This hard-hitting documentary from Emmy Award-winning producer Danny Schechter explores why so many Americans, young people in particular, are being strangled by consumer debt. Burrowing deep into the politics and economics of American debt culture, Schechter argues that the mall has replaced the factory as America's dominant economic engine, exposes a system operating on borrowed money and borrowed time, and clarifies why so many college students are being forced to pay exorbitant interest on loans while graduating, on average, tens of thousands of dollars in debt.
Sections: Introduction | The Credit Card Crusader | How the Companies Operate | The Marketing Machine | How Did We Get Into This Mess? | A Nation Transformed | The Crunch is Coming | Bankruptcy Blues | The Politics of Credit | Predators at Work | What Must Be Done?
Transcript
Filmmaker Info
A Globalvision Production
A Danny Schecter Dissection
Executive Producers: Steve Green & Rory O'Connor
Writer, Producer & Directer: Danny Schechter for Globalvision Inc.
Editorial Adviser: Robert Manning
Director of Photography: Garry Griffin
Editor: Linda Hattendorf
Executive in charge of Production: Rory O'Connor
Camera: Garry Griffin
Associate Producers: Esti Marpet and Marie Sullivan
Filmmaker's Bio
Danny Schecter | Writer, Producer, & Director
Danny Schechter (1942-2015) was a television producer and independent
filmmaker who also wrote and spoke about media issues. He is the author
of
Falun Gong's Challenge to China,
The More You Watch, The Less You Know, and
News Dissector: Passions, Pieces and Polemics.
From 1999 to 2010, Shecter was the executive editor and
"blogger-in-chief" at the now defunct MediaChannel.org, a popular online
media issues network.
Schechter was also the co-founder and executive producer of
Globalvision, a New York-based television and film production company,
where he produced 156 editions of the award-winning series
South Africa Now, and co-produced
Rights & Wrongs: Human Rights Television with Charlayne Hunter-Gault. His human rights production,
Globalization and Human Rights was co-produced with Rory O'Connor and shown nationally on PBS.
Schechter received his Master's degree from the London School of
Economics and an honorary doctorate from Fitchburg College. He was a
Nieman Fellow in Journalism at Harvard, where he also taught in 1969.
After college, he was a full time civil rights worker and then
communications director of the Northern Student Movement, worked as a
community organizer in a Saul Alinsky-style War on Poverty program, and,
moving from the streets to the suites, served as an assistant to the
Mayor of Detroit in 1966 on a Ford Foundation grant. Schechter was a
producer for CNN and a producer for ABC's 20/20, where during his eight
years he won two National News Emmys.
Schechter was an adjunct professor at the Graduate School of Journalism
at Columbia University. His writing has appeared in leading newspapers
and magazines including the
The Nation,
Newsday,
Boston Globe,
Columbia Journalism Review,
Media Studies Journal,
Detroit Free Press,
Village Voice,
Tikkun,
Z Magazine, and many others.
Awards
2008 YALSA Selected DVDs/Videos for Young Adults
