In Like A Lion
Last week brought the announcement that Michael Powell, lightning-rod chairman of the Federal Communications Commission for the past 4 years, would be leaving the FCC. Bob takes a look back at his stormy tenure.
Bush Gets Personal
As the Bush administration gears up for a protracted Social Security overhaul fight, its first battle appears to be one of semantics. The President used to use ‘privatization’ to describe aspects of his social security plan but it seems that word has negative connotations, so ‘personal’ has taken its place. And the press? Well, the language battle is still being fought. Bob speaks with Michael Tanner, director of the social security project at the libertarian Cato Institute. He’s been involved in designing the proposed changes both to the system…and to the language.
The Loudest Secret
This past Sunday, the Washington Post exposed extremely secret Pentagon operations in an article on the front page. The article, about the Pentagon’s secret incursions on CIA turf, is largely based on anonymous sources and secret documents. The article’s author, Barton Gellman, joins Bob to discuss the delicate process whereby government secrets wind up on page one. Artist: Built To Spill, Track: Carry The Zero, Album: Keep It Like A Zero
Names Will Never Hurt Me
In a new book, called “Code Names,” William Arkin discloses and explains some three thousand military code names, many of them still classified. These are secret names for secret programs and plans, related to weapons agreements with foreign nations, undercover counter insurgency units, or when and how to use American troops on American soil. Brooke speaks with Arkin about which secrets are safe to tell. Artist: Duke Ellington, Track: Fleurette, Album: Afric
Beaten To The Punch
This week the ACLU released thousands of pages of Pentagon documents detailing further serious abuse of Iraqi prisoners by their American captors. The Army says it has aggressively investigated these allegations, but the ACLU believes that the documents suggest otherwise. Agree or disagree, you have to give ACLU credit for exhaustively pursuing the records. So exhaustively in fact, that Eric Umansky, who surveys the newspapers for Slate, marvels to Bob that “over the past month, the biggest scoops in the news business have come from…an organization that’s not in the news business.” Artist: Majorstuen, Track: Blue, Album: Jorun Jogga
Digital Illiteracy
This week a study by the Pew Internet and American Life Project found that only one in six users of internet search engines can tell the difference between “unbiased” search results and paid advertisements. Most people can tell the difference between, say, a television show and infomercials. But digital literacy, it seems, continues to elude us. Deborah Fallows, who authored the Pew study, explains to Brooke why our digital confidence still exceeds our abilities.
Not Your Parents Aptitude Test
Educational Testing Service, the company that brought you the rank anxiety of the SAT’s, this month rolled out its newest exam – a test of digital information literacy. ETS believes that college students rely increasingly on digital information, forgoing those old-fashioned trips to the library. And if academic habits have changed you can bet that ETS has created a new way to test them. Teresa Egan, project manager of the new literacy exam, makes a case for their next generation of tests.
Stop The Adness!!!
With the EU threatening to ban all advertising of junk food to kids and our own Centers for Disease Control deep into a study on the links between advertising and obesity, the kids junk food marketing lobby is organizing to defend their “First Amendment right to advertise.” Bob talks to Slate journalist Seth Stevenson, who got up early a couple of Saturdays ago to see for himself how bad these commercials could really be.
Highlights from Past Shows
American Coronation
January 21, 2005
Thursday's coronation of President Bush as a second term president gave American viewers a taste of life in a monarchy. Bob reviews the inauguration coverage on the cable and broadcast networks.
Getting Out the Vote
January 14, 2005
If an Iraqi election takes place, but there's no one there to report it, does it make a sound? As conditions have deteriorated for foreign journalists in Iraq, they have increasingly relied on their Iraqi "fixers" for news gathering. Iraqi journalists aren't safe either - dozens have been killed since the war began. Hiwa Osman has been monitoring the state of Iraqi reporting for the Institute for War and Peace Reporting, and updates Brooke on the situation in advance of this month's elections.
On the Media is funded by The Bydale Foundation, The Ford Foundation, The John S. and James L. Knight Foundation and the Overbrook Foundation.
