On The Media is produced by:
At a joint media appearance by Tony Blair and George Bush this week, a Reuters reporter asked about the Downing Street Memo, which allegedly proves the Bush administration was planning for war eight months before the invasion. And suddenly the memo was in play in the American press - even though reporters have known about it for more than a month. Bob talks to USA Today reporter Mark Memmott about the nature of the coverage.
A certain anxiety has been visible for some time in the headlines of the nation's hottest real estate markets. Namely, how long can housing prices keep going up? Bob talks with Slate.com columnist Daniel Gross about media coverage of what many fear to be a housing bubble, and why everyone wants to get on the record before the bubble bursts in journalism's face…again.
In 2001, Slate.com deputy editor David Plotz set out to tell the tale of a millionaire businessman turned modern eugenicist, who wanted to impregnate young women with the sperm of Nobel prize-winning men. But Plotz himself became part of the narrative when he brought together family members, helping to propel the very story he was reporting. He talks to Bob about his jump from journalist to middleman.
In the previous interview with David Plotz, you might have noticed that Bob invoked the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle. He used it to convey the idea that observers necessarily affect the outcome of whatever they observe. But it turns out that Bob's fluency with science analogies is somewhat lacking, and a Nexis search shows he's not the only one. Scientific American editor in chief John Rennie joins Bob to clear up the confusion.
In much of Africa, the media's role in combating HIV/AIDS has been confined for many years to the bloodless recitation of government statistics - reporting that's done little to increase public awareness. Enter Internews, a group that trains local journalists to better understand the underlying science of the epidemic and to report on it from a more human perspective. Bob speaks with Internews advisors Cece Fadope and Mia Malan, resident advisors in Nigeria and Kenya.
What does The Communist Manifesto have in common with The Feminine Mystique? Both are among the top ten most harmful books of the 19th and 20th centuries, as determined by a panel of conservative thinkers assembled by Human Events Magazine. Herb London, president of the Hudson Institute, was among the judges. He joins Bob to discuss the danger of books.
Conventional wisdom holds that too much TV watching is bad for you. But how bad is it, exactly? And is some programming less unhealthy than others? Luckily, scientists worldwide are hard at work determining the precise effects of television on the human subject. In the interest of keeping listeners up to date with the latest research, we bring you the highlights of the past year in media studies.
Once upon a time, latchkey kids could curl up to the TV for dramatized versions of the more vexing issues of adolescence. Bullying, parental divorce, teen pregnancy, and the dangers of drugs were just some of the topics addressed in ABC's After School Specials, which aired from 1972 through 1988. OTM's Sarah Lemanczyk reports on how the series plays in 2005.
Highlights from Past ShowsThis week, journalism's most mysterious anonymous source, Deep Throat, revealed himself to be former G-man W. Mark Felt. Media portrayals have cast him, alternatively, as a crusader driven by affection for the Bureau or a disaffected bureaucrat with an axe to grind. Bob reflects on the media's final installment of the "kind of crazy &$!#@ story" that imbeds itself in the psyche of a nation.
Photographs of American soldiers killed in Iraq are a window onto the cold reality of war there. Does that mean we should see those images in our morning papers? So far, the answer from editors seems to be no. LA Times media writer Jim Rainey surveyed eight major newspapers, and joins Brooke to discuss what he found.
On the Media is funded by The Bydale Foundation, The Ford Foundation, The John S. and James L. Knight Foundation and the Overbrook Foundation.
