Broken Crew

Producer: Bill Lichtenstein is a Peabody Award-winning print and broadcast journalist and documentary producer who has covered national child welfare issues for more than four decades. 

Bill has received more than 60 major journalism honors including a George Foster Peabody Award; United Nations Media Award; three National News Emmy Award nominations; eight National Headliner Awards; and four Gracie Awards from the American Women in Radio and TV, along with other journalism honors.

Bill previously worked for seven years for ABC News producing investigative reports for “20/20,” “World News Tonight” and “Nightline,” and has written extensively for the Huffington Post, Nation, Newsday, New York Times, New York Daily News, Village Voice, Boston Globe, and TV Guide on child welfare, health and media issues.

Bill’s work covering (and uncovering) critical stories about the welfare of children over the past 40 years includes: 
        * Bill was on the ABC News team that broke the Atlanta child murders story and co-produced "Throwaway Kids" a 20/20 report on the deaths of children in state custody in Oklahoma following a nine-month investigation that led to an overhaul of the state’s human services department and the resignation of its long-time director.
         *  Bill and LCMedia produced "If I Get Out Alive," a one-hour radio documentary narrated by Academy Award-winning actress and child advocate Diane Keaton, which exposed the systematic abuse and brutality faced by juveniles in the adult prison system, as well as diversion programs to keep young offenders from prison. The program was used as part of national educational outreach campaign. 
          *  Bill was a 2005 Guggenheim Fellow and studied the intersection of children's welfare and foster care; children’s mental health; education; and the family court/juvenile justice systems, and the need for coordinated care for youth-at-risk that involves all four areas.  
          * Bill's groundbreaking article revealed the national practice of locking children at school in seclusion or "time out" rooms and using physical restraints on kids as young as five years old. His reporting was later honored by the Casey Medals for Meritorious Journalism and along with Congressman Joe Kennedy III he received a Special Recognition Award from the Massachusetts Association for Mental Health. 
           *  Bill's article "Mass. Problems for Kids" for the Huffington Post exposed a myriad of fatal problems for kids in the Massachusetts state child welfare system including 103 deaths in a three-year period. 
           *  Bill's documentary film West 47th Street followed three years in the lives of four people with serious mental illness and won Best Documentary" at the Atlanta Film Festival, aired on PBS’s documentary series P.O.V., and was called “must see” by Newsweek.  

Bill's latest film, "WBCN and The American Revolution" and companion book on MIT Press/Penguin Random House, tells the untold story of the early days of the legendary Boston radio station to examine how media can create social change.  Both the film, which aired on PBS, and the book received multiple award.