Globalization & Human Rights: Producers' Biographies

Executive Producers
Rory O'Conner
Danny Schechter

Charlayne Hunter-Gault
Hunter-Gault made civil rights history as the first black woman to graduate from the University of Georgia in 1962 and has gone on to establish herself as one of television's premier journalists. For four years, she has anchored Globalvision's internationally distributed, award winning, weekly television human rights news magazine series "Rights & Wrongs."

She is a seventeen year veteran of public television, first joining The MacNeil/Lehrer Report in 1978 as a correspondent and became the NewsHour's national correspondent in 1983. In 1989, she was also a correspondent for MacNeil/Lehrer Productions' five-part series, Learning in America.

Previously, Hunter-Gault served as a "Talk of the Town" reporter for The New Yorker. After winning a Russell Sage Fellowship to Washington University, she was on the staff of Trans-Action magazine. In 1967, she joined the investigative news team at WRC-TV, Washington, D.C., and also anchored the local evening news. In 1968, Hunter-Gault joined The New York Times as a metropolitan reporter specializing in coverage of the urban black community. Her work was honored with many awards during her ten years at the paper, including the National Urban Coalition Award for Distinguished Urban Reporting. Hunter-Gault has also been published in The New York Times Magazine, Saturday Review, The New York Times Book Review, Essence and Vogue.

During her associaton with The News Hour, Hunter-Gault has won additonal awards: two Emmys, and a Peabody for excellence in broadcast journalism for her work on Apartheid's People, a NewsHour series on South Africa. She also received the 1986 Journalist of the Year Award from the National Association of Black Journalists; the 1990 Sidney Hillman Award; the Good Housekeeping Broadcast Personality of the Year Award; the American Women in Radio and Television Award; and two awards from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting for excellence in local programming.

Hunter-Gault is the author of In My Place (1992), a memoir about her experiences at the University of Georgia; and she is the recipient of more than two dozen honorary degrees.

Hunter-Gault is married, has two children, and lives in New York City.

Rory O'Conner
In 1987, Rory O'Connor co-founded Globalvision, Inc., an independent film and television production company. He has been the company's President since its inception, and has directed, written and produced numerous documentary films and television specials, including three award winning investigative films for the PBS series "Frontline." He also served as Executive Producer of Globalization's two award-winning international weekly news magazines, South Africa Now and Rights & Wrongs. His recent documentary film (Yellow Wasps: Anatomy if a War Crime) investigates the origins of ethnic cleansing in the former Yugoslavia, and he also recently finished a feature film screenplay, One Free Murder, for Universal Pictures. Mr. O'Connor's broadcast work has been honored with numerous awards, including two Emmies, an Iris, a Writer's Guild and a Georger Polk Award.

Prior to starting Globalvision, Mr. O'Connor had more than a decade of experience as a professional journalist, first in print and then in television and radio. A graduate of Boston College, he worked as an editor at the Boston Globe, and later as a reporter for such regional newspapers and magazines as the Boston Phoenix, The Real Paper and Boston Magazine. He subsequently served in a variety of senior editorial positions at The Real Paper, including that of Managing Editor.

Mr. O'Connor began working in broadcast journalism in 1978 as an on-air reporter and producer at WGBH-TV, the ABC affiliate in Boston, where he produced award-winning documentaries and played a key role in the formation of The Investigators, the stationąs first investigative news team. Mr. O'Connor later served as Program Producer of the nightly "Ten O'Clock News" at WGBH and as News Director of the "Neighborhood Network News," a nightly news program on Boston cable television. In addition, his political commentary was a regular news feature on WBCN-FM, one of New Englandąs leading radio stations. In 1986, he removed to New York and produced for the nightly PBS program "The MacNeil / Lehrer News Hour," and the CBS News series "48 Hours."

Mr. O'Connor's articles on politics and culture have appeared in numerous leading national periodicals, including The Atlantic Monthly, Mother Jones, Newsweek, Rolling Stone, Musician, Vogue, and many others. His recent article (Boston Magazine, August, 1997) is a profile of Viacom head Summer Redstone. He is also the co-author of an award-winning non-fiction book entitled Nukespeak: The Selling of Nuclear Technology in America (Sierra Club, 1981; Penguin, 1982.) He has taught and lectured at a number of colleges and universities, including Harvard, MIT, Boston College and Boston University. He is married and the father of two sons.

Danny Schechter
Danny Schechter is a founder and the Vice President/Executive Producer of Globalvision, Inc,. a media company formed in 1987.

Mr. Schechter has worked as a journalist and broadcaster for thirty years. He began his career in print as the editor of his high school newspaper and then founded a student magazine at Cornell University, where he graduated in 1965.

After college, he worked as a community organizer in a War on Poverty program, and as the Communications Director of the Northern Student Movement, a civil rights organization. He served as Assistant to the Mayor of Detroit, Michigan in 1966 on a Ford Foundation grant.

Going on to a master's degree program at The School of Economics, he returned to journalism as the London Editor for Ramparts Magazine the nationally distributed investigative magazine of the sixties. His print journalism also appeared in leading newspapers and magazines including The Boston Globe, Columbia Journalism Review, Detroit Free Press, Village Voice and many others.

In 1970, he became the News Director and principal newscaster for WBCN-FM, Boston's leading youth-oriented commercial radio station, where he served for a decade as an innovator in radio news. His work was honored with many industry awards, including two Major Armstrong Awards, which contributed to his nomination as a Nieman Fellow in Journalism at Harvard University. He also taught at Harvard.

In 1978, he began his career in Boston television as an on-air reporter on the "Ten O' Clock News" at WGBH, Channel 2. He was lured away to produce a nationally syndicated weekly issue-oriented talk show, working with Lucie Salhany, the former Chairman of the Fox Broadcasting Company. That program won a New England Emmy and an IRIS award from NAPTE. In 1980, Mr. Schechter created and produced "Five All Night/Live All Night," the nation's first all night live entertainment-oriented TV show at WCVB Boston. Later that year he was invited to join the producing team at the new Cable News Network (CNN) in Atlanta, where he produced the nightly "Sandi Freeman Show," CNN's first prime time "Nightline" style program.

Joining ABC News in 1981, he was assigned to the "20/20" news magazine where he was an investigative reporter and segment producer. His work won two National News EMMY Awards. He also worked as senior level broadcast producer for ABC's late night program. In 1988, he left to become a partner in Globalvision, where he created and supervised the company's wide range of programming and creative projects. He has won many industry awards, press recognition and an honorary Ph.D. for this work. He is the author of the book "The More You Watch, The Less You Know" from Seven Stories Press.

[HOME][TRANSCRIPT][COMPLETE INTERVIEWS]
[PRODUCERS' BIOS][RESOURCES][ORDER INFO.]