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The Washington saga that has gripped journalism watchers for many months has taken another unexpected turn. Seems that storied scribe Bob Woodward may have been the first journalist contacted by the notorious Valerie Plame leaker. And he kept mum until this week. Brooke reflects on the transformation of Watergate Bob into White House Bob.
Preaching politics is protected speech in America…unless you do it from the pulpit. Religious organizations that get involved in electioneering risk getting stripped of their tax-exempt status. The debate over that rule, recently revived by an IRS audit in Pasadena, has united activists of many political stripes. Bob takes a closer look at one contentious intersection of church and state.
The storm brewing over public broadcasting unleashed another deluge this week, in the form of a long-awaited internal report about the man at the top. The report charges former Corporation for Public Broadcasting Chairman Kenneth Tomlinson with playing politics in ways that violated the letter and spirit of the law, and using his influence to put more conservatives on the air. Brooke reviews the allegations with Current reporter Karen Everhart.
With winter taking hold in the Himalayas, the human tragedy triggered by the October 8th earthquake is still very much a current emergency. But you wouldn't know it from looking at the American news-scape. In recent weeks, coverage of the quake's aftermath has been spotty in print and all but absent from TV. Bob speaks to CBS "nonbudsman" Vaughn Ververs and Washington Post foreign editor Keith Richburg about the story's downward arc.
Listeners weigh in on Bob's interview with Judith Miller and on the pro-war uses of anti-war films.
When a name-brand product shows up in a TV show, it's most likely no accident. With TV's traditional advertising model threatened by new technologies, networks are increasingly allowing marketers to integrate their pitches into the story scripts themselves. But that arrangement doesn't sit well with TV's writers. Brooke talks to Writers Guild west president Patric Verrone about the problems with product placement.
Big television is undergoing big changes - not so much in content but in how we watch it, when we watch it, and who delivers the goods. In recent weeks, ABC has partnered with iTunes, CBS with Comcast, and NBC with Direct TV. The deals will allow people to view old shows whenever they want. Bob talks to Broadcasting & Cable columnist John Higgins about the ramifications of video-on-demand.
For 75 years, baseball's top honors - the Cy Young, Rookie-of-the-Year, and MVP - have been awarded by some of the game's foremost experts: newspaper sportswriters. But some editors are objecting to the practice, saying journalists should be covering the news, not creating it. Randy Harvey, sports editor at the Baltimore Sun, tells Brooke why his paper recently banned its staffers from voting on postseason awards.
Highlights from Past ShowsThis week, as the 'auto-body-count' in France grew ever higher by night, anxiety in the press grew by day. In the U.S., headlines read “Paris is Burning” and commentary ranged from criticism of French authorities to warnings of a “clash of civilizations” that could at any moment sweep the globe. The Week’s Susan Caskie joins guest host Daljit Dhaliwal for a review of the coverage elsewhere in the world.
The BBC World Service has announced plans to close ten of its foreign language services, almost all of them in Eastern Europe, in order to start an Arabic TV service in the Middle East. Is the move purely a response to marketplace considerations? Or are there other factors at work too? Bob puts the question to Jerry Timmins, who runs the organization's operations for Africa and the Middle East.
On the Media is funded by The Bydale Foundation, The Ford Foundation, The John S. and James L. Knight Foundation and the Overbrook Foundation.
