Danny Schechter (1942–2015)
Author of The More You Watch the Less You Know
About the Author
Daniel Isaac Schechter was born in Manhattan, New York on June 27, 1942. He received a bachelor's degree from Cornell University. While there, he organized rent strikes in Harlem and marched for civil rights in Washington, D. C. and in the South. He received a master's degree from the London School show more of Economics, where he became active in the antiapartheid movement. In 1971, he joined the Boston rock station WBCN-FM, where he found a following as Danny Schechter, the News Dissector. As a producer of the ABC News magazine 20/20, his work won two Emmy Awards. In 1988, he and Rory O'Connor founded Globalvision, which produced Rights and Wrongs: Human Rights Television and South Africa Now, a weekly public affairs program that won a George Polk Award in 1990. During his lifetime, he wrote 17 books including The More You Watch the Less You Know: News Wars/(Sub)Merged Hopes/Media Adventures and Madiba A-Z: The Many Faces of Nelson Mandela. He also made more than 30 films, including six documentaries on Nelson Mandela and another entitled WMD: Weapons of Mass Deception. He died of pancreatic cancer on March 19, 2015 at the age of 72. (Bowker Author Biography) show less
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Works by Danny Schechter
Tagged
Common Knowledge
- Birthdate
- 1942-06-27
- Date of death
- 2015-03-19
- Gender
- male
- Disambiguation notice
- VIAF:37164466
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Reviews
Schechter's book gives us too much information, a lot of it debatable, to be considered in a single dosage. The lack of an index makes the cross referencing of material impossible. But the most serious flaw may be the mixture of essays, diary entries, seemingly factual reporting, and guest chapters that give this book a hodge-podge feel.That's not to say the book is uninteresting, particularly for those predisposed to be critical of Western media, Western governments, and market economies. show more Though disjointed at times, the book does move along through the many styles and techniques that could leave some readers dizzy. show less
Perfect for : Personal Use, Someone interested in learning about the impacts to the current economy
In a nutshell: I believe that many things have led to our current economic crisis, and I also believe that we will recover. Plunder's author, Danny Schechter, provides investigative insight into some of the events that brought our economy to this point, mainly greed and dishonesty among those involved in the mortgage industry and the credit industry (seems they were able to talk many consumers show more into using credit cards and buying homes when they should not have been qualified for them). The author does go on to show that what has happened here in the United States is bound to turn into a Global problem in the near future. In all, this was a very informative read that gave me a lot to think about and reflect on.
Extended Review:
Content: While I am not an expert in economics or anything related to it, I can't claim that this is THE book to shed light on what exactly happened, but I can say that Danny Schechter has done his research and put together a lot of information regarding many contributing factors to today's economic issues, especially the mortgage crisis! I also gained insight into why our family was "qualified" for much more than we felt we could comfortably afford when we were looking for a home to buy (over the past 10 years, my husband and I purchased a first home, which we sold in order to buy our current home. In both cases, lenders tried to talk us into doubling what we wanted to pay, telling us we should buy bigger because we were "qualified" . . . boy am I glad we didn't listen to them!).
Format: The book is written in an interesting format that supports the author's claims with documentation. Mixed in with the author's own words and explanations are many quotes and passages from other sources (online and print) pertaining to the subject matter.
Readability: This was a fairly easy read, given the subject matter. There are a lot of financial terms used, but the author did a good job of explaining them.
Overall: A very interesting look into how and why we have reached this point in our credit crisis, which is magnified by the fact that this will most likely become a Global crisis as other countries have taken similar actions with regards to the use of credit. show less
In a nutshell: I believe that many things have led to our current economic crisis, and I also believe that we will recover. Plunder's author, Danny Schechter, provides investigative insight into some of the events that brought our economy to this point, mainly greed and dishonesty among those involved in the mortgage industry and the credit industry (seems they were able to talk many consumers show more into using credit cards and buying homes when they should not have been qualified for them). The author does go on to show that what has happened here in the United States is bound to turn into a Global problem in the near future. In all, this was a very informative read that gave me a lot to think about and reflect on.
Extended Review:
Content: While I am not an expert in economics or anything related to it, I can't claim that this is THE book to shed light on what exactly happened, but I can say that Danny Schechter has done his research and put together a lot of information regarding many contributing factors to today's economic issues, especially the mortgage crisis! I also gained insight into why our family was "qualified" for much more than we felt we could comfortably afford when we were looking for a home to buy (over the past 10 years, my husband and I purchased a first home, which we sold in order to buy our current home. In both cases, lenders tried to talk us into doubling what we wanted to pay, telling us we should buy bigger because we were "qualified" . . . boy am I glad we didn't listen to them!).
Format: The book is written in an interesting format that supports the author's claims with documentation. Mixed in with the author's own words and explanations are many quotes and passages from other sources (online and print) pertaining to the subject matter.
Readability: This was a fairly easy read, given the subject matter. There are a lot of financial terms used, but the author did a good job of explaining them.
Overall: A very interesting look into how and why we have reached this point in our credit crisis, which is magnified by the fact that this will most likely become a Global crisis as other countries have taken similar actions with regards to the use of credit. show less
From my interview with the author archived as selection 298 at archive.org.
[…] I wanna say excellent job on the book Falun Gong's Challenge to China .
Danny Schechter: Thank you
I really enjoyed reading it and its sort of opened up a whole new world to me because I hadn't really noticed the issue a lot beforehand, but then after that, I started seeing it in newspaper headlines and stuff. It maybe was there all along, but this is where it made it stick in my mind.
DS: Well you know, we live in show more a world where news and information, particularly from other countries, often doesn't register with people because it's very hard to connect to and to relate to it, to really have any sense of background or context to who these people are, and what they're doing. In this case, we’re talking about as many as a hundred million people, starting in China, who basically took up what is called qi gong exercises, and a whole belief system called Falun Gong. This thing started 8 years ago. It was the most rapidly growing, fastest growing, spiritual practice in all of China. It got practically no press attention in America whatsoever, until 10,000 of these people surrounded the Chinese Communist Party leadership compound one day to challenge the Communist party's repression of police actions that were arresting and harassing their people. They're basically saying, "Look, leave us alone. We’d like to be legalized and we'd like to go on with our spiritual practice. We're not against the government. We're not political." At first this happened in April of '99 the Chinese government didn't say anything, and [was] kind of shocked by what happened. It made headlines around the world and then it sort of disappeared again. Then in July, China decided to crack down on this group, on the Falun Gong, and to ban it. Not only did they ban it, but they basically prohibited any discussion of it. They burned over a million books, and they began arresting practitioners, the people who were practicing this Falun Gong spiritual practice, which is really deeply rooted in Chinese traditions. It's kind of a fusion of Taoism and Buddhism. It's kind of a system of how you self-improvement. We might even consider it something like New Age spiritual practices. But in China, this was perceived by the government as a threat to the government. Since then, 53 people have died, 50,000 people have been detained, hundreds of people are in labor camps, and are in mental hospitals and being treated really badly, which has led to the denunciation of China by the US government, other governments, for the deterioration of human rights. But because the United States wants to do business with China, trade with China, American companies got this new trade bill through. Nobody's doing anything about it. They're really not talking about it very much, and so, people read about it, like you, but they don't really connect to it. This doesn't sort of makes sense to them: “Who are these people? What is this about?” As a consequence, one of the biggest stories of our time is being missed, and that's why I ended up writing this book, Falun Gong's Challenge to China which is just out from Akashic books, because I think it's really important for people to know more about this. This is a very big force, and we've just seen what happened in Belgrade, Yugoslavia, where people non-violently challenged the government, basically overthrew a decision by the government to not recognize the elections. Well, in China, you have a situation where there are no elections whatsoever. There's no democracy, yet you have a movement with a hundred million people, which is immense. Not only is it in China, but it is in 40 countries now, including the United States.
Danny, I’d like to have you elaborate on a couple of the points you made. This is an internet radio show, and we're really interested in the internet here, me personally. Something about that jumped out at me through your book. As you mentioned and it might seem kind of odd to our listeners that there's a sort of contrast here. This is something rooted in Chinese traditions, but the Chinese government themselves see it as a threat. Correct me if I’m wrong, but part of the reason they seem to see it as a threat was the group's ability to be organized and to put on their demonstrations, as silent and as non-violent as they were. It seems that one of the tools that they were able to maintain this organization was their use of the internet for websites and email in order to keep people together.
DS: Right, right. This is a force that has mastered the new technology. Many of the Falun Gong practitioners, well in China, many of them are older women, people who are looking for the health benefits of this practice. Many people feel that they do these exercises, they're able to feel better, if not recover from various ailments and diseases. They have a faith in its healing power, but also, mentally they wanna become better people, and it has a whole philosophy to it. But in America, many people who are involved in it are actually, PhDs, graduate students, computer experts, specialists and what-have-you. There's a network of websites that they have used in many, many different languages, and in many countries. They try to get their message out because the media, the mass media, has been a very unreliable way of getting the message out because, by and large, even though they're reported upon, they're really quoted in my book, in Falun Gong's Challenge to China. A lot of interviews with the people of Falun Gong themselves, "What did they say? What did they say?" You really get to hear that. It's always quoting some expert or quoting some government official, but it's very really actually giving them a chance to be heard. This problem with media and I’ll get to them in a second is something that I’m very deeply concerned about. I'm editing a website myself, called www.mediachannel.org, and www.mediachannel.org has brought together 520 organizations from all around the world. It's the largest online media issues network in the world. What we're doing online is to try to talk about what's not being covered in the media, and how and why we're not getting the full story. One of the topics we have written about has been this coverage of Falun Gong. One of the things we've noted is that the internet has become a major tool in the organization of Falun Gong, just like in Yugoslavia, where the government there, Milosevic, had banned the radio station or tried to drive it off the air. Those people went online, and were able to broadcast into the former Yugoslavia, through the internet. Falun Gong is doing the same thing. In my book Falun Gong's Challenge to China there's a whole chapter about how they do this, how they used the web, which is fascinating. Not just the web, but also beepers, and all kinds of communication devices to stay one step ahead of the Chinese police and the Chinese Intelligence apparatus, which is very paranoid about them. So, the web’s become a major tool for democratization all over the world. In China, it's increasingly being heard. In fact, the New York Times reported today that after these events in Belgrade, various chat groups and chat discussions online, in China, Chinese sites, in Chinese, there are people commenting on what happened in Serbia and saying, “We need that here too”. The internet is bringing together, despite attempts to ban it, repress it, filter it, hack it, limit it, it's bringing together a global audience of people who are concerned about free expressions, concerned about communicating their ideas and values. Falun Gong is doing this, and I found out this fascinating phenomenon by and large, it hasn't been reported on in the media, but in my book, I do devote quite a bit of time to discuss this, and also, to how China has responded. China itself has a website. One of the things I have in the book is a whole list of all the sites that you could check out, pro-Falun Gong, anti-Falun Gong, third-party sites that can tell you more about the argument, because there's an online media war going on here. There's an electronic war and, in addition to the political war, one of the things China has been doing has been hacking these sites and also the email boxes of some of these people. Some of the so-called disruption of service, attacks that we saw on Yahoo and other things, Chinese had been doing this against the Falun Gong sites. One guy told me that one day, suddenly his email box filled up with 2500 messages in a minute, basically overcoming and overwhelming his site. Finally, they tracked it down to an undisclosed, web service in China, but they couldn't get the Chinese to stop. They have to actually close the email box and open a new one for this person. So, China has been using this type of approach and, by and large, has nothing reported on. show less
[…] I wanna say excellent job on the book Falun Gong's Challenge to China .
Danny Schechter: Thank you
I really enjoyed reading it and its sort of opened up a whole new world to me because I hadn't really noticed the issue a lot beforehand, but then after that, I started seeing it in newspaper headlines and stuff. It maybe was there all along, but this is where it made it stick in my mind.
DS: Well you know, we live in show more a world where news and information, particularly from other countries, often doesn't register with people because it's very hard to connect to and to relate to it, to really have any sense of background or context to who these people are, and what they're doing. In this case, we’re talking about as many as a hundred million people, starting in China, who basically took up what is called qi gong exercises, and a whole belief system called Falun Gong. This thing started 8 years ago. It was the most rapidly growing, fastest growing, spiritual practice in all of China. It got practically no press attention in America whatsoever, until 10,000 of these people surrounded the Chinese Communist Party leadership compound one day to challenge the Communist party's repression of police actions that were arresting and harassing their people. They're basically saying, "Look, leave us alone. We’d like to be legalized and we'd like to go on with our spiritual practice. We're not against the government. We're not political." At first this happened in April of '99 the Chinese government didn't say anything, and [was] kind of shocked by what happened. It made headlines around the world and then it sort of disappeared again. Then in July, China decided to crack down on this group, on the Falun Gong, and to ban it. Not only did they ban it, but they basically prohibited any discussion of it. They burned over a million books, and they began arresting practitioners, the people who were practicing this Falun Gong spiritual practice, which is really deeply rooted in Chinese traditions. It's kind of a fusion of Taoism and Buddhism. It's kind of a system of how you self-improvement. We might even consider it something like New Age spiritual practices. But in China, this was perceived by the government as a threat to the government. Since then, 53 people have died, 50,000 people have been detained, hundreds of people are in labor camps, and are in mental hospitals and being treated really badly, which has led to the denunciation of China by the US government, other governments, for the deterioration of human rights. But because the United States wants to do business with China, trade with China, American companies got this new trade bill through. Nobody's doing anything about it. They're really not talking about it very much, and so, people read about it, like you, but they don't really connect to it. This doesn't sort of makes sense to them: “Who are these people? What is this about?” As a consequence, one of the biggest stories of our time is being missed, and that's why I ended up writing this book, Falun Gong's Challenge to China which is just out from Akashic books, because I think it's really important for people to know more about this. This is a very big force, and we've just seen what happened in Belgrade, Yugoslavia, where people non-violently challenged the government, basically overthrew a decision by the government to not recognize the elections. Well, in China, you have a situation where there are no elections whatsoever. There's no democracy, yet you have a movement with a hundred million people, which is immense. Not only is it in China, but it is in 40 countries now, including the United States.
Danny, I’d like to have you elaborate on a couple of the points you made. This is an internet radio show, and we're really interested in the internet here, me personally. Something about that jumped out at me through your book. As you mentioned and it might seem kind of odd to our listeners that there's a sort of contrast here. This is something rooted in Chinese traditions, but the Chinese government themselves see it as a threat. Correct me if I’m wrong, but part of the reason they seem to see it as a threat was the group's ability to be organized and to put on their demonstrations, as silent and as non-violent as they were. It seems that one of the tools that they were able to maintain this organization was their use of the internet for websites and email in order to keep people together.
DS: Right, right. This is a force that has mastered the new technology. Many of the Falun Gong practitioners, well in China, many of them are older women, people who are looking for the health benefits of this practice. Many people feel that they do these exercises, they're able to feel better, if not recover from various ailments and diseases. They have a faith in its healing power, but also, mentally they wanna become better people, and it has a whole philosophy to it. But in America, many people who are involved in it are actually, PhDs, graduate students, computer experts, specialists and what-have-you. There's a network of websites that they have used in many, many different languages, and in many countries. They try to get their message out because the media, the mass media, has been a very unreliable way of getting the message out because, by and large, even though they're reported upon, they're really quoted in my book, in Falun Gong's Challenge to China. A lot of interviews with the people of Falun Gong themselves, "What did they say? What did they say?" You really get to hear that. It's always quoting some expert or quoting some government official, but it's very really actually giving them a chance to be heard. This problem with media and I’ll get to them in a second is something that I’m very deeply concerned about. I'm editing a website myself, called www.mediachannel.org, and www.mediachannel.org has brought together 520 organizations from all around the world. It's the largest online media issues network in the world. What we're doing online is to try to talk about what's not being covered in the media, and how and why we're not getting the full story. One of the topics we have written about has been this coverage of Falun Gong. One of the things we've noted is that the internet has become a major tool in the organization of Falun Gong, just like in Yugoslavia, where the government there, Milosevic, had banned the radio station or tried to drive it off the air. Those people went online, and were able to broadcast into the former Yugoslavia, through the internet. Falun Gong is doing the same thing. In my book Falun Gong's Challenge to China there's a whole chapter about how they do this, how they used the web, which is fascinating. Not just the web, but also beepers, and all kinds of communication devices to stay one step ahead of the Chinese police and the Chinese Intelligence apparatus, which is very paranoid about them. So, the web’s become a major tool for democratization all over the world. In China, it's increasingly being heard. In fact, the New York Times reported today that after these events in Belgrade, various chat groups and chat discussions online, in China, Chinese sites, in Chinese, there are people commenting on what happened in Serbia and saying, “We need that here too”. The internet is bringing together, despite attempts to ban it, repress it, filter it, hack it, limit it, it's bringing together a global audience of people who are concerned about free expressions, concerned about communicating their ideas and values. Falun Gong is doing this, and I found out this fascinating phenomenon by and large, it hasn't been reported on in the media, but in my book, I do devote quite a bit of time to discuss this, and also, to how China has responded. China itself has a website. One of the things I have in the book is a whole list of all the sites that you could check out, pro-Falun Gong, anti-Falun Gong, third-party sites that can tell you more about the argument, because there's an online media war going on here. There's an electronic war and, in addition to the political war, one of the things China has been doing has been hacking these sites and also the email boxes of some of these people. Some of the so-called disruption of service, attacks that we saw on Yahoo and other things, Chinese had been doing this against the Falun Gong sites. One guy told me that one day, suddenly his email box filled up with 2500 messages in a minute, basically overcoming and overwhelming his site. Finally, they tracked it down to an undisclosed, web service in China, but they couldn't get the Chinese to stop. They have to actually close the email box and open a new one for this person. So, China has been using this type of approach and, by and large, has nothing reported on. show less
My interview with the author is archived as selection 299 at archive.org.
Here is from the transcript:
Here is from the transcript:
show more
DS: Well, first of all, I'm a television producer as well as a writer. My book News Dissector is my third book or fourth book really, recently Trying to write about my own experiences and also some of the issues of journalism that I'm involved with. Our company, Global Vision globalvision.org on the web produces lots of films. I'm working on a film right now about Florida and about the untold
story of what happened in the election there. That's going to have to wait a little while now because of this current situation.show less
[...]
...one of the problems here is that Americans have been living in a bubble you know, they're not really aware of what's going on in the rest of the world because they're not informed about it. Our newspapers said there's been a seventy percent to eighty percent cutback in the US media of coverage of the world prior to September 11th. So, it's not surprising that people are uninformed and in some ways think that “Well, none of this affects us.” Well, guess what? It does affect us. That's why it's important to read about this, to be knowledgeable, to seek out independent sources, to learn a little history. That's what I try to do with this book News Dissector from Akashic books and also, on the Media Channel. If you look at the role the media plays in all this and we're also making films to try to do that as well so, but it's an independent presence in the media system that's dominated by just five to seven big companies who control everything. So, you know, it's not surprising that people are not being given information for many different sources and that's what we need, more diversity of information.
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