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With just a couple of days left before the Iowa caucuses, the airwaves in the all-important 29th state are awash with campaign ads both for and against the Democratic candidates. But how is a poor undecided Iowan to weed out the substantive wheat from the false and misleading chaff? Enter factcheck.org, a new website sponsored by the Annenberg Public Policy Center. Veteran journalist Brooks Jackson is the project's director, and joins Bob to discuss it.
Many TV networks this campaign season are taking a cue from Operation Iraqi Freedom. They have assigned reporters to be 24-hour-a-day shadows for the candidates on the trail, and outfitted them with digital video cameras for the job. MSNBC has even dubbed their field producers "campaign embeds." New Hampshire Public Radio's Raquel Maria Dillon reports on the new generation of boys - and girls - on the bus.
This week, the U.S. Supreme Court rejected an appeal of the Bush Administration's secret detention of more than a thousand people in the weeks following September 11th. The decision represented a defeat for several groups who had sued for access to information about the detainees, some of whom were charged with immigration violations, and many of whom were deported. Bob discusses the case and its implications with Lyle Denniston, Supreme Court reporter for the Boston Globe.
The Bush White House is hardly the first to regard the press with suspicion and complain about the attack dog media. But no administration has ever so successfully controlled the message coming out of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, or cared so little about cultivating a relationship with the press corps. Ken Auletta recently went inside "Fortress Bush" to explore the question of why reporters are so unwelcome there, and tells Bob what he found.
The bloodshed in Iraq shows no sign of abating - Americans continue to come home in bodybags almost daily. But reporters covering the conflict aren't immune from the dangers either. The journalist death toll currently stands at 13, and some have suggested that news organizations in war zones start employing armed guards. But Newsweek reporter Christopher Dickey tells Bob that carrying a gun in hostile territory won't make him any safer.
Listeners pipe up about our interview with conservative, now liberaltalk show host Ed Schultz.
Nineteen years after Robert Redford first staged his independent film festival in the mountains of Utah, the Sundance Festival is now a household name. The event has ushered many independent movies into theaters nationwide, and catapulted their makers to fame and fortune. But has Sundance's glitzy success obscured the event's original goals? Bob talks with Peter Biskind, author of "Down and Dirty Pictures: Miramax, Sundance, and the Rise of Independent Film."
For those of us who don't make it out to Park City every January, the Sundance Festival is represented by the most popular films that emerge from its screens. But in the time between the lights coming up and going back down again, the attendees themselves get down to the real business of pitching scripts, making deals, and attending parties. Last year, our friend Cami Delavigne headed out to Sundance with a script in one hand, and a tape recorder in the other.
Highlights from Past ShowsLast month, President Bush signed off on a piece of legislation that gives the FBI unprecedented powers to obtain personal information from a financial institution. It also broadens the definition of financial institution, meaning that the Feds can now obtain your credit card records without a court order. Why haven't we heard more about this? It might be because Bush signed the law on the same day that Saddam was unearthed. Or it may just be that the media alarm is seldom triggered by such gradual expansions of the government's snooping powers. Bob talks to James Dempsey of the Center for Democracy and Technology.
In 2003, fault lines between media and government widened dramatically in Britain. The most visible conflagration followed the suicide of a government scientist who was the alleged source for a controversial BBC story on pre-war intelligence. But the Beeb was not the only British news outlet that bared its claws with aggressive reporting. Brooke reviews the year with Michael Goldfarb, a London-based reporter for WBUR.
On the Media is funded by The Bydale Foundation, The Ford Foundation, The John S. and James L. Knight Foundation and the Overbrook Foundation.
