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The day before Thanksgiving, Henry Kissinger was appointed by President Bush to lead an investigation into possible intelligence failures leading up to the events of September 11th 2001. On the Media checks in with Scott Armstrong, Washington journalist and founder of the National Security Archive about media coverage, or lack thereof - of the controversial appointment.
With 32 stories in three months about the Augusta National's exclusion of women, many have accused the New York Times of leading a personal crusade against the golf tournament. When the Times spiked two recent stories that disagreed with the editorial page on the matter those same critics asked whether the paper had gone too far. Bob speaks with Alex Jones, ex Times writer and current Director of the Joan Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy at Harvard University.
This Sunday marks the deadline for Iraq to present a thorough accounting of its weapons of mass destruction programs. In a bit of TV serendipity, it's also the weekend HBO premiers a docu-drama about the last war in Iraq, called "Live from Baghdad." The film stars Michael Keaton as CNN news producer Robert Wiener - Brooke speaks with the real Mr. Weiner.
Filmmaker Michael Moore gained fame with the 1989 movie "Roger and Me," a look at the closing of the GM plants in Flint, Michigan. He was denied an academy award nomination for best documentary either because the film was too anti-establishment (his explanation) or, as it later came out, because it wasn't much of a documentary. OTM Producer At Large Mike Pesca went trolling though Moore's latest documentary, "Bowling for Columbine."
Roone Arledge, who died this week, has been dutifully eulogized as a giant of modern broadcasting, first with ABC Sports, then as president of ABC news. The creator of "Wide World of Sports," Monday Football" and the slow-motion replay made no less of a mark on TV news than on TV sports. But by the end of his career many of his pioneering innovations had begun to turn on him, Bob explains.
The award-winning public television program Frontline is trying to go where no camera has gone before… into a room where a jury is deliberating a capital murder case. Bob speaks with Professor Gerald Treece of the South Texas College of Law in Houston who opposes cameras in the jury room and Michael Sullivan, Frontline's Executive producer for Special Projects who is all for it.
This weekend, the sequel to the comedy, "Analyze This!" opens nationwide. It's called "Analyze That! and it continues the saga of a psychiatrist played by Billy Crystal, treating mob boss Robert DeNiro. Anyway, it got OTM's Sara Fishko to thinking…
Highlights from Past ShowsOn the Media checks in with our regular correspondent, Martin Walker, to talk about the recently completed NATO conference and to discuss how the world press covered it.
This week both houses of Congress passed the Homeland Security Act, which will result in the biggest overhaul of the federal bureaucracy in 50 years. The Act will have broad ramifications—from the relationship of the federal government with its citizens, to suppressing previously public information. Bob speaks with Mark Tapscott, of the Center for Media and Public Policy at the Heritage Foundation, about his concerns surrounding the new circumstances of Homeland Security.
On the Media is funded by The Bydale Foundation, The Ford Foundation, The John S. and James L. Knight Foundation and the Overbrook Foundation.
