Bill Lichtenstein's Bio
Bill Lichtenstein's work as an award-winning print and broadcast journalist and documentary producer spans 40 years, and has been honored with more than 60 major journalism awards.
Bill founded the Peabody Award-winning Lichtenstein Creative Media in 1990 to produce high-quality film, TV and radio productions involving social justice and human rights issues, as well as innovative educational outreach and social marketing campaigns. Productions include "West 47th Street” the award-winning documentary film; “The Infinite Mind,” for a decade public radio’s most honored and listened to health and science program that examined all aspects of the human mind, mental health and neuroscience; the groundbreaking “Voice of an Illness” documentary series, the first programs to feature people who had recovered from serious mental illness telling their own stories, in their own words; and “If I Get Out Alive,” narrated by Academy Award-winning actress and child advocate Diane Keaton, which exposed the conditions faced by young people incarcerated in adult correctional institutions.
Previously, Bill worked for seven years for ABC News producing investigative reports for “20/20,” “World News Tonight” and “Nightline” that told compelling human stories involving social justice issues including abused and dying children in Oklahoma state juvenile institutions; battered women convicted of murdering their abusers; and the first national reporting on the Environmental Protection Agency and Superfund abuses for Nightline. Later, he was one of two producers of the ABC-TV program “Jimmy Breslin’s People.”
Bill is a contributor to the Huffington Post, and has written extensively on politics, health issues and the media for the New York Times, Nation, Newsday, New York Daily News, Village Voice, Boston Globe, and TV Guide, among others.
His work, and that of LCMedia, have received more than 60 major print and broadcast journalism awards, including a George Foster Peabody Award; United Nations Media Award; Guggenheim Fellowship; eight National Headliner Awards; and four Gracie Awards from the American Women in Radio and TV, among other journalism honors, and top media awards from major national mental health organizations including the National Institute of Mental Health; American Psychiatric Association; American College of Neuropsychopharmacology; National Mental Health Association (Mental Health America); National Alliance on Mental Illness; and the National Alliance for Research on Schizophrenia and Depression.
Bill and LCMedia have worked extensively in the area of strategic communications and mental health, including: a three-year mental health anti-stigma campaign, created under contract with New York City, which was informed by the first major qualitative and quantitative research into what would reduce mental health stigma in a single city; the first primary research regarding the impact of trauma following the September 11th attacks conducted in partnership with the American Psychological Association; and primary research and the production of a video detailing the treatment of people with mental illness in emergency room care settings, used to help train ER medical staff.
Bill and LCMedia have also pioneered the development of new media, including in the 3-D virtual reality world Second Life, and were a partner in the creation and roll-out of the M-3, the first medically validated on-line mental health screener.
Bill is a graduate of Brown University and the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism. He taught Investigative Reporting for TV as well as Documentary Film at the New School for Social Research from 1979 through 2006.
Bill founded the Peabody Award-winning Lichtenstein Creative Media in 1990 to produce high-quality film, TV and radio productions involving social justice and human rights issues, as well as innovative educational outreach and social marketing campaigns. Productions include "West 47th Street” the award-winning documentary film; “The Infinite Mind,” for a decade public radio’s most honored and listened to health and science program that examined all aspects of the human mind, mental health and neuroscience; the groundbreaking “Voice of an Illness” documentary series, the first programs to feature people who had recovered from serious mental illness telling their own stories, in their own words; and “If I Get Out Alive,” narrated by Academy Award-winning actress and child advocate Diane Keaton, which exposed the conditions faced by young people incarcerated in adult correctional institutions.
Previously, Bill worked for seven years for ABC News producing investigative reports for “20/20,” “World News Tonight” and “Nightline” that told compelling human stories involving social justice issues including abused and dying children in Oklahoma state juvenile institutions; battered women convicted of murdering their abusers; and the first national reporting on the Environmental Protection Agency and Superfund abuses for Nightline. Later, he was one of two producers of the ABC-TV program “Jimmy Breslin’s People.”
Bill is a contributor to the Huffington Post, and has written extensively on politics, health issues and the media for the New York Times, Nation, Newsday, New York Daily News, Village Voice, Boston Globe, and TV Guide, among others.
His work, and that of LCMedia, have received more than 60 major print and broadcast journalism awards, including a George Foster Peabody Award; United Nations Media Award; Guggenheim Fellowship; eight National Headliner Awards; and four Gracie Awards from the American Women in Radio and TV, among other journalism honors, and top media awards from major national mental health organizations including the National Institute of Mental Health; American Psychiatric Association; American College of Neuropsychopharmacology; National Mental Health Association (Mental Health America); National Alliance on Mental Illness; and the National Alliance for Research on Schizophrenia and Depression.
Bill and LCMedia have worked extensively in the area of strategic communications and mental health, including: a three-year mental health anti-stigma campaign, created under contract with New York City, which was informed by the first major qualitative and quantitative research into what would reduce mental health stigma in a single city; the first primary research regarding the impact of trauma following the September 11th attacks conducted in partnership with the American Psychological Association; and primary research and the production of a video detailing the treatment of people with mental illness in emergency room care settings, used to help train ER medical staff.
Bill and LCMedia have also pioneered the development of new media, including in the 3-D virtual reality world Second Life, and were a partner in the creation and roll-out of the M-3, the first medically validated on-line mental health screener.
Bill is a graduate of Brown University and the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism. He taught Investigative Reporting for TV as well as Documentary Film at the New School for Social Research from 1979 through 2006.
