Michele Mitchell (journalist)

Michele Mitchell is an American filmmaker, journalist and author who has covered politics and social issues for PBS and CNN Headline News, and does so now for Film at Eleven.

She grew up in Yorba Linda, California, and attended Esperanza High School, where she ran track and cross country, and wrote for the school newspaper and the youth section of The Los Angeles Times. She attended Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois, where she earned a BSJ and MSJ in 1992. Throughout college, she wrote sports for the Chicago Tribune. Her first job was on Capitol Hill, where she was the youngest congressional communications director, for Rep. Pete Geren (D-TX), who became the Secretary of the Army for Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama.

Her journalism career began during the height of the "Generation X" political trend,[1] which she wrote about in 1998 in her first book, A New Kind of Party Animal: How the Young Are Changing Politics As Usual (Simon & Schuster).[2] The book led to a job at CNN Headline News as a political analyst [3] for the 2000 election. In 2001, she became the political anchor at Headline News, covering daily political stories and, post-9/11, she filed one of the last interviews given by the mujahadeen Abdul Haq. She particularly emphasized the Patriot Act, which earned her the verbal disdain of Attorney General John Ashcroft's staff and frequent appearances on Politically Incorrect. She left Headline News in 2003 after her second novel was published, but returned to television on Nowe with Bill Moyers on PBS. There, she filed investigative stories on the war on terror, vote fraud, women and the economy, and the Abramoff scandal.

In 2006, she founded the independent multi-platform media company Film at Eleven Media,[4] an independent media company, distributing news programming on the Internet and mobile. Here she produced and directed the critically acclaimed[5] television documentary " Where Did the Money Go" The film, which aired over 1,000 times in the United States on PBS stations generated controversy [6] when the American Red Cross attacked it as "inaccurate."[7] However, the film was embraced by the Haitian community,[8] activists,[9] aid workers and Members of Congress, and was screened at the Oakland Film Festival and the Bolder Life Film Festival in 2012. In 2013, the film won a Gracie Award for Outstanding Investigative Program,[10] a CINE Golden Eagle,[11] a CINE Special Jury Award for Best Investigative Documentary and won the 2013 National Edward R. Murrow Award for Best TV Documentary.[12] It was also screened at the 2013 Miami Women's International Film Festival where it won Best Documentary Short. In 2009 she produced the short documentary "Reporting for Duty" about Israeli reservists in the 2nd Lebanon War, which aired on PBS and on the Internet to a total audience of 10 million.

In 2013, she began filming The Uncondemned with co-director Nick Louvel, a documentary about the first time rape was prosecuted as a war crime during the Rwanda genocide. In March 2015, she presented on the film at Docudays, an annual Human Rights Documentary Film festival in Kiev, Ukraine. In April 2015, she gave a TedX talk called "What's Rape's Brand" [13] at TedXNavesink which discusses the topic of the film. The Uncondemned is currently in postproduction and is scheduled to be released in the fall of 2015.

She is the recipient of the Gracie Awards and also received an honorable citation from the Overseas Press Awards[14] for her coverage of Nepalese girls sold into indentured servitude.[15] She also serves on the advisory board of the Authors Guild of America, Amman Imman [16] and BYKids. She has reported extensively from Afghanistan, India, Nepal, Sri Lanka, Jordan, West Bank, Israel, Lebanon, Libya and Morocco and most of the 50 states.

Selected works

References

  1. ↑ Huntley, Mark (28 September 2004). "Decoding Gen-X Values". The New York Sun. Retrieved 27 August 2012.
  2. ↑ Satin, Mark. "The Cool Diffidence and Passionate Realism of the Rising Generation". Radical Middle Newsletter. Retrieved March 2003.
  3. ↑ http://www.sfgate.com/entertainment/article/CNN-Spins-Out-of-Control-With-Never-Ending-Story-2723150.php
  4. ↑ http://www.filmat11.tv
  5. ↑ Johns, Lindsay (20 March 2012). "Haiti: Where Did the Money Go....?". Daily Mail (London). Retrieved 27 August 2012.
  6. ↑ Bassett, Laura (24 January 2012). "Red Cross Responds to Documentary's Charges of Haiti Aid". Huffington Post. Retrieved January 24, 2012.
  7. ↑ Page, Clarence (January 29, 2012). "Where Did Haiti's Aid Go?". Chicago Tribune. Retrieved January 29, 2012.
  8. ↑ Britell, Alexander (22 December 2011). "Haiti: Where Did the Money Go? An Interview with Michele Mitchell". Caribbean Journal. Retrieved 27 August 2012.
  9. ↑ "Why Doesn't the American Red Cross Want People to See 'Haiti: Where Did the Money Go?'". Center for Economic and Policy Research. Retrieved 25 January 2012.
  10. ↑ http://www.thegracies.org/2013-grace-awards.php#local
  11. ↑ http://www.cine.org/fall-2012-golden-eagle-award-recipients/professional-telecast-news-division/
  12. ↑ http://www.cine.org/special-jury-awards/cine-2013-special-jury-award-recipients/
  13. ↑ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ut5_TVLAFDc
  14. ↑ OPC of America. "2008 OPC Award Winners". Overseas Press Club of America. Retrieved 27 August 2012.
  15. ↑ http://www.pbs.org/now/shows/414/transcript.html
  16. ↑ http://www.ammanimman.org/
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