Wolfgang Achtner is a correspondent, television producer, documentary filmmaker, author and journalism educator. Television experience is the result of almost thirty years work for some of the most important American and foreign television networks, including eight years as freelance correspondent for CNN and eleven years as reporter/producer for ABC News. From March 2008 though November 2009 he was Rome & Vatican correspondent for Press TV. He has produced breaking news reports, features and in-depth reports on a variety of topics including Italian politics, the economy and immigration.  From 2001 to 2007 he worked primarily as independent documentary filmmaker. In 2007 completed his most recent documentary Say something left-wing: Nanni Moretti and politics, that examines Italian actor/director Moretti’s relationship with politics, as a filmmaker and as an activist. In 2006 he completed The Transition: from the death of Pope John Paul II to the installation of Benedict XVI. This film examines an extremely interesting moment in the life of the Roman Catholic Church. Other documentaries include a feature-length film in 2003 on The Movements of Spring,  the grassroots opposition movement led by actor/director Nanni Moretti and a A Day To Remember on the consistory of cardinals that took place on February 21, 2001. BBC World aired a 25-minute-long version of this documentary as The Papal Consistory in April 2002. At the end of the ‘80s he was one of the first American videojournalists to report on international events, working with a Hi-8 videocamera for ABC News in East Germany, covering the protests in Leipzig that led to the collapse of the Communist regime and in China, covering events in Beijing after the repression in Tienanmen Square, respectively in October and in June, 1989. For several years he worked as a correspondent from Italy for The Independent and The Independent on Sunday and he contributed articles to Italian periodicals, including La Repubblica, Il Mondo, Mondo Economico, Il Manifesto, Reporter. During the past ten years he has held regular lectures and seminars on ethics and print and television news reporting for Italian journalists and journalism students. Achtner has taught at the University of Perugia and the University of Siena, and has organized and directed videojournalism training courses for Italy’s L’Espresso group and other Italian media companies. In 2006 he published Democrazia e telegiornali: il giornalismo come servizio pubblico, advocating American-style tv news broadcasts for Italy. Experience as a teacher of television journalism in Italy inspired the writing of a textbook in Italian Il Reporter Televisivo: manuale pratico per un giornalismo televisivo credibile e di qualità (1997 McGraw-Hill), that is considered a classic handbook by Italian tv news journalists and has been chosen as the required coursebook by several universities and journalism schools. He is also author of Penne, Antenne e Quarto Potere: per un giornalismo al servizio della democrazia (1996 Baldini e Castoldi). This book provides a carefully researched history of the Italian press and broadcasting media from the end of World War II until 1996, and explains the transformation from television entrepreneur to prime minister accomplished by Silvio Berlusconi.