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Irv Drasnin is an American journalist, a producer-director-writer of documentary films for CBS News and PBS (Frontline, The American Experience, Nova). Among the prestigious awards he has received for broadcast journalism are the duPont-Columbia (twice), the Directors Guild (DGA), the Writers Guild (WGA, twice), and the American Film and Video Blue Ribbon (twice).

His thirty documentaries include a chronicle of modern China beginning with Misunderstanding China (CBS News), Shanghai (CBS News), Looking for Mao (PBS/Frontline), China After Tiananmen (PBS/Frontline) and The Revolutionary, an independent feature-length film.

When US-China relations were restored in 1972 after a 20-year hiatus, each of the three U.S. television networks was allowed access to film a documentary. Drasnin drew the assignment for CBS News, spending ten-weeks inside the country to make the film Shanghai. In 1991, he was the first American broadcast journalist to report in depth from China in the wake of the government’s brutal crackdown on student-led demonstrations in Beijing’s Tiananmen Square, China After Tiananmen.

His foreign reporting also focused on southern Africa and the last stands of white colonial rule in Who’s Got A Right to Rhodesia (CBS News) and in Apartheid (PBS/Frontline).

Mr. Drasnin’s domestic topics are highlighted by The Guns of Autumn (CBS News), You and the Commercial (CBS News), Health in America (CBS News), Inside the Union (CBS News), The Radio Priest (PBS/The American Experience), The Chip vs The Chess Master (PBS/Nova), and Forever Baseball (PBS/The American Experience.).

He was a founding member and then co-chair of the China Council of The Asia Society in New York (1980-82). His public speaking engagements include The National Press Club, The Chicago Council of Foreign Relations, the Kansas City International Relations Council, the National Photographers Association, The Foreign Correspondents Clubs of Beijing, of Shanghai, and of Hong Kong, of which he is a member, and numerous universities and civic groups.

Early Life and Education
Irv Drasnin was born in Charleston, West Virginia on March 18, 1934, a son of immigrants: his father, Joseph, a U.S. Treasury Agent, was from Tsarist Russia, as was his mother, Clara Aaron. The family moved to Los Angeles when he was four years-old. His oldest brother, Sid, was an architect remembered (with Lloyd Wright) for the Wayfarer’s Chapel in Palo Verdes, CA, and for The Gardens of the World in Thousand Oaks, CA. His brother Bob played clarinet, sax and flute with the Les Brown Orchestra and Red Norvo quintet among others, performed in Carnegie Hall as a classical musician, was the Director of Music at CBS, and a composer and teacher.

Education: Mr. Drasnin is a graduate of Carthay Center grammar school, John Burroughs Junior High School and Los Angeles High School (1952). He has a BA in political science from UCLA, where he was student body president (1955-56); editor of The Daily Bruin (for which the paper was awarded an All-American rating as one of the top five college dailies in the country); and Men’s Representative to the Student Council (1954). He also was a member of Project India (1954), one of twelve students selected each year to spend the summer in India, speaking about America and often debating with Indian college students. It changed his career path from wanting to cover sports for the LA Times, to covering Asia and U.S.-China relations.

He has a MA from Harvard in East Asian Studies (1957-59) with a specialization in China. He taught in the Master’s Film Program at Stanford University (1980-82).

United Press International
He began his career as a reporter at United Press International, in Pittsburgh, Pa., the eastern division news headquarters (1959-60), where the stories he covered included the steelworkers strike of 1959, the visits of Soviet leaders Kozlov and Khrushchev, Wightman Cup Tennis, and the siege of Chicken Hill (a cops and bank robbers shootout). He wrote both for newspapers and radio.

CBS News Broadcasts
In 196l he was hired by CBS News as a writer for daily news broadcasts, becoming a producer for Calendar, a public affairs program with Harry Reasoner; and the CBS Evening News with Walter Cronkite. His assignments for the evening news included a wide range of major news events, most prominently the civil rights movement. He was the producer of CBS News coverage in Selma, Alabama (March 1965) and for the Senate passage of the Voting Rights Act that followed. Other notable assignments included the Republican Convention of 1964, the successful presidential campaign of Lyndon Johnson, the funeral of Winston Churchill in London, the space program (the Mercury 6 flight of Wally Schirra), and the World Series, Dodgers vs the Orioles, Cardinals vs. the Red Sox.

The Documentary Film Years at CBS News and PBS
CBS News, 1966-79. PBS, 1982-92, for Frontline, The American Experience and Nova.

Milestones:
Misunderstanding China, CBS News, 1972: This film became a landmark for its penetrating examination of the myths and misconceptions that have defined America’s view of China and the Chinese --- and the consequences for US-China relations. It was broadcast as President Nixon was on his way to Beijing to meet Mao Zedong. Even now, as the US-China relationship remains fraught with challenges and conflicts, this film still is in circulation.

Looking for Mao, PBS/Frontline, 1983: Five years after the end of the Cultural Revolution, one of the most catastrophic political upheavals of the 20th century, China turned away from Maoism to implement political and economic reforms. In the spirit of those times, Drasnin was able to film the changes taking place, allowed access, interviews and freedom of movement not possible before Mao’s death, and not often since.

The Guns of Autumn, CBS News, 1975: This film about hunting in America touched a raw nerve, even though it depicted only hunting practices that were widely in use and legal, often under the supervision of state game agencies. The response was said to be a record for a network documentary, an estimated 37-thousand letters, cards and calls, pro and con. Much of the negative reaction was organized by the National Rifle Association, hunting organizations and the outdoors press --- even before the film was broadcast.

You and the Commercial, CBS News, 1973: The first network documentary to explore television advertising and its impact on the American viewer, probing the claims and techniques of the advertising industry which pays most of the network’s bills. Truth in advertising had become an issue that was investigated in this unprecedented report.

The Radio Priest, PBS/The American Experience, 1988: The Great Depression of the 1930’s were years of economic distress, anger, of confusion and an urgent search for answers, a time when Americans were vulnerable to charlatans and demagogues. Few voices in that troubled era would sound as promising, or threatening, as that of the Radio Priest, Charles Coughlin --- or be more a cause for reflection than it is today.

Apartheid, PBS/Frontline, 1988: A secret meeting between white South Africans and the outlawed African National Congress (ANC), South Africa’s black liberation movement, had to be held in Dakar, Senegal. This is an account of that clandestine and candid confrontation, a search for common ground and a way out of Apartheid, the separation of races that was the basis for white rule.

The Chip vs The Chess Master, PBS/Nova, 1991: At the beginning of the computer age, the chess board became a laboratory for testing the limits of the machine. In this film, a face-to-face confrontation between world chess champion Gary Kasparov and an IBM computer, it was the machine testing the limits of man.

Health in America: The Promise and the Practice. CBS News, 1970: This film takes an uncompromising look at the claim that Americans were receiving the best health care in the world. The issues covered include the economic, geographic and racial disparities in the quality of care and who gets it, part of a national debate that still roils our health care system, and politics.

Personal Life
He is married to Xiaoyan Zhao, a Stanford Ph. D. in Communication, and former Senior Vice President and global polling director for New York-based GfK Roper Public Affairs. The couple has lived in New York City (1987-1996) and Hong Kong (1997-98) where Xiaoyan was the founding Managing Director of Roper’s Asia-Pacific Headquarters. They now reside in Los Altos, California.

Other
For the American Academy of Achievement, he has interviewed more than a hundred notable recipients from the arts and literature, the sciences, business, politics and sports. They include: Mikhail Gorbachev, Desmond Tutu, Ehud Barak, Justice Anthony Kennedy, Rep. John Lewis, Colin Powell, Sally Ride, Timothy Bremers-Lee, Stephen Jay Gould, Maya Lin, Amy Tan, Edward Albee, James Michener, George Lucas, James Earl Jones, Wynton Marsalis, Quincy Jones, B.B. King, Kareem Abdul Jabbar, Willie Mays and John Wooden.