Interview: Danny Schechter, Executive Editor, Media Channel.org & Globalvision: 29th July 2003

Media Man Australia hits the "jackpot".

We speak live to Danny Schechter, the world renown Media Dissector, based in New York, USA.

Danny Schechter is a media writer and analyst, television producer, independent filmmaker and celebrated media figure.

Danny's background is with the "mainstream" news outlets in the United States.

Today Danny operates MediaChannel.org, which represents true freedom of the press.

In this historic 50 minute interview we cover freedom of the press, war and politics (history and current), embedded journalism, the real reality of reality TV, how you can make a positive difference to our world, and what makes good journalism.

You will be indeed on the end of your seat, as Danny Schechter and Greg Tingle take you on the ride of your journalistic life!

PS: Listen to the interview, while it's still free folks! (we are in the process of developing paid streaming.

Listen Here

This is Greg Tingle reporting for Media Man Australia. We're speaking to Danny Schechter, "The Media Dissector", direct in New York. Welcome to the program Danny.

Pleasure to be with you, from the other side of the world.

Thank you. Pleasure to be with you. We've been looking forward to this for quite a while. So, Danny, for the uninitiated, what is in fact is your background in the media?

There is no such thing as a fact, everyone has an interpretation of facts...I've been doing media work for many, many years...first as a new reporter, then......

LISTEN TO THE INTERVIEW

I would love it if you can share......you will hear more about this, and I will communication it all over the world.

I will post the interview on MediaMan.com.au in the interviews and multimedia section...We look forward to a lot more future contact.

Great. Thank you so much.

Bye.

WOW (Greg say's, before he hits the stop button)

(50 minutes of pure gold)

...end.

Editors note: This just may have been our greatest interview to date. No stone was left unturned, and we discussed the hard and complicated media issues in a manner the general public will understand and appreciate. Media Man Australia would like to give Danny and the whole team at Media Channel.org a big public thank you, and we look forward to seeing our new friends in the United States within a year.

Links:

Media Channel

The Dissector's Web Log

Globalvision: Danny Schechter profile

Coldtype.net : Embedded: Weapons Of Mass Deception

Book Review (courtesy of Coldtype.net) for educational use, and to supplement our interview with Danny.

There were two wars going on in Iraq – one was 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 WMD’s, Weapons of Mass Deception.

The TV networks in America considered their non-stop around-the-clock coverage their finest hour, pointing to the use of embedded journalists and new technologies that permitted viewers to see a war up close for the first time.

Critics of the coverage, such as veteran journalist and media watcher Danny Schechter, a former ABC and CNN producer, consider much of the U.S. media complicit in the promoting and cheerleading for a war in which some of the reporting was sanitized, staged and suppressed. Schechter, 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 30 years in journalism with an outsiders perspective to critiquing media coverage. Throughout the war, as he describes, he was “self-embedded” at Mediachannel.org, the world’s largest on-line media issues network, writing a 3000 word daily “dissection” of the global coverage based on a wide range of source.

Now that coverage, including articles and essays published elsewhere, appears with a new introduction and hard-hitting analysis as Embedded: Weapons of Mass Deception, a book length study of the new merger between the military and the media. The book includes reports written in late May, 2003.

“It is important for readers to assess these arguments before our memories fade and the Bush Administration changes the subject,” says Schechter. “We rushed this book into print online so it can contribute to the continuing debate about the war and its impact. Until now, only the government is being scrutinized. It’s urgent that we also assess media coverage.”