Bill Lichtenstein
Encyclopedia
Bill Lichtenstein is a print and broadcast journalist and documentary producer. Lichtenstein is president of the independent media production company, Lichtenstein Creative Media.
Lichtenstein's work has involved both the use, and the examination of the use, or media to help reflect and create social, cultural and political change. This includes working on-air at underground Boston radio station WBCN-FM in the early 1970s; to producing investigative reports for ABC News in the 1980s; to later revolutionizing the way the American public understood and viewed mental health through public media and documentary films; to uses of emerging media such as 3-D virtual reality and the on-line community Second Life. Lichtenstein has also written widely for The Nation, Village Voice, New York Daily News, Boston Globe and Huffington Post and from 1980 until 2005 was on the faculty of the New School University. His work has been honored with more than 60 major journalism awards , including a Peabody Award
; a Guggenheim Fellowship
; eight National Headliner Awards
; Cine Golden Eagle; a United Nations Media Award; and three National News Emmy Award nominations.
Lichtenstein graduated from Brown University
in 1978 with degrees in Political Science and English (double major). While at Brown, Lichtenstein worked at WBRU-FM, the 20,000-watt commercial radio station operated by Brown students, and he served as the station's program director in 1975. Lichtenstein received a M.S. degree from the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism
in 1979. While at Columbia Journalism, Lichtenstein co-authored with David Wimhurst an investigative report on the FBI's infiltration of the Puerto Rican independence movement, published in the Nation.
In 1980, Lichtenstein worked with 20/20 producer Jeff Diamond and correspondent Sylvia Chase on two groundbreaking investigative reports on deadly automobile design flaws, which were awarded an Emmy Award for investigative reporting. Lichtenstein also collaborated with producers Lowell Bergman and Andrew Cockburn on "COINTELPRO
: The Secret War," the first network news report on FBI's covert program to use dirty tricks to disrupt and neutralize political activists, including actress Jean Seberg
, and Black Panther Geronimo Pratt
. He also worked on "American Held Hostage: The Secret Negotiations," a three-hour prime time ABC News special hosted by Pierre Salinger that chronicled the previously unreported efforts by President Jimmy Carter to gain the release of the American hostages in Iran.
In 1983, Lichtenstein was nominated for three national news Emmy Awards, including for a 20/20 segment he co-produced, Throwaway Kids
, the result of a nine-month investigation into abused and dying children in Oklahoma state juvenile institutions, "The Danger Within," a report on the dangers of Urea-Formaldehyde home insulation that resulted in a Congressional ban of the product, and "Nuclear Preparation: Can We Survive?" an investigation into President Reagan's largely confidential plans for the United States to be able to fight and survive an all-out nuclear war.
In 1984, during the presidential election campaign, Lichtenstein was the producer of three separate investigative reports on key members of President Ronald Reagan's administration, which were set to air on ABC's evening newscast, World News Tonight, but were killed by ABC prior to air. The first examined longtime Reagan friend and Director of the U.S. Information Agency, Charles Wick, and Wick's previously unknown ownership of a chain of nursing homes in California, which state investigators called the worst in California; the second story involved Reagan friend and campaign manager Senator Paul Laxalt (R-Nevada), and connections between then-Senator Laxalt's acceptance of campaign contributions from casino executives who were known organized crime figures, and Laxalt's efforts to pressure the Justice Department to curtail FBI investigations of the mob figures; and the third story involved previously undisclosed connections between Reagan's Secretary of Labor Raymond Donovan and organized crime. In a 1985 cover story in Mother Jones magazine, entitled "How ABC Spikes the News: Three Reagan Administration Scandals that Never Appeared on World News Tonight," reporter Mark Dowie first made public the three reports that never aired, and framed ABC's spiking of the stories as part of the network's efforts to gain favor with the Reagan administration in order to increase the number of local television stations that could be owned by any one entity. The events surrounding the three stories were later detailed in Mark Hertsgaard's "On Bended Knee," and "Project Censored" cited the reports as "Three Stories that Might Have Changed the Course of the 1984 Election" in their annual top ten censored stories list in 1984.
Lichtenstein also worked briefly in 1986 for The Investigative Group, part of the law firm of Rogovin, Huge and Lenzner, then out of house council for the CIA. Headed by former Watergate counsel Terry Lenzner, Lichtenstein worked with IGI on several projects including the tracking of missing royalties for the Beatles' Apple Records
, and working undercover in Perth, Australia to assist Australian mining and steel making company Broken Hills Proprietary (BHP), the country's largest corporation, in successfully defending itself against a hostile takeover by conservative industrialist Robert Holmes à Court
and a then group of pro-Apartheid South Africans who were seeking control of BHP in order to shift their operations to Australia in the wake of anti-Apartheid changes in South Africa
Lichtenstein uncovered and reported on the previously untold efforts by top White House officials in the George H.W. Bush administration, including Bill Kristol and John Sununu, to pressure the Chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts, John Frohmayer, to cancel grants that had been awarded to four performance artists, Karen Finley
, Holly Hughes
, John Fleck
and Tim Miller
, due to the controversial nature of their work. The artists, who became known as the NEA Four
later sued the NEA, resulting in the Supreme Court case of the National Endowment for the Arts v. Finley
. Lichtenstein's reporting on direct White House pressure on the NEA to cancel the grants, and Bush Administration efforts to use the NEA to advance the administration's political agenda, was published in the Village Voice investigative report "The Secret Battle for the NEA," for which Bill was awarded a National Headliner Award for Best Investigative Reporting.
Lichtenstein Creative Media produced "If I Get Out Alive," narrated by Academy Award-winning actress and youth advocate Diane Keaton
. The documentary was the first to focus on the conditions and brutality faced by young people in the adult correctional system including those in the absence of proper mental health care who died by suicide. The program was honored with a National Headliner Award and a Casey Medal for Meritorious Journalism.
Bill Lichtenstein produced and was director of photography of the award-winning documentary film, "West 47th Street.", which aired on PBS' P.O.V., and won the Atlanta and DC Independent Film Festivals., and an Honorable Mention at the Woodstock Film Festival.
Lichtenstein created and was senior executive producer of the national, one-hour weekly public radio series, The Infinite Mind
, which premiered in 1998 and examined all aspects of neuroscience, mental health, and the mind. The series, which was independently produed by Lichtenstein Creative Media, was hosted by two of the nation's most prominent psychiatrists, Dr. Fred Goodwin, the former director of the National Institute of Mental Health, and best-selling author Dr. Peter Kramer, with public radio's John Hockenberry as commentator. With 30 major journalism awards and nearly one million listeners weekly, "The Infinite Mind" was public radio's most honored and listened to health and science program. According to the show's producers, "The Infinite Mind" looked at "how the brain works, and why it sometimes does not, covering mental health, neuroscience and the mind/body connection from scientific, cultural and policy perspectives."
Beginning in the late 1990s, the program broke ground and news on such topics as: Addiction; Aspergers Syndrome; Alzheimer's; Bullying; Chronic Fatigue Syndrome; Depression in the Brain; Gambling; Mental Health and Immigrants; Post Traumatic Stress Disorder; Postpartum Depression; Post-Polio Syndrome; Pregnancy And The Mind; Schizoaffective Disorder; Sports Psychology; and Teen Suicide. The national broadcast was the first and only national news organization after the September 11th attacks to identify trauma and Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder as an issue, and was widely hailed for its coverage of the mental health impact of the terrorism, as well as providing needed resources to public radio listeners.
In addition to world-leading scientific researchers and medical professionals, The Infinite Mind featured subjects of interest to a broad listening audience with celebrity guests including author John Updike; actors including Carey Fisher; Stanley Tucci; Anthony Edwards; Mercedes Ruehl; Margot Kidder and David Straithairn; comedians Richard Lewis and Lewis Black; the Firesign Theater; author William Styron and his wife Rose Styron; baseball batting champ Wade Boggs; former First Lady Rosalynn Carter; documentary filmmaker Ric Burns; television pioneer Norman Lear; business journalist James Cramer; Tipper Gore; Children’s Defense Fund founder Marian Wright Edelman; and live performances and discussions with musicians including Aimee Mann, Jessye Norman, Judy Collins, Suzanne Vega, Janis Ian, Laurie Anderson, Cowboy Junkies, Loudon Wainwright III, Philip Glass, and Emanuel Ax, and the casts of the Broadway hits “Avenue Q” and “Wicked.” The decade-long series received major funding from the MacArthur Foundation, the National Science Foundation, the National Institutes of Health.
Bill's work in the area of strategic communications and educational outreach, particularly in the area of mental health, includes serving on the Advisory Board of the Rosalynn Carter Fellowships for Mental Health Journalism; the National Leadership Council of the National Alliance for Research on Schizophrenia and Depression; the advisory council of the Center for the Advancement of Children's Mental Health at Columbia University; review committees at the National Institutes of Health and the National Science Foundation; and advisory boards of Families for Depression Awareness and the Parents/Professionals Advocacy League. Bill's work, and that of Lichtenstein Creative Media, has been honored with the top media awards from the major national mental health organizations, including the National Institute of Mental Health; American Psychiatric Association; National Mental Health Association; National Alliance on Mental Illness; American College of Neuropsychopharmacology; and the National Alliance for Research on Schizophrenia and Depression.
Lichtenstein's company was a pioneer of the social uses of the on-line 3-D virtual world, Second Life. Lichtenstein Creative Media produced the first ever concert and live radio broadcast from Second Life in August 2006, with singer Suzanne Vega and author Kurt Vonnegut who appeared in avatar form. Subsequent events in Second Life include a live press conference with Italian Minister of Infrastructure Antonio Di Pietra, and a live town meeting on Darfur with Mia Farrow, produced in partnership with the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum. BusinessWeek magazine cited Lichtenstein as one of eight "Savvy CEO's Who Hang Out in Second Life", along with IBM's CEO Sam Palmisano and former Virginia Governor Mark Warner. Lichtenstein wrote the seminal essay "The Transmission of Experience," identifying interactive 3-D virtual reality experiences such as Second Life as being the first to "transmit experience" over distances. Lichtenstein Creative Media maintains a 16-acre virtual broadcast center in Second Life.
From 1980 to 2006, Lichtenstein taught investigative reporting for TV and documentary film production at The New School
in New York City. Lichtenstein specializes in politics, particularly the politics of health issues, and the media for such publications as The Huffington Post
, The Nation
, Newsday
, Village Voice, Entertainment Weekly
, TV Guide
, 7 Days, Health, Medical Tribune, Channels and the New York Daily News
. "The Secret Battle for the NEA," published in the Village Voice in 1992, received a National Headliner Award. His news photography has appeared in the Baltimore Sun and the front page of the New York Daily News.
Lichtenstein Creative Media is currently working on a four-part series for PBS focusing on the intersection of foster care, education, juvenile justice and mental health funded by the MacArthur Foundation and a Guggenheim Fellowship and "The American Revolution," a documentary film examining the cultural, social and political changes in the late 1960s.
However, a week after the New York Times article, the National Public Radio series, "On the Media," ran a story that an anonymous source confirmed that Goodwin had informed the show's producers. However, three months later, on March 12, 2008, "On the Media" admitted they had no evidence Lichtenstein or the show's producers knew about Goodwin's speaking fees, and "On the Media" broadcast a full on-air retraction and apology.
In the on-air retraction, "On The Media's" host, Brooke Gladstone, apologized for what she called the "lapse of journalistic judgment" in the report, which had relied solely on an unnamed source to corroborate Goodwin's claim that Lichtenstein Creative Media was aware of these speaking fees. In its retraction and apology, "On The Media" acknowledged that, contrary to what they originally reported, the anonymous source said she has "no first-hand evidence that [Lichtenstein] knew of any fees." Gladstone added that "The Infinite Mind" "had always adhered to standard journalism practice in vetting guests and disclosing conflicts of interest."
Lichtenstein's work has involved both the use, and the examination of the use, or media to help reflect and create social, cultural and political change. This includes working on-air at underground Boston radio station WBCN-FM in the early 1970s; to producing investigative reports for ABC News in the 1980s; to later revolutionizing the way the American public understood and viewed mental health through public media and documentary films; to uses of emerging media such as 3-D virtual reality and the on-line community Second Life. Lichtenstein has also written widely for The Nation, Village Voice, New York Daily News, Boston Globe and Huffington Post and from 1980 until 2005 was on the faculty of the New School University. His work has been honored with more than 60 major journalism awards , including a Peabody Award
Peabody Award
The George Foster Peabody Awards recognize distinguished and meritorious public service by radio and television stations, networks, producing organizations and individuals. In 1939, the National Association of Broadcasters formed a committee to recognize outstanding achievement in radio broadcasting...
; a Guggenheim Fellowship
Guggenheim Fellowship
Guggenheim Fellowships are American grants that have been awarded annually since 1925 by the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation to those "who have demonstrated exceptional capacity for productive scholarship or exceptional creative ability in the arts." Each year, the foundation makes...
; eight National Headliner Awards
National Headliner Awards
The National Headliner Awards are a prize given out by Press Club of Atlantic City since 1935. Both broadcast journalism and print journalism are recognized, in separate categories.-External links:*...
; Cine Golden Eagle; a United Nations Media Award; and three National News Emmy Award nominations.
Early life
Lichtenstein began his career in broadcasting in 1970, at the age of 14, working at WBCN-FM, one of the country's original progressive rock radio stations. Lichtenstein worked at WBCN, while in high school, as newscaster and on-air announcer. His 1973 radio documentary, "What is News?", which examined the impact of corporate ownership and control of the news industry, was awarded a NPR "Youth Radio Award."Lichtenstein graduated from Brown University
Brown University
Brown University is a private, Ivy League university located in Providence, Rhode Island, United States. Founded in 1764 prior to American independence from the British Empire as the College in the English Colony of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations early in the reign of King George III ,...
in 1978 with degrees in Political Science and English (double major). While at Brown, Lichtenstein worked at WBRU-FM, the 20,000-watt commercial radio station operated by Brown students, and he served as the station's program director in 1975. Lichtenstein received a M.S. degree from the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism
Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism
The Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism is one of Columbia's graduate and professional schools. It offers three degree programs: Master of Science in journalism , Master of Arts in journalism and a Ph.D. in communications...
in 1979. While at Columbia Journalism, Lichtenstein co-authored with David Wimhurst an investigative report on the FBI's infiltration of the Puerto Rican independence movement, published in the Nation.
ABC News
Lichtenstein began his work in television as a writer for ABC and CBS Sports, including as Chief Writer for CBS's coverage of the 1979 Pan American games. Lichtenstein worked for ABC News from 1979 through 1986, where he produced investigative reports for the ABC News magazine 20/20, Nightline, World News Tonight, and Morning News.In 1980, Lichtenstein worked with 20/20 producer Jeff Diamond and correspondent Sylvia Chase on two groundbreaking investigative reports on deadly automobile design flaws, which were awarded an Emmy Award for investigative reporting. Lichtenstein also collaborated with producers Lowell Bergman and Andrew Cockburn on "COINTELPRO
COINTELPRO
COINTELPRO was a series of covert, and often illegal, projects conducted by the United States Federal Bureau of Investigation aimed at surveilling, infiltrating, discrediting, and disrupting domestic political organizations.COINTELPRO tactics included discrediting targets through psychological...
: The Secret War," the first network news report on FBI's covert program to use dirty tricks to disrupt and neutralize political activists, including actress Jean Seberg
Jean Seberg
Jean Dorothy Seberg was an American actress. She starred in 37 films in Hollywood and in France, including Breathless , the musical Paint Your Wagon and the disaster film Airport ....
, and Black Panther Geronimo Pratt
Geronimo Pratt
Geronimo Ji Jaga , also known as Geronimo ji-Jaga Pratt born: Elmer Pratt, was a high ranking member of the Black Panther Party...
. He also worked on "American Held Hostage: The Secret Negotiations," a three-hour prime time ABC News special hosted by Pierre Salinger that chronicled the previously unreported efforts by President Jimmy Carter to gain the release of the American hostages in Iran.
In 1983, Lichtenstein was nominated for three national news Emmy Awards, including for a 20/20 segment he co-produced, Throwaway Kids
Throwaway Kids
Throwaway Kids was a two-part investigative report airing on the ABC News magazine 20/20 in 1981.The report followed a nine-month undercover investigation by producers Karen Burnes and Bill Lichtenstein...
, the result of a nine-month investigation into abused and dying children in Oklahoma state juvenile institutions, "The Danger Within," a report on the dangers of Urea-Formaldehyde home insulation that resulted in a Congressional ban of the product, and "Nuclear Preparation: Can We Survive?" an investigation into President Reagan's largely confidential plans for the United States to be able to fight and survive an all-out nuclear war.
In 1984, during the presidential election campaign, Lichtenstein was the producer of three separate investigative reports on key members of President Ronald Reagan's administration, which were set to air on ABC's evening newscast, World News Tonight, but were killed by ABC prior to air. The first examined longtime Reagan friend and Director of the U.S. Information Agency, Charles Wick, and Wick's previously unknown ownership of a chain of nursing homes in California, which state investigators called the worst in California; the second story involved Reagan friend and campaign manager Senator Paul Laxalt (R-Nevada), and connections between then-Senator Laxalt's acceptance of campaign contributions from casino executives who were known organized crime figures, and Laxalt's efforts to pressure the Justice Department to curtail FBI investigations of the mob figures; and the third story involved previously undisclosed connections between Reagan's Secretary of Labor Raymond Donovan and organized crime. In a 1985 cover story in Mother Jones magazine, entitled "How ABC Spikes the News: Three Reagan Administration Scandals that Never Appeared on World News Tonight," reporter Mark Dowie first made public the three reports that never aired, and framed ABC's spiking of the stories as part of the network's efforts to gain favor with the Reagan administration in order to increase the number of local television stations that could be owned by any one entity. The events surrounding the three stories were later detailed in Mark Hertsgaard's "On Bended Knee," and "Project Censored" cited the reports as "Three Stories that Might Have Changed the Course of the 1984 Election" in their annual top ten censored stories list in 1984.
Investigative Reporter
In 1986, Lichtenstein was one of the two show producers of the ABC late-night program "Jimmy Breslin's People," featuring Breslin, the Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist.Lichtenstein also worked briefly in 1986 for The Investigative Group, part of the law firm of Rogovin, Huge and Lenzner, then out of house council for the CIA. Headed by former Watergate counsel Terry Lenzner, Lichtenstein worked with IGI on several projects including the tracking of missing royalties for the Beatles' Apple Records
Apple Records
Apple Records is a record label founded by The Beatles in 1968, as a division of Apple Corps Ltd. It was initially intended as a creative outlet for the Beatles, both as a group and individually, plus a selection of other artists including Mary Hopkin, James Taylor, Badfinger, and Billy Preston...
, and working undercover in Perth, Australia to assist Australian mining and steel making company Broken Hills Proprietary (BHP), the country's largest corporation, in successfully defending itself against a hostile takeover by conservative industrialist Robert Holmes à Court
Robert Holmes à Court
Michael Robert Hamilton Holmes à Court was an entrepreneur who became Australia's first businessman worth over a billion dollars before dying suddenly of a heart attack in 1990.Holmes à Court was one of the world's most feared corporate raiders through the 1980s, having built his empire...
and a then group of pro-Apartheid South Africans who were seeking control of BHP in order to shift their operations to Australia in the wake of anti-Apartheid changes in South Africa
Lichtenstein uncovered and reported on the previously untold efforts by top White House officials in the George H.W. Bush administration, including Bill Kristol and John Sununu, to pressure the Chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts, John Frohmayer, to cancel grants that had been awarded to four performance artists, Karen Finley
Karen Finley
Karen Finley is an American performance artist, whose theatrical pieces and recordings have often been labelled "obscene" due to their graphic depictions of sexuality, abuse, and disenfranchisement...
, Holly Hughes
Holly Hughes
Holly Hughes is a Republican National Committee member from the State of Michigan, in the United States. She is also a Member of the Michigan House of Representatives for District 91.- Political career :...
, John Fleck
John Fleck
John Fleck is an American actor and performance artist. His guest roles include Silik on the television series Star Trek: Enterprise, several characters on Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, and the pilot to Babylon 5, The Gathering . He starred as Gecko on the television show Carnivàle, and as Louis on...
and Tim Miller
Tim Miller
Timothy or Tim Miller may refer to:* Tim Miller , American ice hockey player* Tim Miller , American performance artist and writer* Timothy Miller, historian of religion...
, due to the controversial nature of their work. The artists, who became known as the NEA Four
NEA Four
The "NEA Four", Karen Finley, Tim Miller, John Fleck, and Holly Hughes, were performance artists whose proposed grants from the United States government's National Endowment for the Arts were vetoed by John Frohnmayer in June 1990. Grants were overtly vetoed on the basis of subject matter after...
later sued the NEA, resulting in the Supreme Court case of the National Endowment for the Arts v. Finley
National Endowment for the Arts v. Finley
In National Endowment for the Arts v. Finley, 524 U.S. 569 , the Supreme Court of the United States ruled that the National Foundation on the Arts and Humanities Act, as amended in 1990), which required the Chairperson of the National Endowment for the Arts to ensure that "artistic excellence...
. Lichtenstein's reporting on direct White House pressure on the NEA to cancel the grants, and Bush Administration efforts to use the NEA to advance the administration's political agenda, was published in the Village Voice investigative report "The Secret Battle for the NEA," for which Bill was awarded a National Headliner Award for Best Investigative Reporting.
Lichtenstein Creative Media
Lichtenstein founded the Peabody Award-winning independent media production company Lichtenstein Creative Media in 1990. The company produced the "Voices of an Illness" documentary series, the first programs to feature people living with, and recovered from, serious mental illness. The series "set new standards of scientific accuracy in media coverage of mental health," according to the National Institute of Mental Health, and was called "remarkable" in a feature article in Time magazine.Lichtenstein Creative Media produced "If I Get Out Alive," narrated by Academy Award-winning actress and youth advocate Diane Keaton
Diane Keaton
Diane Keaton is an American film actress, director, producer, and screenwriter. Keaton began her career on stage, and made her screen debut in 1970...
. The documentary was the first to focus on the conditions and brutality faced by young people in the adult correctional system including those in the absence of proper mental health care who died by suicide. The program was honored with a National Headliner Award and a Casey Medal for Meritorious Journalism.
Bill Lichtenstein produced and was director of photography of the award-winning documentary film, "West 47th Street.", which aired on PBS' P.O.V., and won the Atlanta and DC Independent Film Festivals., and an Honorable Mention at the Woodstock Film Festival.
Lichtenstein created and was senior executive producer of the national, one-hour weekly public radio series, The Infinite Mind
The Infinite Mind
-The Infinite Mind public radio series:The Infinite Mind was a one-hour, national, weekly public radio series that aired from 1998 to 2008. It was independently produced and distributed by the Peabody Award-winning Lichtenstein Creative Media. The program was hosted by Dr...
, which premiered in 1998 and examined all aspects of neuroscience, mental health, and the mind. The series, which was independently produed by Lichtenstein Creative Media, was hosted by two of the nation's most prominent psychiatrists, Dr. Fred Goodwin, the former director of the National Institute of Mental Health, and best-selling author Dr. Peter Kramer, with public radio's John Hockenberry as commentator. With 30 major journalism awards and nearly one million listeners weekly, "The Infinite Mind" was public radio's most honored and listened to health and science program. According to the show's producers, "The Infinite Mind" looked at "how the brain works, and why it sometimes does not, covering mental health, neuroscience and the mind/body connection from scientific, cultural and policy perspectives."
Beginning in the late 1990s, the program broke ground and news on such topics as: Addiction; Aspergers Syndrome; Alzheimer's; Bullying; Chronic Fatigue Syndrome; Depression in the Brain; Gambling; Mental Health and Immigrants; Post Traumatic Stress Disorder; Postpartum Depression; Post-Polio Syndrome; Pregnancy And The Mind; Schizoaffective Disorder; Sports Psychology; and Teen Suicide. The national broadcast was the first and only national news organization after the September 11th attacks to identify trauma and Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder as an issue, and was widely hailed for its coverage of the mental health impact of the terrorism, as well as providing needed resources to public radio listeners.
In addition to world-leading scientific researchers and medical professionals, The Infinite Mind featured subjects of interest to a broad listening audience with celebrity guests including author John Updike; actors including Carey Fisher; Stanley Tucci; Anthony Edwards; Mercedes Ruehl; Margot Kidder and David Straithairn; comedians Richard Lewis and Lewis Black; the Firesign Theater; author William Styron and his wife Rose Styron; baseball batting champ Wade Boggs; former First Lady Rosalynn Carter; documentary filmmaker Ric Burns; television pioneer Norman Lear; business journalist James Cramer; Tipper Gore; Children’s Defense Fund founder Marian Wright Edelman; and live performances and discussions with musicians including Aimee Mann, Jessye Norman, Judy Collins, Suzanne Vega, Janis Ian, Laurie Anderson, Cowboy Junkies, Loudon Wainwright III, Philip Glass, and Emanuel Ax, and the casts of the Broadway hits “Avenue Q” and “Wicked.” The decade-long series received major funding from the MacArthur Foundation, the National Science Foundation, the National Institutes of Health.
Bill's work in the area of strategic communications and educational outreach, particularly in the area of mental health, includes serving on the Advisory Board of the Rosalynn Carter Fellowships for Mental Health Journalism; the National Leadership Council of the National Alliance for Research on Schizophrenia and Depression; the advisory council of the Center for the Advancement of Children's Mental Health at Columbia University; review committees at the National Institutes of Health and the National Science Foundation; and advisory boards of Families for Depression Awareness and the Parents/Professionals Advocacy League. Bill's work, and that of Lichtenstein Creative Media, has been honored with the top media awards from the major national mental health organizations, including the National Institute of Mental Health; American Psychiatric Association; National Mental Health Association; National Alliance on Mental Illness; American College of Neuropsychopharmacology; and the National Alliance for Research on Schizophrenia and Depression.
Lichtenstein's company was a pioneer of the social uses of the on-line 3-D virtual world, Second Life. Lichtenstein Creative Media produced the first ever concert and live radio broadcast from Second Life in August 2006, with singer Suzanne Vega and author Kurt Vonnegut who appeared in avatar form. Subsequent events in Second Life include a live press conference with Italian Minister of Infrastructure Antonio Di Pietra, and a live town meeting on Darfur with Mia Farrow, produced in partnership with the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum. BusinessWeek magazine cited Lichtenstein as one of eight "Savvy CEO's Who Hang Out in Second Life", along with IBM's CEO Sam Palmisano and former Virginia Governor Mark Warner. Lichtenstein wrote the seminal essay "The Transmission of Experience," identifying interactive 3-D virtual reality experiences such as Second Life as being the first to "transmit experience" over distances. Lichtenstein Creative Media maintains a 16-acre virtual broadcast center in Second Life.
From 1980 to 2006, Lichtenstein taught investigative reporting for TV and documentary film production at The New School
The New School
The New School is a university in New York City, located mostly in Greenwich Village. From its founding in 1919 by progressive New York academics, and for most of its history, the university was known as the New School for Social Research. Between 1997 and 2005 it was known as New School University...
in New York City. Lichtenstein specializes in politics, particularly the politics of health issues, and the media for such publications as The Huffington Post
The Huffington Post
The Huffington Post is an American news website and content-aggregating blog founded by Arianna Huffington, Kenneth Lerer, and Jonah Peretti, featuring liberal minded columnists and various news sources. The site offers coverage of politics, theology, media, business, entertainment, living, style,...
, The Nation
The Nation
The Nation is the oldest continuously published weekly magazine in the United States. The periodical, devoted to politics and culture, is self-described as "the flagship of the left." Founded on July 6, 1865, It is published by The Nation Company, L.P., at 33 Irving Place, New York City.The Nation...
, Newsday
Newsday
Newsday is a daily American newspaper that primarily serves Nassau and Suffolk counties and the New York City borough of Queens on Long Island, although it is sold throughout the New York metropolitan area...
, Village Voice, Entertainment Weekly
Entertainment Weekly
Entertainment Weekly is an American magazine, published by the Time division of Time Warner, that covers film, television, music, broadway theatre, books and popular culture...
, TV Guide
TV Guide
TV Guide is a weekly American magazine with listings of TV shows.In addition to TV listings, the publication features television-related news, celebrity interviews, gossip and film reviews and crossword puzzles...
, 7 Days, Health, Medical Tribune, Channels and the New York Daily News
New York Daily News
The Daily News of New York City is the fourth most widely circulated daily newspaper in the United States with a daily circulation of 605,677, as of November 1, 2011....
. "The Secret Battle for the NEA," published in the Village Voice in 1992, received a National Headliner Award. His news photography has appeared in the Baltimore Sun and the front page of the New York Daily News.
Lichtenstein Creative Media is currently working on a four-part series for PBS focusing on the intersection of foster care, education, juvenile justice and mental health funded by the MacArthur Foundation and a Guggenheim Fellowship and "The American Revolution," a documentary film examining the cultural, social and political changes in the late 1960s.
Fred Goodwin and The Infinite Mind
On November 21, 2008, the New York Times reported that host of "The Infinite Mind," Dr. Fred Goodwin, had received "at least $1.3 million from 2000 to 2007 giving marketing lectures for drugmakers, income not mentioned on the program." Lichtenstein Creative Media said that the show's producers had not been informed and were not aware of these marketing talks to clinicians at steak houses and country clubs, nor the fees received by Goodwin, and that Goodwin's actions directly violated the conflict of interest prohibitions in his contract. No evidence was ever produced that producers had been informed.However, a week after the New York Times article, the National Public Radio series, "On the Media," ran a story that an anonymous source confirmed that Goodwin had informed the show's producers. However, three months later, on March 12, 2008, "On the Media" admitted they had no evidence Lichtenstein or the show's producers knew about Goodwin's speaking fees, and "On the Media" broadcast a full on-air retraction and apology.
In the on-air retraction, "On The Media's" host, Brooke Gladstone, apologized for what she called the "lapse of journalistic judgment" in the report, which had relied solely on an unnamed source to corroborate Goodwin's claim that Lichtenstein Creative Media was aware of these speaking fees. In its retraction and apology, "On The Media" acknowledged that, contrary to what they originally reported, the anonymous source said she has "no first-hand evidence that [Lichtenstein] knew of any fees." Gladstone added that "The Infinite Mind" "had always adhered to standard journalism practice in vetting guests and disclosing conflicts of interest."