Michael Kirk is a documentary filmmaker and partial creator of the PBS show Frontline, where he worked as senior producer until 1987. Kirk owns a production company, the Kirk Documentary Group, in Brookline, Massachusetts. He is a former Nieman Fellow in Journalism at Harvard University. He has produced such documentaries as "Inside the Meltdown," about the 2008 financial crisis, "Bush's War," about the Iraq War under George W. Bush, and "The Way the Music Died," about the dire straits of the record industry.
Kirk was born in Denver and later moved to Boise, Idaho where he grew up and attended Bishop Kelly High School. He graduated from the University of Idaho in 1971 with a degree in communications. The university named an award after Kirk, “The Michael Kirk Award”, given annually to a student in broadcast journalism.