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With tensions escalating between Washington and Tehran, and the IAEA trying to cut through both sides’ spin, some in the intelligence community are getting an eerie sense of déjà vu. Guest host Mark Jurkowitz talks to McClatchy Newspapers foreign affairs correspondent Warren Strobel about what journalists can do this time to avoid the mistakes they made in the lead-up to the Iraq war.
In 1971, Daniel Ellsberg leaked the Pentagon Papers to The New York Times. Now, with bellicosity about Iran in the Beltway air, Ellsberg is renewing his call for insiders to leak. He and Brooke discuss the tension between government employees’ contract to keep secrets and their oath to uphold the Constitution.
Maher Arar is not a terrorist, according to a report released this week by a government commission in Ottawa. The document describes how Canadian and U.S. law enforcement blunders led to Arar’s deportation to his native Syria, where he was held for ten months as a suspected Al Qaeda sympathizer and tortured. Toronto Globe and Mail columnist Margaret Wente tells Mark Jurkowitz how the Mounties used the media to help smear Arar.
The Associated Press revealed this week that its Pulitzer Prize-winning photographer, Bilal Hussein, has been detained by the U.S. military since April. Military officials say they believe Hussein has close ties to insurgents. The AP says “then charge him with something!” AP executive editor Kathleen Carroll speaks with Mark Jurkowitz.
When E. coli made its way into a California spinach field, it brought down a vegetable that has enjoyed a remarkable run in the popular imagination. But how did the vegetable acquire its reputation as the leafy-green-that-could? Brooke speaks with food writer Michael Pollan about the spinach industry’s successes – and failures – in creating the super food.
Former Virginia governor and presidential hopeful Mark Warner recently took one small step for politicians, when he became the first major politician to deliver a press conference in Second Life, a virtual online world. Warner tells Brooke why his campaign schedule included Second Life, and why he’ll be stumping there again.
Second Life is not a game, its creators and residents insist, but rather a virtual world, with an ever-growing population. It attracts real-world investors like Harvard University, and real-world performers like Suzanne Vega. Brooke speaks with economists, gamers, politicians and journalists about the lure of reinventing the real-world online. And she goes inside to take a look for herself.
Highlights from Past ShowsIt was billed as a non-partisan reflection on the fifth anniversary of 9/11. But scarcely was the president’s speech over on Monday before the media lit up with arguments over its political content. As for us, we were hardly surprised to hear a politician talking politics – especially in the midst of an election season. But did the reflexive quality of the ensuing debate obscure a level of vitriol that was newsworthy in itself?
President Bush’s description and defense this week of U.S. standards for interrogating terror suspects put the issue of torture back in the news. In 2003, Abu-Ghraib caused a flurry of attention. But much of what we know about U.S. torture policies is the result of dogged reporting. Eric Umansky surveyed post-9/11 torture reporting for the Columbia Journalism Review, and tells Bob what the coverage teaches us about the press.
On the Media is funded by The Bydale Foundation, The Ford Foundation, The John S. and James L. Knight Foundation and the Overbrook Foundation.
