Danny Schechter

Daniel Isaac Schechter (June 27, 1942 – March 19, 2015) was an American television producer, independent filmmaker, blogger, and media critic. He wrote and spoke about many issues including apartheid, civil rights, economics, foreign policy, journalistic control and ethics, and medicine. While attending the London School of Economics in the 1960s, Schechter became an anti-apartheid activist and made trips to South Africa on behalf of the African National Congress (ANC). Later he would help musician Steven Van Zandt assemble other performers to form Artists United Against Apartheid, who released the album Sun City in 1985. Schechter produced and directed six nonfiction films about Nelson Mandela from the time Mandela was a political prisoner to his election and service as President of South Africa.

Schechter's first job in media was with WBCN in Boston, during the 1970s where he became known as "Danny Schechter, the news dissector", a nickname that stuck throughout his life. He continued to work in media with ABC and the start-up cable television news station CNN until he abandoned corporate media and founded TV and film production company Globalvision with his friend and longtime associate Rory O'Connor. Globalvision produced South Africa Now which was a television show that focused on the anti-apartheid struggle and news and culture from South Africa. He authored over 14 books.

Early life and education Schechter was born in New York City, on June 27, 1942. His mother, Ruth Lisa Schechter (née Lubin), was a secretary and a published poet; Schechter grew up in the Bronx, in the garment union-sponsored Amalgamated housing cooperative development. and an adjunct professor at the Graduate School of Journalism at Columbia University. To Schechter, "dissecting" the news meant he reported the facts of a story, laid the background for the issue, then asserted why media outlets failed to accurately report on the story. Schechter described himself as "a participatory journalist, a down-with-the-movement reporter, a manic media maven." Among his many interviews was one with John Lennon and Yoko Ono in June 1973.

A growing segment of the public wants to be involved with new media. The boom in on-line computer networks and even radio talk shows demonstrates the demand and the need—which the media giants are unlikely to satisfy. Let’s hope that the Congressional watchdogs who are questioning the anti-trust implications of these new monopolies-in-the-making will speak out to preserve public access. In commercial television, everything is slick, but little matters. Its edges may be rough, but public access should matter to us—not only for what it is, but for what it can become." — Danny Schechter, Newsday (November 3, 1993)

Schechter assisted musician Steven Van Zandt and record producer Arthur Baker in creating Artists United Against Apartheid, which was a group of musicians who released a protest album in 1985 entitled Sun City. He was the recipient of the Society of Professional Journalists' 2001 Award for Excellence in Documentary Journalism. Schechter's film WMD: Weapons of Mass Deception won the Austin Film Festival's Documentary Film Award in 2004.

From 1999 to 2010, Schechter was also executive editor and "blogger-in-chief" at the now-defunct MediaChannel.org, for which he wrote a nearly-3000-word daily blog on media and society. Known for his sharp criticism of corporate media, Schechter was just as scathing in his opinions of PBS, which rejected several of his ideas for documentaries including an American Masters biography on economist John Kenneth Galbraith.

In a 2002 column for Current, Schechter wrote, "PBS is a land of niches and bailiwicks, a Japanese-style employment system topped with execs who seem to have cushy jobs for life if they play it safe. They are thus very risk-averse and barely accountable to the public in whose name they are paid.”

Death Schechter died of pancreatic cancer on March 19, 2015, in New York City.

Awards and honors 2001 Award for Excellence in Documentary Journalism from the Society of Professional Journalists (for Falun Gong's Challenge to China) 2004 Austin Film Festival Documentary Film Award (for WMD: Weapons of Mass Deception) 2008 James Aronson Award for Blogging Honorary doctorate from Fitchburg State University Nieman Fellowship in Journalism at Harvard University Two Emmy Awards, four nominations

Productions

Film and television Schechter produced and directed many television specials and documentary films, including:

Beyond A Long Walk To Freedom (2014) America's Surveillance State (2014) DeWitt Clinton HS: The School That Can Teach Them All, on the fight for Public Education (2013) Who Rules America? (2012) Plunder: The Crime Of Our Time (2010) Barack Obama: The People's President (2009) Boob Tube: Sex, TV and Ugly George (2008) Viva Madiba (2008) A Work in Progress: Danny Schechter and the Journalism of Change (2007) In Debt We Trust: America Before The Bubble Burst (2006) WMD: Weapons of Mass Deception (2004) Counting on Democracy (2004), about the 2000 Florida election recount, narrated by Ossie Davis and Ruby Dee We Are Family (2002), about a benefit recording of the Sister Sledge song following the September 11, 2001 attacks; shown at the Sundance Film Festival Nkosi: A Voice of Africa's AIDS Orphans (2001), narrated by Danny Glover Falun Gong's Challenge to China (2001) A Hero for All: Nelson Mandela's Farewell (1999) Globalization & Human Rights (1998) Beyond Life: Timothy Leary Lives (1997) The World of Elie Wiesel (1997) Sowing Seeds/Reaping Peace: The World of Seeds of Peace (1996) Prisoners of Hope: Reunion on Robben Island (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 Marc Levin and Barbara Kopple Give Peace a Chance (1991) Nelson Mandela: Free at Last (1991), PBS national broadcast Mandela in America (1990) The Making of Sun City (1987) Student Power (1968)

Books Schechter's books include:

Surveillance A to Z (Seven Stories Press, 2015, forthcoming). When South Africa Called, We Answered: How the Media and International Solidarity Helped Topple Apartheid (Cosimo Books, 2015). Madiba A to Z: The Many Faces of Nelson Mandela (Seven Stories Press, 2013). Occupy: Dissecting Occupy Wall Street (Cosimo Books, 2012). Blogothon: Reflections and Revelations from the News Dissector (Cosimo Books, 2012) The Crime Of Our Time: Why Wall Street is Not Too Big To Jail (Disinformation Books, 2010) Plunder: Investigating Our Economic Calamity and the Subprime Scandal (Cosimo Books, 2008) When News Lies (Select Books, 2006) The Death of Media (and the Fight to Save Democracy) (Melville House Publishing, 2005). Media Wars: News At A Time of Terror (Rowman & Littlefield, 2003) Embedded: Weapons of Mass Deception: How the Media Failed to Cover the Iraq War (Prometheus Books, 2003) News Dissector: Passions, Pieces and Polemics (Akashic Books, 2001) Falun Gong's Challenge to China: Spiritual Practice or 'Evil Cult'? (Akashic Books, 2000) The More You Watch, The Less You Know (Seven Stories Press, 1997)