"... it seems to be a life time ride for me, growing up as I did in a working class housing project in the Bronx,
imbued with the trade union culture of my dad and grandfather with a pronounced sense not just of injustice but the struggle against injustice."
imbued with the trade union culture of my dad and grandfather with a pronounced sense not just of injustice but the struggle against injustice."
"I became more sensitized to the international impacts of our policies and first went to South Africa in the apartheid years and
later reported from the War in the North and South which showed me how propagandized we were as a nation."
THE
New American Dream
INTERVIEW
DANNY SCHECHTER lives in New York City.
He graduated from Cornell in 1964.
He received a Master's degree from the London School of Economics. He was a Neiman Fellow in journalism at Harvard, where he also taught in 1969.
He was an adjunct professor of at the Graduate School of Journalism at Columbia.
He was a civil rights worker and a community organizer in the War on Poverty program. He served as an assistant to the Mayor of Detroit in 1966.
He was a producer for the ABC new magazine 20/20, winning two Emmy awards. He joined the start-up staff of CNN as a producer.
Schechter has reported from forty-nine countries.
He helped found Glovalvision, a New York-based television and film production company. He is also the executive editor of MediaChannel.org, where he writes a 3000-word daily blog entry on media and society.
The New American Dream Trivia Question:
To win a round button that says, "Bush Is Lying About What He Knew," be the first one to correctly answer the following.
Danny Schechter would rather be ....
a. Sitting in the front window of Danny's BarberShop in Guthrie Center, Iowa, reading Reader's Digest b. Sailing around the world with Ted Turner c. Producing the Rachel Ray Show d. Obama's second press secretary e. Bicycling to Boise f. Meeting Karl Rove in the alley behind Duffy's Irish Pub
____________________
NAD: Danny, hello, thank you for taking the time for this.
You were in college during the early Vietnam years, then taught in New York during the later '60s, in the civil rights movement — and then you get into mainstream media, the big-time of the time.
Wow.
You have been right in the middle of the action, right?
It had to have been fun, right?
I worked in Harlem, Baltimore, and Mississippi.
I was personally exposed to Dr. King and so many of the greats like Fannie Lou Hamer and, yes, even Malcolm X.
It was that movement that politicized me first in High School as a student editor and then later at Cornell University where I studied history and tried to make some.
I was personally exposed to Dr. King and so many of the greats like Fannie Lou Hamer and, yes, even Malcolm X.
It was that movement that politicized me first in High School as a student editor and then later at Cornell University where I studied history and tried to make some.
DANNY SCHECHTER:
Well, Mike, it seems to be a life time ride for me, growing up as I did in a working class housing project in the Bronx, imbued with the trade union culture of my dad and grandfather with a pronounced sense not just of injustice but the struggle against injustice.
That was formative to me.
So I brought those values with me into the activism that defined my youth, especially the Movement of the 60's.
I worked in Harlem, Baltimore, and Mississippi. I was personally exposed to Dr. King and so many of the greats like Fannie Lou Hamer and, yes, even Malcolm X. It was that movement that politicized me first in High School as a student editor and then later at Cornell University where I studied history and tried to make some.
With the war in Vietnam, I became more sensitized to the international impacts of our policies and first went to South Africa in the apartheid years and later reported from the War in the North and South which showed me how propagandized we were as a nation.
Fun?
Sure I had fun.
I always try to merge my values and my work, not take myself too seriously, and dip into popular culture — music, poetry, boogieing etc.
Yes, and I even inhaled ....
NAD: My wife just came in the door and said that gas is down to $1.60 and that she has heard it will get down to $1.
You are also an economist.
What's up with that?
Why do prices fluctuate like that? Supply and demand?
Six fat guys squeezing into the back booth at Wendy's Of Dubai and deciding?
Or what?
That's partly why I started digging into the debt issue and made the film "IN DEBT WE TRUST' (indebtwetrust.com).
When I started working on it, friends thought I was nuts since the economy SEEMED so strong.
When it came out I was called an alarmist and doom and gloomer.
Now we are all alarmed ....
When I started working on it, friends thought I was nuts since the economy SEEMED so strong.
When it came out I was called an alarmist and doom and gloomer.
Now we are all alarmed ....
DANNY SCHECHTER:
First of all I am not an economist even though I went to the London School of Economics, and the School of Industrial and Labor Relations.
Most of my lessons came in the collage of harder knocks and so like everyone else I am puzzled and outraged about whats going on.
When I worked for 20/20 at ABC — I was there 8 years — I did stories on labor struggles and the S&L crisis and saw how much criminality there is in the economy.
That's partly why I started digging into the debt issue and made the film "IN DEBT WE TRUST' (indebtwetrust.com).
When I started working on it, friends thought I was nuts since the economy SEEMED so strong.
When it came out I was called an alarmist and doom and gloomer.
Now we are all alarmed ....
Just today, I saw a piece by a columnist in Holland Michigan who finally saw the film and said: "In 2007 Emmy-winning journalist Danny Schechter (ABC News, CNN) investigated America’s mounting debt crisis in a film everyone should see, “In Debt We Trust.” The film predicted every aspect of our current debt crisis, foreclosures, mortgage scams, too much credit card debt, a federal government that spends money like a drunken sailor.
"President Bush in his last press conference on Jan. 12 said no one saw this financial crisis coming. That is simply untrue. Schechter did, many others did, but it is true that for a variety of reasons President Bush did not see it coming, nor did many members of Congress. There are two reasons for this blindness, denial and the simple political fact that debt is the mother’s milk of our economy."
So it looks like I went from being a zero to a hero. Smile.
NAD: Would you like to choose one of these to answer, elaborate on?
We don't ask this to make fun. We ask because we really seek the answers.
— Are UFOs real?
Could be. Think I have seen some?
— Did we land on the moon in 1968?
Think so. I wasn't there. Was busy that weekend?
— Did Bush knock down the towers?
With his slingshot?
— Was Paul Wellstone's death an accident?
Have questions .... suspicions linger. I did the film BEYOND JFK working with Oliver Stone in the aftermath of JFK. I still have questions about the Warren Commission. Our company helped with the film 91l: Press For Truth about the farce of the 911 Commission.
— The Oklahoma City bombing? Wasn't that just another U.S. government terrorist exercise? Or not.
How do I know?
— Waco. We burned kids, right? You can see flames shooting out of the tanks. Or not.
Typical police overreaction. My first radio story was on the Attica Massacre of 1971. Similar mindset.
— Is Bigfoot real?
He swore to me he is. (Although HE struck me as SHE!)
— Is there a God?
In NYC we have alternate side of the street parking — you park on one side one day and then across the street the next. So on Mondays, I a believer, Tuesdays not.
... What makes you think that?
I am just not touched by the spirit but respect people who are ...
NAD: How did you survive the Bush years?
DANNY SCHECHTER:
With great difficulty.
The funding base for our not for profit work has all but disappeared ... Getting work — we make documentaries and shorter videos — is harder than ever for all indy media ...
NAD: Do you anticipate having to survive the Obama years, struggle through — or do you have hopes for something better?
DANNY SCHECHTER:
You can't live without hope. I am certainly happy he beat McCain ... But the crisis we are in is real and getting worse ... One man cannot a a magic wand wave.
NAD: What do you think about the election of Obama? ...
DANNY SCHECHTER:
I have just finished a film about the Obama campaign which will be out soon on DVD — it's called "PEOPLE'S PRESIDENT" and it shows HOW he won — with grass roots activist and internet saavy. It goes into the techniques that were used, not the same old political arguments ...
NAD: And ... why wasn't it stolen as well ... or was it?
DANNY SCHECHTER:
This is a double negative or is it a triple negative .... Answer: Many reasons.
NAD: Who decided it wasn't going to be Kucinich or Ron Paul or Cynthia McKinney or Ralph Nader?
DANNY SCHECHTER:
The voters, that's who.
NAD: Was it supply and demand?
DANNY SCHECHTER:
Too simplistic and mechanistic/reductionist — why do you ask?
NAD: Or six fat guys squeezing into the back booth at Wendy's of Westchester?
DANNY SCHECHTER:
(Are these these the same guys who were in Dubai last week?)
NAD: What is your most recent book? And can you explain the "financial crisis" to us here in four lines or preferably less?
DANNY SCHECHTER:
Last book is PLUNDER: Investigating Our Economic Calamity (Cosimo Books available on Amazon) Focuses on Wall Street Crime, Lack of Regulation and Complicity of the media.
See http://www.newsdissector.com/Plunder
NAD: Please tell us more about yourself, the things you have done, what you would like to do, what you did today. What do you eat, what do you smoke, what do you drink.
DANNY SCHECHTER:
Thats all?
Don't smoke (dad died of Lung Cancer); Don't drink much save juices (I am so good); Eat too much; slept in this morning and reviewed a cut of a section of the new film I am making based on Plunder.
See the trailer on YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1jj1kjsZg0g.
If you like it and can help, write, Dissector@mediachannel.org
NAD: What did you absolutely have to get done by noon today?
DANNY SCHECHTER:
Slept until noon today — first time in months.
NAD: How about by Christmas 2009?
DANNY SCHECHTER:
Can't think so long term.
NAD: Have you ever been arrested? Been in jail?
DANNY SCHECHTER:
Have seen jillions.
Only once at the protest in Maryland at the former segregated Glenn Echo amusement park in Maryland 1963. Have had many run-ins — but I went into media not into affinity groups. Maybe its the same thing.
NAD: Did you just decide it wasn't for you. Did you have a deep-down understanding, belief that change would happen more efficiently otherwise?
DANNY SCHECHTER:
No not at all. Change happens through struggle. I have been in the struggle for many decades and am now struggling to get through your questions.
NAD: Oh yeah. Bill Hicks. I just discovered him about five years ago. Did you know about him when he was alive?
DANNY SCHECHTER:
Yeah — but I was drawn to others in my day, Dick Gregory, George Carlin etc
NAD: Wasn't he saying all the things that indy media types are saying these days, about the media, about government?
DANNY SCHECHTER:
Yes he was ... Am I an Indy Media Type? What is an Indy media type? Do we need to think in terms if "types" and stereotypes? Let's give that a rest.
NAD: What else would you like to add? What else should we have asked?
DANNY SCHECHTER:
In this format, it's your job to ask, mine to try to answer.
And I have tried. Yes I did.
NAD: Please insert a link here to something you would like linked to, with a brief tag re: where that link goes:
DANNY SCHECHTER:
See my daily News Dissector blog at http://www.newsdissector.com/blog and tell me what you think when you do.
NAD: Thank you.
DANNY SCHECHTER: My pleasure.
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