We've gotten to know Danny "the Media Dissector" Schechter since we started BuzzFlash and gotten to respect his passion and his work. Danny is a bit of a gadfly, a graduate of the civil rights movement -- and long-time media critic -- who definitely has an impassioned point of view.
Danny has put together a fascinating and absorbing documentary on the most seemingly boring of all subjects: debt.
It's not a high-budget film, but it is more powerful than many documentaries with 50 times the budget that we suspect Schechter had.
Schechter is the on-camera narrator of this accessible and insightful walk through the valley of American debt. By the end, you'll be mad as Hell and won't be able to take it anymore. But, you'll probably blow off steam by going out and having a good dinner, which you will charge with a credit card.
And that's the irony of "In Debt We Trust," because the engine of debt in American society for many Americans is the ravenous and rapacious credit card industry, which has enjoyed unbridled support from both sides of the political aisle.
Credit cards go hand and hand with pumping a consumer society gone out of control. We are encouraged to buy our fantasies and pay on credit, even if we cannot afford the consumer product of the moment that we don't really need, but that advertising convinces us that we can't live without.
Credit card companies can only make their billions in profit if we go into debt. It's a very simple concept, but they, as Schechter shows us, are masters at getting us to spend, spend, spend!
As a result, we are a nation in hock, literally. Not only are most of us personally deep in the red, but America is kept afloat by loans from overseas, including China and the oil-rich nations in the Middle East.
Somehow, Schechter makes all of this a gripping story that outrages as much as it makes us realize how much we have all fallen prey to the lure of the credit card driven debtors society.
"In Debt We Trust": America Before the Bubble Bursts (DVD)
Danny Schechter

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Description | back to top
"IN DEBT WE TRUST shows how the mall replaced the factory as America's dominant economic engine and how big banks and credit card companies buy our Congress and drive us into what a former major bank economist calls modern serfdom. Americans and our government owe trillions in consumer debt and the national debt, a large amount of it to big banks and billions to Communist China."
Other Reviews | back to top
"Have we got the movie for you. "IN DEBT WE TRUST" is a sort of economics lesson meets Supersize Me.... ...the facts Schechter spinkles throughout are mind-boggling...Come to think of it, Schechter has created about as sexy a film as possible on the topic of consumer debt."
--Orlando Weekly
Details | back to top
90 Minutes
Danny Schechter is a television producer and independent filmmaker who also writes and speaks about media issues. He is the author of "Embedded: Weapons of Mass Deception: How the Media Failed to Cover the Iraq War" (Prometheus Books, October 2003); "Media Wars: News At A Time of Terror (Rowman & Littlefield, 2003); "The More You Watch, The Less You Know" (Seven Stories Press) and "News Dissector: Passions, Pieces and Polemics" (Akashic) Books and Electron Press). He is the executive editor of MediaChannel.org, the world's largest online media issues network, and recipient of the Society of Professional Journalists' 2001 Award for Excellence in Documentary Journalism.
He has produced and directed many TV specials and documentary films, including "WMD: Weapons of Mass Deception" (2004), "Counting on Democracy" about the electoral fiasco in Florida narrated by Ossie Davis and Ruby Dee; the post 9-11 film We Are Family" (2002) shown at the Sundance Film Festival; "Nkosi: A Voice of Africa's AIDS Orphans" (2001) narrated by Danny Glover; "A Hero for All: Nelson Mandela's Farewell" (l999); "Beyond Life: Timothy Leary Lives" (1997); "Sowing Seeds/Reaping Peace: The World of Seeds of Peace" (1996); "Prisoners of Hope: Reunion on Robben Island" (1995, co-directed by Barbara Kopple); "Countdown to Freedom: Ten Days that Changed South Africa" (1994), narrated by James Earl Jones and Alfre Woodard; "Sarajevo Ground Zero" (1993); "The Living Canvas" (1992), narrated by Billy Dee Williams; "Beyond JFK: The Question of Conspiracy" (1992, co-directed by Marc Levin and Barbara Kopple); "Give Peace a Chance" (1991); "Mandela in America" (1990); "The Making of Sun City" (1987); and "Student Power" (1968).
Schechter is co-founder and executive producer of Globalvision, a New York-based television and film production company now in its 16th year. He founded and exec-produced the series "South Africa Now" and co-produced "Rights & Wrongs: Human Rights Television. He has specialized in investigative reporting and producing programming about the interface between human rights, journalism, popular music and society. His career began as the "News Dissector" at Boston's leading rock station, WBCN. Later, Schechter was a producer for ABC NEWS 20/20. He produced 50 segments for ABC and won two national Emmys and was nominated or two others.
A Cornell University graduate, he received his Master's degree from the London School of Economics, and an honorary doctorate from Fitchburg College. He was a Neiman 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, and worked as a community organizer in a Saul Alinsky-style War on Poverty program. Then, moving from the streets to the suites, Schechter served as an assistant to the Mayor of Detroit in 1966 on a Ford Foundation grant.
Schechter joined the start-up staff at CNN as a producer based in Atlanta. He then moved to ABC as a producer for 20/20. Schechter has reported from 49 countries and lectured at many schools and universities. He was an adjunct professor at the Graduate School of Journalism at Columbia University. Schechter's 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, and many others.
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