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After the votes were tallied this week, pundits continued to debate how much the Iowa caucuses really matter. But if there's any lesson we take away from Iowa, it's that the media love a winner, and love to hate a loser. And according to National Journal media critic Bill Powers, the theatrical coverage of the rise and fall of candidates follows the same predictable stages as celebrity tales of triumph over adversity. Bob parses the coverage with Powers.
When the candidates left the stage on Thursday after the final debate before primary season, there was no rest - yet - for the weary. Instead, they moved on to the spin room, where the reporters asked questions that hadn't been asked in the debate, and the candidates reiterated their messages. New Hampshire Public Radio's Raquel Maria Dillon sent us this postcard from the spin room after a debate last month.
Last month, a small community of webloggers decided they were fed up with the coverage that their favorite Democratic candidate was getting in the mainstream press. They decided to take matters into their own hands, and one by one began to "adopt" reporters whose work they would critique on their own websites. Is this new corps of citizen media critics an inevitable outgrowth of the Internet Age? Or is there something about Campaign '04 that invited an army of reporter watchdogs? Perhaps, suggests Brooke, it's a combination of both.
Looking back over the history of politics in the TV age, there are more than a few examples of people dragged into infamy by a single image of themselves. And so it was with Governor Howard Dean this week, whose performance at a spontaneous pep rally in Iowa resonated almost instantaneously around the world. Bob reflects on the media's iconography of the ridiculous, through which the real person is left on the cutting room floor.
There weren't many surprises in this year's State of the Union Address, at least as far as the camera angles were concerned. We saw the usual well-timed cuts from the President to audience members with an apparent connection to his speech. As always, there was the sense that the camera operators were operating with a copy of the speech, a seating chart and a game plan. Who makes that plan? This year, it was ABC producer Peter Doherty. He tells Brooke how it all works.
In Saddam Hussein's Iraq, the range of children's books reflected the world that young people were being raised to live in. But since the fall of Baghdad, titles like "Tanks in the Night" and "The Story of Nationalisation" are disappearing from bookstores. In their place, publishers are now offering the kind of child-oriented fare more recognizable here. Hiwa Osman of the Institute for War & Peace Reporting joins Bob to discuss Baghdad's changing publishing landscape.
This month, the Pentagon contracted an American company, Harris Corp., to run the much-criticized Iraqi Media Network, now called al-Iraqiya. Harris Corp.'s partner will be the Lebanese Broadcasting Corporation International. It's not surprising that the respected and well-rounded LBCI was chosen for the project. But some have wondered why an Arab media outlet would cooperate with the reconstruction effort in Iraq, considering how much that effort is scorned by much of the Arab public. Brooke speaks with Michael Young, opinion editor of the Daily Star in Beirut.
Last week in Atlanta, a group of journalists with very different backgrounds gathered to discuss war reporting. There were two who covered the war in Iraq, one who covered World War II and Vietnam, a senior executive from CNN, and the producer of a new documentary about war coverage. Among other things, they talked about how much government interference and a journalist's own allegiances influence the reporting we see. Reporter Joshua Levs moderated the discussion, and filed this report.
Highlights from Past ShowsWith 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.
Last 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.
On the Media is funded by The Bydale Foundation, The Ford Foundation, The John S. and James L. Knight Foundation and the Overbrook Foundation.
