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15 years ago, riots raged across Los Angeles and TV screens worldwide. Much of the media portrayed the riots as a response to the beating of Rodney King. But historian Mike Davis says that simple narrative did L.A. another injustice: it ignored the reality on the ground.
In 2002, a handful of lawmakers were privy to classified intel about Iraqi WMD. Behind closed doors, there was uncertainty. But in public, Bush officials told a different story. Senator Dick Durbin explains why he didn’t blow the whistle when it might have made a difference.
Estimates of civilians killed in Iraq range from 60,000 to 600,000. Now the Iraqi government is clamping down on the last remaining source for official numbers. L.A. Times Baghdad correspondent Tina Susman says her paper is keeping count anyway.
More on this topic:
But Who’s Counting
Innocent Accounting Errors
The New Math
Since the beginning of the Iraq war, blogs by soldiers and marines have provided one of the clearest pictures of life as a grunt. Now, the Army is cracking down on military blogs. Retired paratrooper and blogger Matthew Burden says it’s a death sentence for combat blogging. But Army Major Ray Ceralde defends the new rules.
More on this topic:
I Wanna Be a Soldier Blogger
This year’s winner in the prestigious World Press Photo Contest is from last year’s war in Lebanon. It’s a complicated image, and has been misunderstood by more than one caption writer. Spencer Platt talks about how his photo came into being.
Rupert Murdoch has made a serious bid for the Dow Jones Company. For years, the parent company of The Wall Street Journal has dismissed suitors, but analysts believe it may finally entertain offers. New Republic editor Franklin Foer explains what's at stake.
For some Indians, Richard Gere’s awkward embrace with Bollywood actress Shilpa Shetty was not just offensive, it was criminal. NYU professor Tejaswini Ganti says the incident plays into the mixed messages about Indian women perpetuated by Bollywood.
In Gwalior, India, women with no journalistic training, and often no education, are writing about their grievances in the newspaper Mahila Paksh. New Delhi-based reporter Mridu Khullar says their reporting has led to extraordinary changes.
Highlights from Past Shows
When former Russian president Boris Yeltsin died this week, a near-universal chorus of obituarists declared his legacy mixed. He may have ushered in democracy and a free press, but he failed to build the institutions to sustain them.
NBC News’s decision to broadcast Cho Seung-Hui’s final message earned the network major ratings, and a heap of criticism. But you had to look north of the border to find a major news outlet that didn’t follow NBC’s lead. CBC editor in chief Tony Burman explains why the CBC left the manifesto alone.
On the Media is funded by The Bydale Foundation, The Ford Foundation, The John S. and James L. Knight Foundation and the Overbrook Foundation.
