b. 5 Jan. 1940, Oak Ridge, TN

Media activist; filmmaker; educator; organizer

In four decades as a filmmaker, teacher, and international communications rights activist, DeeDee Halleck has helped place new technologies—from home video and cable television to Internet journalism and digital satellite broadcasting—in the hands of social movements and regular folks. Along the way, she has inspired generations of grassroots media activists. She helped found a string of creative grassroots media initiatives, including the influential public access cable series Paper Tiger TV, and the nation's first grassroots community TV network, Deep Dish TV. A keen historian of community media projects and movements, Halleck is also an endless fount of creative ideas; she first proposed adapting the radio news program Democracy Now! for television. In the late 1970s, as president of the Association of Independent Video and Filmmakers, she campaigned to allow independent producers greater access to public television. That campaign also yielded the “sunshine” rules that make public broadcasters accountable to their local communities.

See also:

• DeeDee Halleck: Media Hero (Yes! Magazine)