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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.
Ariel Sharon has been a public figure in Israel for most of the state's history, so his relationship with the national media runs deep. The likely final chapter began this week, as the press covered his exit from power and started wrestling with his legacy. The Jerusalem Post's Amotz Asa-el joins Brooke to reflect on how Sharon shook his image as a belligerent young "Tarzan" and developed a working relationship with the media.
Bob reflects on the difficulty of covering the mining tragedy in West Virginia, where a convergence of official misinformation, tight deadlines, and desperation for good news led to incorrect reports that 12 of the 13 miners were alive.
In the last days of 2005 the Justice Department announced it was launching an investigation into who leaked that the President had authorized the National Security Agency to wiretap people in the United States without court warrants. Whether the source was a leaker or a whistleblower, a traitor or a patriot, is unknown. What the future holds for the story's lead author, the New York Times' James Risen, is unknown too. University of Chicago Law Professor Geoffrey Stone joins Brooke to discuss the possibilities.
Leaks, part and parcel of the Fourth Estate, were and are a tremendous irritant to the Bush Administration. Back in the early days of the War on Terror, Bob produced this piece on the pros, cons and mechanisms of the ever-present, and indispensable, Washington leak.
Five years ago this week On the Media was re-launched as a nationally distributed, pre-produced hour hosted by Bob and Brooke. To mark this auspicious occasion Brooke looks back at the earlier incarnations of the show and how the media criticism beat has grown up over these years. Media crit bigwigs Howard Kurtz and Mark Jurkowitz weigh in, as do former OTM hosts Brian Lehrer and Alex Jones.
The OTM 5th anniversary celebration continues as Senior Producer Katya Rogers presents some of the very best and very worst of On the Media through the years. You'll laugh, you'll cry.
Highlights from Past ShowsOne 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 Aceh and its press are rebuilding, twelve months later.
Last week, The New York Times reported that the National Security Agency has been eavesdropping on American citizens for the past four years. The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act allows the government to conduct such operations, so long as it obtains a warrant from the FISA court. So why didn’t the NSA get the necessary paperwork? washingtonpost.com blogger William Arkin tells Brooke that the Administration offered two reasons: time and technology.
On the Media is funded by The Bydale Foundation, The Ford Foundation, The John S. and James L. Knight Foundation and the Overbrook Foundation.
