USA Today is wrapping up its investigation of one of its own - former reporter Jack Kelley. So far, the paper says there is strong evidence that the 21-year veteran of the paper and five-time Pulitzer finalist fabricated substantial portions of at least eight major stories, and that his "journalistic sins" were "sweeping and substantial." Bob talks to Salon contributing writer John Gorenfeld about why readers were so willing to believe in Kelley's oft-colorful dispatches.
After the fall of Saddam, there was much excitement about Iraq's burgeoning media. Suddenly, there were hundreds of newspapers on newsstands, and journalists were free to practice their craft unimpeded by regime censors. The only problem - they weren't exactly sure how to. Brooke talks to Hiwa Osman, an Iraqi Kurd employed by the London-based Institute for War and Peace Reporting to train Iraqi journalists.
Most of what we know about what, when, and how much media is consumed by Americans we know from researchers at places like the Pew Research Center. And most of what they know comes from phone interviews with Americans themselves. Recently, skeptical researchers at Ball State University set out to test the reliability of this methodology. They discovered that people consume more than twice the amount of media than they claim over the phone. Bob talks to Ball State Telecommunications Professor Bob Papper, who co-authored the study.
When you spin the radio dial, you know when you've hit National Public Radio. Its particular voice has been loved, derided and parodied for years. This week, NPR announced that one of its signature voices will make way for a new one. After 25 years as host of Morning Edition, Bob Edwards will leave his post on April 30th. Bob takes a few minutes on the other side of the microphone to reflect on his departure with Brooke.
Bob and Brooke read from listeners' letters.
Spreading the message of American goodwill to an ever more hostile Middle East is no easy task. Before Radio Sawa, Al Hurra TV and Hi Magazine, the State Department recruited advertising executive Charlotte Beers to create a series of mini-documentaries on American Muslims. The mini-docs were booed off the air in the Arab world as nothing more than slick ads, and eventually Beers left the post. Beers and Bob discuss the perils of public diplomacy.
From MTV to Jack Daniels to Pizza Hut, it's not hard to market American products overseas. But that doesn't mean it's easy to sell America itself. Bob explores how business strategies could be used by diplomats to exchange Brand America for the hearts and minds of the rest of the world.
Highlights from Past Shows
With many Democrats steaming over revelations about the White House's efforts to get its Medicare overhaul approved last fall, media watchers this week were also wagging their fingers at the Administration's subsequent effort to take its Medicare message to the people. At issue is a government-produced "video news release," in which a script prepared by the Department of Health & Human Services was packaged to look like a regular news report. Brooke examines the controversy, and the mechanisms by which the VNR made its way into newscasts on 40 local stations.
Days after the Bush re-election campaign released its first round of TV ads, three anti-Bush ad campaigns hit the airwaves in 17 battleground states. Democratic challenger John Kerry's advisers are welcoming the ads, but are not involved with their production. And according to Bush-backers, that makes the ads illegal. Brooke talks to Democratic media consultant Karl Struble about what recent campaign-finance legislation means for election-oriented ads.
On the Media is funded by The Bydale Foundation, The Ford Foundation, The John S. and James L. Knight Foundation and the Overbrook Foundation.
