By now we know that former Congressman Mark Foley had been sending icky emails to underage congressional pages for some time. We also know that at least two Florida newspapers had tips about the emails almost a year ago. Bob talks with Neil Brown, executive editor of the St. Petersburg ...

Apart from opinion columns and magazine pieces, news outlets tend to place any mention of civil war in the mouths of sources, or qualify it with phrases like “on the brink of” and “risks descending into.” Brooke asks New York Times Deputy Foreign Editor Ethan Bronner why.

Yet another shoe dropped in the Valerie Plame saga this week. It seems the original source for columnist Bob Novak’s scoop wasn’t Karl Rove or Scooter Libby. According to a new book by two beltway reporting vets, it was Richard Armitage, erstwhile Deputy Secretary of State and early critic of ...

The view from here is that Iran is a closed society with no outside (aka Western) news, information, or entertainment slipping in. Is it true? Or, are Iranians offered a variety of global views via satellite television and the internet? As America’s diplomatic stalemate with Iran becomes increasingly prominent in ...

Whenever news media turn their attention to the Middle East, accusations of bias – from all sides – are sure to follow. This week was no exception. But the story’s a little different than it’s been in the past, and bias aside, American media haven’t quite adjusted to the new ...

The press took a tongue-lashing from politicos this week for reporting how the government tracked terrorists through the global banking industry. Bob talks with Heather Mac Donald, of the Manhattan Institute, who believes the New York Times in particular is a national security threat. Not so, says Scott Armstrong of ...

Sticks and stones, among other things, continue to break bones in Iraq. But this week’s best-covered (if not bloodiest) battle took place on Capitol Hill, and was all about names. Republicans seized on Dems’ disagreement about troop withdrawals, accused their opponents of defeatism, and taunted them for wanting to “cut ...

As news of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi’s death spread around the world Thursday, the photo of his lifeless face was nearly impossible to miss. For U.S. and Iraqi security forces, the image of Zarqawi – dead, mounted, and framed – represented a decisive victory. But RAND Corporation terrorism expert Bruce Hoffman ...

What are fringe politicians who want to stand out on Capitol Hill to do? Or a politico with a pet issue for the national stage? Here’s an idea: announce a run for president. New Republic Senior Editor Michael Crowley tells Brooke some of the many reasons why a hopeless candidate ...

With a new mayoral candidate poised to unseat New Orleans mayor Ray Nagin, there’s been much talk about the extent to which Hurricane Katrina changed the complexion of the city. But the floods also wrought deep changes to the decades-old contours of the local newspaper and broadcasting scenes. Last week, ...

This week, White House press secretary Scott McClellan told reporters something they didn’t know. To wit: he will soon be stepping down, for good, from the podium. Reporters might have seldom gotten what they wanted from his daily briefings. But taken as a whole, his tenure speaks volumes about the ...

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, ...

A sudden flourishing of investigative journalism in China has created a Wild West atmosphere – crusading reporters and editors blazing away at the powers that be. But this is taking place in the authoritarian East, where communist party officials make examples of news organizations deemed too quick on the draw. ...

Vice President Cheney was at the center of several serious stories this week. The one about how he shot his friend and didn’t tell the press definitely won the most coverage, but it also became a symbol for the other more complicated stories about cherry-picking intelligence in the lead-up to ...

Rarely does a debate over free speech include as many people, in as many different countries, as has the Danish "cartoon controversy." In the months after a series of caricatures of the Prophet Mohammed were published in Denmark, Muslims in Europe and the Middle East have responded with boycotts and ...

The NSA’s warrant-less wiretapping program has generated the first of what are likely to be many legal challenges. The ACLU accuses the government of violating the constitutional rights of a group of academics, activists, and journalists, all of whom believe they may have been monitored. But lawyer Jonathan Turley tells ...

This week, Prime Minister Ariel Sharon suffered a severe stroke that threatened his life and effectively ended his political career. International Editor of the Week Magazine, Susan Caskie joins Bob for a look at how the news was covered in newspapers in the U.S., Europe and the Middle East.

One year ago this week, an earthquake under the Indian Ocean triggered a massive tsunami that left huge swaths of death and destruction across South and South East Asia. In the Indonesian province of Aceh, everything was devastated, including the media. Bob talks to Kathleen Reen of Internews about how ...

Last week, the British tabloid The Daily Mirror alleged that in the spring of 2004, President Bush suggested bombing the Qatar headquarters of al-Jazeera. The U.S. press has trod lightly on the story, which was based on a leaked memo that has not yet been published. But the rest of ...

This week, as the 'auto-body-count' in France grew ever higher by night, anxiety in the press grew by day. In the U.S., headlines read “Paris is Burning” and commentary ranged from criticism of French authorities to warnings of a “clash of civilizations” that could at any moment sweep the globe. ...