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After seven years, a trillion dollars, tens of thousands of civilian deaths, nearly 35,000 US injured and 4,500 US dead, President Obama announced this week that the combat mission in Iraq is over. Historian Douglas Brinkley explains why this seemingly momentous moment received so little media coverage.
Throughout the war in Iraq foreign journalists have relied heavily on fixers, the local feet on the ground who translate, find sources and help provide safety. Though many have since left the country, for fear that their work with Western media has made them targets, some fixers remain. Hussam Ali al-Mussawi, who worked for The San Francisco Chronicle, New York Times, McClatchy, Newsweek and Der Spiegel, explains his uncertain future.
If you felt a sense of déjà vu when reading about the latest round of Israeli/Palestinian peace talks this week, you were not alone. The situation seems intractable but the reporting too often follows a well-worn template. JJ Goldberg, senior columnist for The Forward, understands that déjà vu feeling but argues that savvy readers will find a different story this time.
From the Million Man March to the Obama Inauguration to Glenn Beck’s recent “Restoring Honor” rally, estimating the size of a crowd is both scientifically difficult and politically fraught. ASU professor Steve Doig, Washington Post editor Dan Keating and retired U.S. Park Police officer Carl Holmberg – crowd estimators all – weigh in.
Earlier this week, Washington Post sports writer Mike Wise sent a deliberately false tweet about Pittsburgh Steelers quarterback Ben Roethlisberger to prove to his audience that journalists will happily reprint rumors without confirming their veracity. But what did he really prove? Bob talks to Mike Wise and profootballtalk.com editor Mike Florio.
August was the 175th anniversary of the New York Sun’s Great Moon Hoax, when Richard Adams Locke created a sensation by writing a series of satirical articles, taken seriously by the public, about life on the moon. Matthew Goodman, author of The Sun and the Moon, says this story marked a paradigmatic shift in the way Americans perceived newspapers.
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Highlights from Past Shows
This week, OTM talks about popular cultural myths that refuse to die. The first is seems to have staying power: the rumor that President Obama is a Muslim. A 2009 Pew study found that many Americans still believe it to be true, and many more simply don't know the President's religion. Political scientist Brendan Nyhan explains how misperceptions spread and says we can be incredibly stubborn in the face of facts.
Political news this week was dominated by the so-called "Ground Zero Mosque," but the Muslim community center at Park51 is neither at Ground Zero, nor is it chiefly a mosque. Late this week several news organizations including the AP issued memos which offered guidance as to how to cover this story. We talked to Yahoo! News media reporter Michael Calderone about the origin of this phrase and how it became media shorthand for this controversial story.
On the Media is funded by The Bydale Foundation, The Ford Foundation, The John S. and James L. Knight Foundation and the Overbrook Foundation.
