The Malaysian P.M. may be unrepentant, but for journalist Gregg Easterbrook, it was a week for apologies. But it seems to be a case of too little, too late. Since invoking images of money-grubbing Jews on The New Republic's blog last week, he's been fired from his gig on ESPN and been widely accused of anti-Semitism. Bob talks to Slate.com columnist Mickey Kaus about the dangers of blogging without an editorial safety net.
Every morning, the hosts of "Daytime" on Tampa TV station WFLA cheerily deliver feature reports about local goings-on and other topics of interest. But lest the show be confused with standard newsmagazine fare, many of the guests who appear on Daytime have a more unorthodox arrangement with the producers. They've bought their airtime. Bob speaks to WFLA's president and general manager, Eric Land, about the ethics of embedding ads in regular programming.
While the newsworthiness of the stories on the nightly news is sometimes debatable, viewers can at least rest assured that the stories were produced by journalists. Or can they? Bob reports from the fuzzy territory where public relations becomes news, in the form of the ubiquitous, but largely invisible, "video news release."
Television executives were thrown for a loop this week by the latest numbers from the AC Nielsen Company. According to the ratings report, overall prime time TV viewership by men aged 18 to 34 was down by eight percent in the first three weeks of the season. Industry observers have various explanations, but most agree that the falloff in viewership is unprecedented. CBS Executive VP of Research and Planning David Poltrack is one insider who is un-phased by the report, but tells Bob that in the long run, programmers will have to confront a dwindling supply of eyeballs.
This week, The New York Times startled many of its long-time readers with a comprehensive typographical facelift. For decades, the Times has been known as the paper with five or six different typefaces on a given day's front page. But the editors decided that less was more, and so they commissioned several variations of a century-old typeface - Cheltenham - for use as its sole headline type. Bob chats with Matthew Carter, the renowned typographer called in to make the changes.
A year ago this week, armed Chechen separatists stormed into a packed Moscow theater, leading to a 57-hour standoff with Russian troops outside. The tragic end of the siege was broadcast around the world, as Russian troops overtook the Chechens with a powerful anesthetic gas, killing 129 hostages in the process. But in the two days before that, the scene inside the theater was also being documented - by one of the Chechen gunmen. Bob talks to Dan Reed, producer and director of "Terror in Moscow" - a new documentary that incorporates the terrorists' own footage.
Bob weighs in on the acrimony surrounding Bill O'Reilly's recent appearance on NPR's "Fresh Air," which ended prematurely when O'Reilly stormed out of the studio. It's true, says Garfield, that host Terry Gross may have lowered her interviewing standards for her date with the Fox News Channel's most popular bully. But if that's true, O'Reilly most definitely had it coming to him.
Highlights from Past Shows
The Chinese government's penchant for secrecy is no secret. As the People's Republic counted down to the liftoff of its first manned space voyage this week, the government was eager to tout proof of China's technological advances but at the last minute officials decided not to broadcast the liftoff live. Now that the astronaut has landed safely, the country has been awash in exultant coverage. Brooke discusses the tension between secrecy and national pride in China with Orville Schell, Dean of the Graduate School of Journalism at the University of California at Berkeley.
When Arnold the action hero morphed into Arnold the governor this week, it seemed like many members of media could not quite believe what they were reporting, despite pre-election polls which indicated an easy win for Schwarzenegger. In a recent column, Harper’s Magazine Editor Lewis Lapham chastised the eastern editors who could hardly mask their incredulity at the whole affair. He joins Brooke to discuss the election coverage.
On the Media is funded by The Bydale Foundation, The Ford Foundation, The John S. and James L. Knight Foundation and the Overbrook Foundation.
