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This week’s debate on wiretapping legislation centered on whether to grant immunity to the phone companies who face lawsuits from angry privacy groups. Jonathan Turley, professor at George Washington University Law School, says the phone companies shouldn’t be let off the hook.
Turkey’s vote this week, to allow military incursions into Iraqi Kurdistan, comes amid growing tensions between Turkey, the U.S. and Iraq’s semi-autonomous Kurds. The World’s Middle East correspondent Quil Lawrence explains that Iraqi Kurdistan has waged a long public relations campaign to brand itself as “the other Iraq.”
This Thursday, Congress sustained the President’s veto of an expanded Children’s Health Insurance bill. But two poster children, Bethany Wilkerson and Graeme Frost, got the lion’s share of media attention. Reporter James Carroll covered Senator Mitch McConnell’s connection to attacks on Frost.
A couple of Silicon Valley start-ups plan to market genetic testing to the masses. One possible feature is a networking component based on your DNA. Portfolio Magazine contributing editor David Ewing Duncan discusses the future of what may be a multi-billion dollar direct-to-consumer biotech industry.
A year ago, publications were touting municipal Wi-Fi as free for all and coming soon to a city near you. In recent weeks, however, the euphoria has turned to eulogies. But CNET writer Maggie Reardon says reports of Wi-Fi’s death have been exaggerated.
In his November-issue report, Harper’s editor Ken Silverstein explains how the former Massachusetts governor has been re-branded for the national market. The question now remaining is – Will you buy the product?
For the Dalai Lama, emptiness is not just a Buddhist concept—it’s an enormously successful P.R. strategy. Attacks from China don’t hurt his image either. In the wake of his Congressional Gold Medal, we look at the Dalai Lama’s enduring rock-star status in the American media.
Highlights from Past Shows
How will citizen journalists affect the media’s ongoing struggle to evolve or risk becoming obsolete? Who bears responsibility for a crowd-sourced story? Where’s the profit in it? Bob investigates.
Sen. Arlen Specter (R-PA) called Thursday’s revelation of DOJ-approved interrogation techniques “shocking.” But was it really? Not so for the nightly newscasts, which mostly had other priorities.
On the Media is funded by The Bydale Foundation, The Ford Foundation, The John S. and James L. Knight Foundation and the Overbrook Foundation.
