Contributor

Bill Lichtenstein

President, Lichtenstein Creative Media

Bill Lichtenstein's Peabody Award-winning work as a print and broadcast journalist and documentary producer spans 45 years. He has received more than 60 major journalism honors, including a Peabody Award; United Nations Media Award; Guggenheim Fellowship; three National News Emmy Award nominations; nine National Headliner Awards; and four Gracie Awards from American Women in Radio and Television. Since 1990, Bill has been president of Lichtenstein Creative Media, which produces high-quality documentary films; public TV and radio programs; and new media productions focusing on human rights and social justice issues. Previously, Bill worked for seven years for ABC News, where he produced investigative reports for "20/20," "World News Tonight" and "Nightline." At ABC, Bill was on the team that broke the Atlanta Child Murders story; his groundbreaking report for Nightline exposed the mishandling of E.P.A. Superfund sites; and his report on the FBI’s COINTELPRO program was the first to reveal the scope of the bureau’s efforts to target and harass political activists. Bill has also widely covered child welfare issues including a nine-month investigation of the deaths of children in state institutions in Oklahoma for 20/20; a documentary narrated by Diane Keaton on the conditions faced by juveniles incarcerated in adult jails and prisons; and an article for the New York Times that exposed the use of physical restraints and seclusion rooms with children in schools across the country. Bill's film and radio work includes the award-winning documentary film, "West 47th Street," which aired on PBS's P.O.V. and won the Atlanta Film Festival; and the national, weekly public radio series, "The Infinite Mind," which for a decade was public radio's most honored and listened to health and science program. Bill’s current project, “The American Revolution,” is a feature-length documentary film being produced for theatrical and broadcast release that tells the story of the early days of underground radio station WBCN-FM in Boston and how “a radio station, politics and rock and roll changed everything.” The film features the original sights, sounds and stories of the era, shared by members of the public in an innovative crowd-sourcing archival collection effort. Lichtenstein Creative Media is also a pioneer of the use of 3-D virtual reality in the on-line community Second Life, including producing the first live public radio broadcasts from Second Life featuring Kurt Vonnegut, Suzanne Vega, and Mia Farrow, among others. Bill has written about politics, the media, and health for the Nation, Newsday, Boston Globe, Village Voice, Entertainment Weekly, TV Guide, 7 Days, Health, and Medical Tribune. Bill's investigative report for the Village Voice, "The Secret Battle for the N.E.A.," which exposed the Bush White House’s role in defunding the artists known as the “N.E.A. 4” received a National Headliner Award, and Bill's news photography has appeared on the front page of the New York Daily News and in the Baltimore Sun. From 1990 through 2005, Bill was a Member of the Faculty of the New School for Social Research, where he taught Investigative Reporting for TV and Documentary Film. A graduate of Brown University and the Columbia Graduate School of Journalism, Bill began his work at the age of 14, on air at WBCN-FM in Boston.