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The eyes of journalists around the world may be turning away from Baghdad, but Baghdadis themselves have more options than ever for reading about their city. A recent estimate pegged the number of new newspapers in Baghdad at more than 100, up from just five during Saddam's reign. NPR's Deb Amos gives Brooke a view from the ground, and tells Brooke about how the American occupiers are attempting to manage the explosion of new voices.
For many months, the Venezuelan media have left their viewers and readers with no doubt as to who's to blame for the downward spiral of the country's economy. The press doesn't merely criticize President Hugo Chavez, but explicitly seeks to remove him from power. But the foreign press, for the most part, continues to treat Chavez as a legitimate ruler. Francisco Toro, Political Editor of Caracas-based VenEconomy, tells Bob why he thinks both sides are getting it wrong.
Judging by recent newspaper accounts, it would seem that the war in Congo has taken a turn for the worse. But those familiar with the conflict say the latest massacre there was simply one of many over the last four years. New Yorker writer Philip Gourevitch, who wrote a book about the 1994 genocide in Rwanda, talks to Brooke about the American media's sporadic coverage of Africa.
The New York Times may have to hand over one of its Pulitzers as penance for a journalistic sin committed 7 decades ago. The Pulitzer Board is reviewing its 1932 prize for Moscow correspondent Walter Duranty, who deliberately suppressed information about the famine that killed millions of Ukranians on his watch. Bob talks with historian Bert Patenaude about Duranty's prize-winning disinformation.
If Minnesota is legendary for its fierce winters, Minnesotans are equally fierce in their love of weather phenomena. And network programmers are cashing in on the obsession - even in the spring it's hard to turn on the TV without finding a meteorologist warning viewers about a threatening storm on the way. Sarah Lemanczyk reports on the tempestuous battle for ratings in the land of lakes.
David Brinkley died this week at the age of 82. Before he left his full-time post behind the news desk seven years ago, he had anchored a news show for four decades - longer than anybody else in the business. Veteran television executive Av Westin joins Brooke to reflect on the life and legacy of David Brinkley.
The advent of TiVO-type personal-video-recorders have made possible the age-old dream of watching TV without the ads. What will the new technology mean for the symbiosis of TV programmers and the advertisers who subsidize them? Most industry insiders might still be in denial about the future, but not OTM's Bob Garfield. He speculates on what might be in store for the public airwaves.
If popular culture provides a lens through which outsiders can track a society-in-flux, then the music videos popular in the Arab world right now have a lot to tell us. Reason Magazine Senior Editor Charles Paul Freund reads the videos as imagined worlds in which Arabs can assert new identities. He joins Brooke to deconstruct a few of them.
Highlights from Past ShowsMost media critics, if they believed it would happen at all, figured it would take a few months, a decent interval, before Howell Raines left the helm of the New York Times. But in the wake of the Jayson Blair scandal, Howell's departure came sooner rather than later. Newsweek media reporter Seth Mnookin speaks to Brooke about the unfolding drama at the Grey Lady.
As it is in the U.S., news about Iraq is beginning to fade from the front pages of Arabic language newspapers. But in its place this week were a number of major stories related to the so-called "War on Terror" and the shifting geopolitics of the Middle East. World Press Review Contributing Editor Peter Valenti gives Bob a survey of the week's top stories as reported in the Arabic press.
On the Media is funded by The Bydale Foundation, The Ford Foundation, The John S. and James L. Knight Foundation and the Overbrook Foundation.
