Last week, reporter Anthony Shadid of the New York Times died in Syria of an asthma attack. Brooke remembered him on the show this week with a snippet from an interview we did in April of 2011 about the American media's short attention span for international crises and the dangers inherent to foreign crisis reporting. You can listen to the entire story here. Transcript below. 

Way back when we re-launched our website in July of this year, we did a Q&A with director Kirby Ferguson. Ferguson has been working on an ongoing series of videos called Everything is a Remix, about the culture of remixing that permeates just about every creative endeavor out there. Ferguson uses a couple of very famous examples (Star Wars, the ouvre of Quentin Tarantino, the innovations in the graphical interfaces in modern computing) to demonstrate that innovation is at least partly appropriation.

It's Monday and time again for a few of our favorite things.  Please post comments below and enjoy!

The staff of OTM pick a few of our favorite things.  Please leave us comments below and enjoy.

(This was originally printed in The Guardian.)

We should all of us, media consumers, applaud the management of the Sacramento Bee, which this weekend courageously fired photographer Bryan Patrick for high crimes against journalism.

This article was originally posted on the blog of the Bill & Melinda Gates foundation, www.impatientoptimists.org

We’ve all heard the old saw that “one death is a tragedy, a million deaths a statistic.” It’s the guiding principle of public relations for those engaged in building support for humanitarian causes. In fact, it’s more than a principle; it’s an inescapable truth.

It's Superbowl weekend, and for non-football fans who've been coerced into watching the game by social pressure of geological magnitude, there's always the ads to look forward to. (Although advertisers are ruining the fun by leaking their ads ahead of time.)

There's almost no chance any of those ...

As part of Facebook's initial public offering yesterday, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg wrote a letter that was included in Facebook's registration statement with the Security and Exchange Commission. Wired's Epicenter blog has an interesting breakdown of Zuckerberg's letter, but there was one section that stood out to us - Zuckerberg's pontifications on hackers and the term "hacker" itself.

A few weeks ago we spoke with former Federal Communications Commission adviser Steven Waldman about the FCC's proposed regulation that would require local television stations to disclose political ad buys online. Although the information is technically available to the public (interested citizens can physically view the file at the station), the move to online would make it far more accessible. But the National Association of Broadcasters didn't seem too enthusiastic about the proposed changes.

In a recent article in the Columbia Journalism Review, Waldman discusses how the local broadcasters reacted to the FCC proposal:

A comment filed by the stations owned by the major TV networks (NBC, CBS, ABC, Fox, and Univision) suggested that researchers should not expect their task to be made easier by the Internet. “Research by its nature requires the expenditure of effort,” they wrote. And for reporters, “a certain amount of leg work is eminently practical.” (One almost expects them to next blurt out, “in my day, we didn’t have no new-fangled Intertubes; we had to go to the damn library and they should too!)

It’s almost as if these companies—did I mention that they’re news organizations?—believe their first obligation is to offer creative character-building obstacles to getting information, not to better inform the public.

You can read Waldman's full article here.

It's Monday and time for a few of our favorite things.

You've probably seen this by now -- the latest Romney attack ad on Newt Gingrich that features neither Gingrich or Romney (or at least not until the disclaimer at the end). Instead, it's all Tom Brokaw, from a 1997 NBC Nightly News segment.

NBC has now asked that Romney pull the video, with Brokaw adding that he feels "extremely uncomfortable" with the use of his likeness. On today's Brian Lehrer Show, ABC chief White House correspondent Jake Tapper weighed in on the controversy:

Here's the full Tapper response from today's Brian Lehrer Show:

What do you think? Fair use on the part of the Romney campaign? Over the line? Let us know in the comments!

On the Media has reported plenty on both our show and our blog about Righthaven, a company that buys copyrights on newspaper stories and images and then sues bloggers who repost them either in part or in full. They've had an incredible run of bad luck in the last six months, culminating in their assets being seized in order to pay off court debts, and an investigation by the Nevada State Bar. One of those seized assets was their website, righthaven.com, which was sold to a mystery bidder earlier this month for a paltry $3,300. The bidder is now a mystery no more.

A few weeks ago, I pitched Bob and Brooke on my idea for an iPhone app that gives you ideas for iPhone apps - plus some of the ideas that would be in my app. (They were skeptical.) I then asked listeners to send along their own great ideas for apps by emailing me.

Lots of you did, here are some highlights. If you have more, email me at ideasfortheideasforanappapp@gmail.com or Tweet to @jodyavirgan

Every Monday, the staff of On the Media talks about a few of their favorite things. Tell us what media you've been consuming in the comments!

Having failed to adequately adapt to the digital age, Eastman Kodak Co. filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection this week.  Kodak had long been struggling:  First, with the advent of digital cameras and then, with the emergence of smartphones that threatened to make even those devices obsolete.  Most recently, drawn out intellectual property litigation added another drain on the company coffers.  One-time rival Fujifilm began diversifying decades ago, branching out into manufacturing optical films for LCD screens and producing cosmetics.  Yes, cosmetics.  Apparently anti-oxidants developed to preserve collagen-containing photos also do wonders for the skin.  Kodak, however, preferred to keep all of its prints in one stop bath, so to speak.

The staff of On the Media pick a few of our favorite things.

On this week's show we ran a story about the Chinese toy maker In Icons and its plans to release a Steve Jobs action figure. Perhaps good news for the legions of Apple fans, the news was less warmly embraced by Apple itself, who threatened legal action against the toy manufacturer.

But as PC World reported yesterday, In Icons has stopped production on the controversial doll. Tandy Cheung, the Hong Kong businessman behind the doll said in a statement that "though we still believe that we have not overstepped any legal boundaries, we have decided to completely stop the offer, production and sale of the Steve Jobs figurine out of our heartfelt sensitivity to the feelings of the Jobs family."

Last week, asked Kevin Murphy and Bill Corbett of Rifftrax and Mystery Science Theater 3000 for some pointers on the art of riffing in preparation for the launch of the 2012 iteration of our Media Scrutiny Theater. Today, we're proud to announce our inaugural video!

On this week's show, U. Nebraska journalism professor Matt Waite admits to having childlike fascination with drones. He recalls being at a conference in San Diego last summer, where a demo video for the Gatewing X100 left him positively giddy.