Danny Schechter – författare

"Limiting access, limiting information to cover the backsides of those who are in charge of the war, is extremely dangerous and cannot and should not be accepted. And I am sorry to say that, up to and including the moment of this interview, that overwhelmingly it has been accepted by the American people. And the current administration revels in that, and they take refuge in that." —CBS News Anchor Dan Rather on BBC News Night, May 16, 2002In Media Wars: News at a Time of Terror, MediaChannel founder and editor, Danny Schechter, "the News Dissector," critically examines media coverage since 9/11. Schechter analyzes what has been covered and, more tellingly, left out, in news coverage of the terrorist attacks and their aftermath. Drawing from the reporting of over one thousand worldwide radio, newspaper, television, and internet affiliates, the result is a scathing account of how the media has become a megaphone for the U.S. military and its war on terror. More than just a critique, Schechter suggests a series of changes to improve our news sources and return them to the vital role a free and independent press must play to preserve a democracy. Media Wars is a timely assessment of what we are and are not being told in the most important story of our new century.

"Limiting access, limiting information to cover the backsides of those who are in charge of the war, is extremely dangerous and cannot and should not be accepted. And I am sorry to say that, up to and including the moment of this interview, that overwhelmingly it has been accepted by the American people. And the current administration revels in that, and they take refuge in that." —CBS News Anchor Dan Rather on BBC News Night, May 16, 2002In Media Wars: News at a Time of Terror, MediaChannel founder and editor, Danny Schechter, "the News Dissector," critically examines media coverage since 9/11. Schechter analyzes what has been covered and, more tellingly, left out, in news coverage of the terrorist attacks and their aftermath. Drawing from the reporting of over one thousand worldwide radio, newspaper, television, and internet affiliates, the result is a scathing account of how the media has become a megaphone for the U.S. military and its war on terror. More than just a critique, Schechter suggests a series of changes to improve our news sources and return them to the vital role a free and independent press must play to preserve a democracy. Media Wars is a timely assessment of what we are and are not being told in the most important story of our new century.

A candid insider''s tale of how the media really works and why it doesn''t work the way it should, The More You Watch, The Less You Know has emerged as a key catalyst in the debate on media reform. The More You Watch, The Less You Know recounts Schechter''s media adventures, from when he was "Danny Schechter the News Dissector" on Boston''s WBCN radio, to his stints as a producer at ABC''s 20/20 and CNN, to his personal odyssey chronicling the anti-Apartheid revolution in South Africa, to his development of innovative programming like South Africa Now and Rights & Wrongs as an independent producer. In this age of telecommunications bills and media mergers, The More You Watch, The Less You Know is an insider’s passionate plea for freedom of the (electronic) press.

From the makers of the major motion picture Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom, a completely unique biography and thematic telling of the story of Nelson Mandela.  This book, which provided key source material for the film, is an unexpurgated collection of the views and opinions of South Africa''s first Black president, and it draws on Danny Schechter’s forty-year relationship with "Madiba," as Nelson Mandela is known in his native South Africa.  

Each chapter of this unique portrait corresponds to a letter of the alphabet, and the letters cover major and minor, unexpected and fascinating themes in Mandela’s life and his impact on others: Athlete, Bully, Comrade, Forgiveness, Indigenous, Jailed, Militant, and President, to name a few. The book quotes liberally from Mandela himself, his ex-wives and other family members, global leaders, Mandela''s cellmates and guards on Robben Island, the team behind Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom, former president F. W. de Klerk, members of the South African Police, and his comrades including his successor Thabo Mbeki.    Madiba A to Z reveals sides of Nelson Mandela that are not often discussed and angles of the anti-apartheid movement that most choose to brush under the table in order to focus on the happy-ending version of the story. As Schechter reports in the book, according to Mandela''s successor as president of South Africa, Thabo Mbeki, “the fundamental problems of South Africa, poverty, inequality, have remained unchanged since 1994.” This is partly because, as Schechter writes, “six months before the 1994 elections, when South Africa was being governed jointly by the ANC and the National Party under a Transitional Executive Council (TEC), there were secret negotiations about the economic future.”   There are many rarely spoken of revelations in Madiba A to Z, a book about Mandela’s brilliance, his courage, his tremendous impact in saving his country and its people of all races, but one that also shows how far South Africa still has to go.

From the Trade Paperback edition.

There were two wars going on in Iraq—one fought with armies of soldiers, bombs, and fearsome military force. The other was fought alongside it with cameras, satellites, armies of journalists, and propaganda techniques. One war was rationalized as an effort to find and disarm WMDs—Weapons of Mass Destruction; the other was carried out by even more powerful WMDs, Weapons of Mass Deception.Veteran journalist and media watcher Danny Schechter, a former ABC and CNN producer, monitored and now analyzes the cheerleading for a war in which reporting was sanitized, staged, and suppressed. The author of Media Wars: News at a Time of Terror, The More You Watch the Less You Know, and News Dissector, brings an insider's knowledge based on thirty years in journalism with an outsider's perspective to critiquing media coverage. Throughout the war he was "self-embedded" at Mediachannel.org, the world's largest online media issues network.Schechter's insightful, wide-ranging critique of the American media's war coverage targets the way in which a virtual merger between the Pentagon and the media produced a war spectacle that the American public was primed to see, media collusion in the campaign to discredit the UN, "rightwing liberation theology" as war propaganda, the cozy relationship between news anchors and retired officers hired as military analysts, the controversies over Peter Arnett and Geraldo Rivera, the looting of Baghdad, the lack of media focus on civilian casualties, the disparities in coverage between U.S. and foreign media, and more.Schechter's disturbing indictment of the major media as purveyors of infotainment instead of news will serve as a wake-up call to journalists, media critics, and everyone who cares about a well-informed citizenry as the basis of democracy.