DANNY SCHECHTER, M.S.
Television
Producer and Filmmaker
Danny Schechter is a television producer and independent filmmaker who
also writes and speaks about media issues.
He is the editor of “MEDIAOCRACY: Hail to the Thief: How the Media Stole
the 2000 Presidential Election” (electronpress.com) and author of “Falun Gong’s
Challenge to China” (Akashic Press), “The More You Watch, The Less You Know”
(Seven Stories Press) and “News Dissector: Passions, Pieces and Polemics” (Akashic
Press. Electron Press). He is the
executive editor of Mediachannel.org, the world’s largest online media issues
network.
Mr. Schechter has produced and directed many TV specials and films,
including “Falun Gong’s Challenge to China” (2000); A Hero for All: Nelson
Mandela’s Farewell (l999); Beyond Life: Timothy Leary Lives (1997); Sowing
Seeds/Reeping Peace: The World of Seeds of Peace (1996); Prisoners of Hope
(1995, co-directed by Barbara Kopple); Countdown to Freedom: Ten Days that
Changed South Africa (1994), narrated by James Earl Jones and Alfre Woodard;
Sarajevo Ground Zero (1993); The Living Canvas (1992), narrated by Billy Dee
Williams; Beyond JFK: The Question of Conspiracy (1992, co-directed by Barbara
Kopple); Give Peace a Chance (1991); Mandela in America (1990) The Making of
Sun City (1987); and Student Power (1968).
Mr. Schechter is co-founder and executive producer of Globalvision, a
New York-based television and film production company now in its 13th year,
where he produced 156 editions of the award-winning series South Africa Now,
co-produced Rights & Wrongs: Human Rights Television with Charlayne
Hunter-Gault. His most recent human
rights production, “Globalization and Human Rights” was co produced with Rory
O’Connor and shown nationally on PBS.
A Cornell University graduate, Mr. Schechter received his Master’s degree from the London School of Economics, and an honorary doctorate from Fitchburg College. He was a Nieman Fellow in Journalism at Harvard, where he also taught in 1969. After college, he was a full-time civil rights worker and then communications director of the Northern Student Movement, worked as a community organizer in a Saul Alinsky-style War on Poverty program, and, moving from the streets to the suites, served as an assistant to the Mayor of Detroit in 1966 on a Ford Foundation grant.
Schechter’s professional journalism career began in1970, when he was
named news director, principal newscaster, and “News Dissector” at WBCN-FM in
Boston, where he was hailed as a radio innovator and won many industry honors,
including two Major Armstrong Awards.
His television producing career was launched with the syndicated Joe
Oteri Show, which won the New England Emmy and a NAPTE IRIS award in 1979. In l980, he created and produced the
nation’s first live late-night entertainment-oriented TV show, Five All Night,
Live All Night at WCVB in Boston.
Schechter
left Boston to join the staff at CNN as a producer based in Atlanta. He then moved to ABC as a producer for
20/20, where during his eight years he won two National News Emmys. Mr. Schechter has reported from 47 countries
and lectured at many schools and universities.
He was an adjunct professor at the Graduate School of Journalism at
Columbia University. Mr. Schechter’s writing
has appeared in leading newspapers and magazines including the The Nation,
Newsday, Boston Globe, Columbia Journalism Review, Media Studies Journal,
Detroit Free Press, Village Voice, Tikkun, Z, and many others. He has a 24-year-old daughter, and lives in
New York City in a large loft with an 8,000-album record collection and an
Apple computer that is nearly out of memory.