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Last time the Obama Administration pitched its plan for economic recovery, Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner was ridiculed for his lack of details and shaky performance. This week, Geithner was mostly hidden from the cameras and Obama did the selling. Political reporter Peter Nicholas says the Pitchman-in-Chief was pretty much everywhere.
With no armistice, surrender or fanfare a war may have quietly come to an end this week. The 'War on Terror' is being replaced rhetorically by the Pentagon and the president with 'Overseas Contingency Operation.' Political Communications professor Kathleen Hall Jamieson looks back at our most recent metaphorical war and what was won and lost.
Newly elected Salvadoran President Mauricio Funes is not your typical politico; after all, he made a name for himself as a war reporter and television journalist. Writer Roger Atwood says that it was Funes’ media experience that gave him the edge.
Last Tuesday a British student logged onto a message board and announced that he was going to burn down his school. Fifty minutes later he was arrested with a gas can and a knife after another member of the message board, on the other side of the world, alerted authorities. JP Neufeld explains why he called the police.
Forty-five years ago, Kitty Genovese was murdered in Queens and, as the story goes, 38 witnesses watched the assault for half an hour but no one intervened. Historian Joseph De May says the truth is a bit more complicated.
With Google having settled its copyright suit with authors and publishers, the company is now poised to be a modern Library of Alexandria with full texts of millions of titles online. Robert Darnton, director of the Harvard University Library, loves the access but wonders at what cost.
The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, a.k.a. the Stimulus bill, passed last month in a firestorm of debate, but how many people have actually sat down to read the whole thing? The New Yorker's Steve Coll is doing just that, and blogging along the way.
For booksellers, hotel guests, and the faithful, one book remains a mainstay – The Bible. But despite the book’s unending popularity, for many it remains a daunting read. Enter Slate columnist David Plotz, who decided to scour the Good Book cover-to-cover, and blog about it for the unschooled among us. Plotz explained to us a few years back why he put his analysis online.
Highlights from Past Shows
There’s a name for how cruel people can get given a little anonymity on the internet. It’s called “online disinhibition effect” and the resulting venom can ruin your day or worse, destroy your good name. Bob looks at the fraught relationship on the web between reputation, privacy and the law.
The basic architecture of the Internet hasn't changed since it was conceived 40 years ago. But what was once the playground of wonks is now the main staging area for the global economy and open to an array of security vulnerabilities. Brooke talks with Internet experts who ponder a vexing conundrum: adjustments that increase security simultaneously hamper innovation.
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On the Media is funded by The Bydale Foundation, The Ford Foundation, The John S. and James L. Knight Foundation and the Overbrook Foundation.
