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Since 1912, when they decided to insert a toy in every box, the makers of Crackerjack haven’t done much to promote their product. But the caramel-coated popcorn and peanut snack survived for more than a century, anyway, perhaps because of one fateful reference -- in the song “Take Me Out to the Ballgame.” Mike looks into the greatest example of product placement in history.
Reporters rarely get a second chance to correct the record. But British reporter Peter Pringle did three years ago when the British government decided to reopen the inquiry into Bloody Sunday, the massacre that took place in the city of Derry, Northern Ireland, thirty years ago this week. Brooke takes at look this tragic event and the role reporters played in revealing the truth.
Looking back on 2001, the event that dwarfs the rest, of course, is the one that shook the country - and our own offices in lower Manhattan, to the core. OTM’s Producer at Large Mike Pesca assembled this look back at the first two days of coverage after the Twin Towers fell.
It’s an English holiday tradition: the Queen’s annual speech of good will toward men broadcast on TV and radio every Christmas afternoon. The Brits, however, may be tiring of it, since viewership has plummeted in the past decade. OTM’s Gareth Mitchell reports from London.
Since the war in Afghanistan began, up until this week, there was a virtual blackout of the words and image of Osama bin Laden in the U.S. media. It made Brooke wonder how bin Laden coverage compares to Hitler’s during World War II. Historian and archivist J. Fred McDonald discusses how much airtime America has historically afforded its enemies.
The Daily News is publishing a book of 80 years of photographs taken in New York City. Brooke talks to retired New York journalist Pete Hamill about the stories the photos tell, and the Big Apple’s history in black and white.
Brooke compares the current propaganda campaign by the Bush administration to US propaganda throughout the 20th Century and the role the media play in spreading the message of the government.
Ottomar Rudolf was born into Nazi Germany and grew up in the Hitler Youth. Then one day he realized that everything he’d been taught was a lie. Brooke speaks to him about overcoming indoctrination.
