke volumes.

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