In March, intelligence agencies began making some 48,000 boxes of documents removed from Iraq, gradually available online. Nobody knows for sure what information may be found inside those boxes, but journalists both mainstream and fringe are diving in with the help of translators to find out. CIA veteran Michael Scheuer likes openness but thinks this is a bad idea. He joins Brooke to discuss why.
Video News Releases are pre-produced PR products paid for by corporations or government agencies but made to look like original reported news pieces, which is how they’re often slipped into your local news with no disclaimer. The practice has been around for years, but before now nobody has quantified how pervasive and sophisticated it’s become. Diane Farsetta, a senior researcher for the Center for Media and Democracy has authored the first study of VNR’s and she explains to Bob how much of your local newscast may be an ad in news clothing.
A year ago this week, students at Red Lake Senior High School on the Ojibwa Reservation in Northern Minnesota returned to school after the most deadly school shooting since Columbine. No community can ever be prepared for a tragedy like that. But in Red Lake, the inevitable media frenzy consisted in large part of reporters who knew nothing of Ojibwa culture, and the tribe, whose Constitution says nothing about press freedom, declared much of the Reservation off limits to reporters. Louise Mengelkoch, a journalism professor at nearby Bemidji State University lays out for Bob the anatomy of a coverage breakdown.
One of the few reporters who had access to the Red Lake community and its tribal leaders after the shooting was Dorreen Yellow Bird, a reporter at the Grand Forks Herald and a Native American herself. A couple of weeks ago, Yellow Bird was asked back to Red Lake for a rare interview on the occasion of the one-year anniversary. She reports to Bob on the news from within.
For the past two and a half months, the Wisconsin State Journal has been inviting readers to its website every day to vote on one of five stories they’d like to see featured. The winner winds up on the next day’s front page. Editors had been prepared for a spike in front-page sports stories – and so were surprised by a strong preference for hard news, especially news about local politics. State Journal editor Ellen Foley talks with Brooke.
The last weekend in March, at a Marriott in Stamford, Connecticut, the 29th annual American Crossword Puzzle Tournament was held. It was a record-breaking affair, with 500 contenders. We sent our producer Mike Vuolo to the event, because as a puzzle fanatic and a published puzzle constructor (a person who writes puzzles) he was desperate to go. He came back with this report.
Highlights from Past Shows
The immigration policy debate has been brewing in for years in Washington. But when half-a-million people turned out for a massive protest last weekend in L.A., many Americans sat up in surprise. Many, that is, who hadn’t been consuming Spanish-language media, where the rally had been plugged for weeks. Bob talks to University of Southern California journalism professor Felix Gutierrez about what the Anglo mainstream missed.
In a three part order issued last week, the Federal Communications Commission levied the largest fines ever against broadcast stations for airing “indecent content.” The biggest blow was a $3.6 million fine for implied sexual situations on the CBS drama “Without a Trace.” Bob speaks with Democratic Commissioner Jonathan Adelstein, who dissented from large portions of the majority decision, but stands by the government’s right to protect against the most egregious trespasses.
On the Media is funded by The Bydale Foundation, The Ford Foundation, The John S. and James L. Knight Foundation and the Overbrook Foundation.
