Jack Willis

Jack Willis (June 20, 1934 – February 9, 2022) was an American journalist, writer and filmmaker.

Jack Lawrence Willis was born in Milwaukee to Louis Willis and Libbie (Feingold) Willis on June 20, 1934. He graduated with a bachelor's degree in political science from the University of California, Los Angeles in 1956 and graduated from UCLA School of Law in 1962.

Jack Willis was the co-founder of Link TV a Direct Broadcast Satellite channel currently in over 34 million American homes via DirecTV and the Dish Network.

He was a producer and executive in commercial, cable and public television. He was a Senior Fellow at George Soros' Open Society Institute where he developed and directed a program on media policy. From 1990 to 1997 he was president and CEO of Twin Cities Public Television. He was also vice-president of programming and production for CBS Cable, where he developed the critically acclaimed performing arts channel, Director of Statue of Liberty Programming for Metro Media Producer's Corp. and Director of Programming and Production of WNET/13 in New York City.

Willis created and produced many award-winning series including the Emmy Award-winning news show The 51st State for WNET/13. He was Co-Executive Producer of PBS' groundbreaking, Emmy winning, The Great American Dream Machine, and the Emmy-winning series City Within a City, a documentary which was widely credited with helping to achieve passage of Milwaukee's Open Housing Law.

He also produced and directed numerous award-winning documentaries. He produced films for CBS News as well as The Human Animal series, with Phil Donahue, for NBC. With Saul Landau, he produced the independent documentary Paul Jacobs and the Nuclear Gang, about the government cover up of the fatal effects of the Nevada nuclear bomb tests on military personnel and civilians living downwind from the tests, won an Emmy and the George Polk Award for investigative journalism. Two of his films, Lay My Burden Down, about the plight of black sharecroppers in the rural south, and Every Seventh Child, about Catholic education were shown at the New York Film Festival. His first film, The Streets of Greenwood about voting rights in Mississippi, won the gold medal at the San Francisco Film Festival.

With his wife, Mary, he wrote several highly rated network movies and co-authored the book But There Are Always Miracles.

He died from assisted suicide in Zurich on February 9, 2022, at the age of 87.