Volume IV, Issue 12 | March 24 - 30, 2005
Danny Schechter, in a still from his documentary “WMD: Weapons of Mass Deception,” is concerned that the American media is abdicating its responsibility
to be an independent, critical voice in society, on issues from war to gay rights.
What Makes Danny Run?
Documentary filmmaker Danny Schechter reflects on a dangerous turn in the media.
By DEBORAH EMIN
Danny Schechter and asked him if I could interview him, I was not yet sure precisely what theme to pursue in my questions. After
seeing his documentary, “WMD: Weapons of Mass Deception,” it became clear that “What Makes Danny Run?” was the perfect
approach to our discussion.
The conference room where I waited for Schechter at Globalvision, the company that he and Rory O’Connor, his longtime business
partner, own and run, was filled with awards and plaques honoring a lifetime of work. A George Polk and a couple of Emmys captured
my notice along with a plaque from the city signed by former Mayor David Dinkins.
“WMD” played in New York earlier this year for only a week. For those of us lucky enough to have seen it, the courage and humanity that
have gone into Schechter’s work for the past 40 years was clear. He has been committed to journalism in its various media.
Danny Schechter was late, but when he sat down to talk to me, it was plain that he was in pain—because of a pinched nerve in his
shoulder—and needed to speak quickly and to get back to his desk where scripts of all kinds awaited his attention. The next day he
was off to Hawaii to show his film and had too much to do before leaving to waste any time.
Schechter is now in his 60s and looks a little worn out and yet seriousness rests in him, coupled with a genuine kindness. He is a
careful man, in that he takes pains to not misrepresent himself, the values he holds dear or how he feels about what has happened to
this country because of the loss of our most trusted vehicle for keeping democracy alive—the media. It wouldn’t be fair to put words into
his mouth or to let the idea circulate that he blames the media for everything that is wrong with our country today. But it is accurate to
say that because he has worked in every form of media, he has a perspective on how it has been degraded and debased that those
without that kind of experience cannot articulate with the same authority.
Daily and single-handedly, Schechter puts out a blog, one of the best, at NewsDissector.org. It is like reading an entire newspaper that
arrives in your mailbox every morning from wherever his travels have taken him. The blog is not a top- down kind of paper; Schechter
calls his work citizen journalism. He encourages his readers to respond to the topics he has chosen for the day culled from
publications all over the world.
Schechter and I began our discussion by my asking why his documentary wasn’t igniting the airwaves. Why hadn’t it sparked a debate
on how our media sold us the war on Iraq? In a low voice that held back some of his laughter at the obvious bind the media finds itself
in, he explained that having been willing conspirators in getting us into this mess, media leaders of course are not going to applaud or
participate in a critique of their handiwork.
Listening to Schechter talk was like walking into a room where a seminar has been going on for several years. It didn’t matter that I
wasn’t there when the course began. No matter when I might have entered the room, there was always going to be something
fascinating to learn. The man bleeds the news; he is able to articulate the issues in their fullest context and while he is talking, you can
hear how respectful of people he is as well. He won’t bash anybody, no matter what his private thoughts are; critical comments about
people are not part of his discourse.
When I asked him what made him make the documentary, he clearly listed his reasons. He began by saying that the reasons he had
gone into journalism in the first place, as a high school student in the Bronx working on the school paper, are no longer valid. He uses
the following description over and over to explain what has happened with the media: “What we have today is an incredible
manipulation of peoples’ ideas, a master narrative that is meant to shape how we should think, what we should even think about
which causes a debasing of information.”
In the days when Schechter (and I) came of age, men like Izzy Stone, the iconoclastic investigative journalist, could read The New York
Times from cover to cover and find most of what needed to be looked at of the world’s news. Stone often talked about how easy it was
to access, just from The Times, what was really going on, even if you had to go to the back of sections to see it all.
Schechter’s intention in his documentary was to get the people involved in reporting the war and those involved in selling it to us to
speak their minds. He let them speak without much commentary by him at all. I don’t mean to suggest that his film is like the great
documentaries of Frederick Wiseman. Schechter most definitely participates in the storytelling, but almost as the Everyman who
wakes up to find the world at war and needs to investigate what happened and why. As the story of the war unfolded, it became quite
clear how the “news” wasn’t news any longer but had become this new word—“militainment.”
Schechter laughed about how in the past Americans used to say with great hubris that we weren’t like those other guys, meaning the
Soviets, because of course we had a free press, while they were shackled with a state-run media. We lived in a democracy after all
where freedom of the press was not just valued but protected. Now, he points out, we may not have a state-run media but we certainly
have a state-influenced media.
The media coverage of the war in Iraq “is despicable if not criminal because they are purposely misleading the country,” he argued, but
it marks not only the death of journalism, but is also telling about the state of our democracy, and our efforts to bring democracy
elsewhere.
“How,” he asked, “can we say that the elections in Iraq were a win for democracy when a true democracy is more than just voting but
having a civic life where issues can be discussed and debated? The candidates in those elections were unknown and unable to
discuss their platforms.”
Schechter showed a bit more of the fire in him when he turned to discussing how the American media betrays a portion of taxpayers
and voters in our civic society—the gay community—and allows the discourse to become slanted and distorted in order to pander to a
small, select faction. He made clear that his views on the media “selling of the war” provides a metaphor for understanding how the
country is organized and run today.
He focused for a moment on how the media played along on the issue of gay marriage during the last election, losing its moral
compass in the bargain. He became very passionate, his voice taking on even deeper resonance. He expressed disappointment that
the press allowed gay and lesbian couples seeking marriage rights to be distorted into cartoons—buffoons or creeps expendable in
order to sell a presidency to the electorate.
Schechter is concerned that the gay community is content with identity politics, which he likens to trade workers just asking for more,
rather than detailing an agenda supportive of the vast complexity of our world. He talked about the real environmental crisis being the
cultural environment in which we live and how that is at risk now and he questioned whether debates among gays are leading to
solidarity and community or to further splintering and isolation. Schechter urged the gay community to consider whether its common
interests can form the basis of an opposition party that refuses to let the powers that be, whether Republican or Democrat, continue
robbing us of our intrinsic worth and our rights because of media misrepresentation and the current administration’s agenda.
Danny Schechter offers a compelling perspective on today’s world that comes through clearly in his recent documentary and his daily
blog. Listening to him, it became clear that in his dissent he is not running away from anything but toward the American people, to
bring us the news. He is an authentic messenger and the nation ignores his warnings at its peril.
