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When ABC broadcast its exclusive health-care-reform town hall meeting with President Obama on Wednesday, one group cried foul. The Media Fairness Caucus, newly formed with some 40 Republican House members, wrote to ABC News president David Westin to complain that Obama wouldn't, couldn't be challenged enough to satisfy them. Both Westin and Caucus head Rep. Lamar Smith of Texas weigh in.
Last week, NPR Ombudsman Alicia Shepard caused a minor uproar after responding to angry emails from listeners over NPR's use of the phrase "enhanced interrogation techniques" to describe treatment of terrorism suspects under the Bush Administration. Shepard talks about NPR's policy and her own opinion on the use of the word "torture."
This week, the Iranian government continued a harsh crackdown on protests and on news outlets covering them. Journalists were expelled from the country. Some were arrested. Others, like Tehran Bureau's Jason Rezaian, were under such severe restrictions that they couldn't effectively report. So Rezaian decided to leave and explains why.
Ross Douthat and Ezra Klein are two new opinion writers at the New York Times and the Washington Post. Both started out in the blogosphere, and both are young - Klein 25, Douthat 29. The two discuss whether they may have actually lost a measure of influence by moving from the net to traditional media.
A few weeks ago Ron Lieber, the New York Times "Your Money" columnist, faced a predicament. He'd undertaken an ambitious research project about student loans that he couldn't possibly finish by his deadline. So he came clean and asked readers for help. Lieber explains his journalistic experiment in mea culpa, crowdsourcing and subtly expanding the print pages of the Times.
In the past few years, "The O'Reilly Factor" has adopted an old tradition from "60 Minutes"-era TV journalism: the ambush interview. We talk to John Cook, investigations editor for Gawker, who says that Bill O'Reilly uses the ambush to settle personal scores. Plus, OTM producer PJ Vogt describes shadowing Cook as he tried to ambush an ambusher.
Legendary producer Lowell Bergman worked for "60 Minutes" for nearly fifteen years. He describes the ambush interview's surprising origins and thorny legal history. He also explains why reporter Mike Wallace eventually stopped using the technique.
Highlights from Past Shows
The world watched the historic demonstrations against the Iranian regime this week. By Friday, the government had clamped down hard on journalists, whose reporting credentials were not renewed, and inside Iran access to the outside world was hard to come by. UCSD Professor Babak Rahimi was in Tehran and described his feeling of isolation.
25 years ago the Russian computer programmer Alexey Pajitnov created the ur-video game Tetris. Simple to play, hard to win and ubiquitous, the game continues to frustrate and entertain the masses. We speak with Pajitnov about how he started the shapes falling.
On the Media is funded by The Bydale Foundation, The Ford Foundation, The John S. and James L. Knight Foundation and the Overbrook Foundation.
