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For four years, the Bush Administration has revealed next to nothing about who it’s detaining at Guantanamo Bay. What little we know is the product mostly of habeas corpus petitions filed on behalf of the detainees. This week, Bush signed a bill that eliminates the right of detainees to pursue those petitions. Brooke speaks with Miami Herald reporter Carol Rosenberg about the implications for journalists.
When President Bush told ABC News this week that the Iraqi situation may indeed be reminiscent of the Tet Offensive, the media went wild. For many, it represented a turnaround for an administration that has consistently brushed off Vietnam comparisons. However, as Vietnam chronicler David Halberstam tells Bob, there are different ways to remember Tet. And the meaning of the president’s concession depends entirely on how he views Tet.
Three years ago, hopes were high for the newly-liberated Iraqi media. But more than a dozen Iraqi journalists have been arrested this year for “insulting public officials” and “inciting violence,” raising the spectre of Saddam-era censorship and retribution. Bob talks to Simon Haselock, former advisor to the Coalition Provisional Authority, about what happened to the legal protections for journalists that he helped create.
Army Lt. Col. Barry Johnson observed last month that the number of embedded reporters in Iraq stood officially at 11, down from a high of more than 600 in March, 2003. The Era of the Embed seems to have passed – but at what price? Brooke puts the question to Sig Christenson, president of Military Reporters & Editors.
Embedded reporters are fleeing the barracks in Iraq, leaving the burden of telling the story to the brave few un-embedded. But whereas Western reporters could once travel freely, they now rely on their Iraqi “fixers” to bring the reporting to them. Brooke tells the story of three of those fixers, pulled into journalism by a trick of fate.
Listeners weigh in on school shootings, the 10th birthday of Fox News, and the 50th birthday of the remote control.
The name Henry R. Luce is firmly enshrined in the annals of American publishing. But few remember the legendary Time editor’s erstwhile partner, Briton Hadden. And it was Hadden, not Luce, who conceived of the idea not only for Time, but of the “newsmagazine” itself. Brooke talks to Isaiah Wilner, author of a new biography of the man Luce wiped off the face of history.
In 1965, Vietnamese reporter Pham Xuan An went to work for Time. He was a tireless writer, with an unerring sense for facts amidst the fog of war, and became an invaluable source of information for American readers. Turns out he was simultaneously an invaluable source of information for the North Vietnamese, moonlighting for more than 30 years as a spy. Thomas Bass profiled An last year in The New Yorker. He tells Bob about the spy who loved us.
Highlights from Past Shows
Scarcely had the dust settled at the site of North Korea's supposed nuclear test before the finger-pointing began in Washington this week. Former East Asia correspondent Dan Sneider has been following the political fallout in the nation's dailies. He tells Bob we'd all be better off if the American press focused less on our own blame-game and more on how people in the region are reacting.
By now we know that former Congressman Mark Foley had been sending icky emails to underage congressional pages for some time. We also know that at least two Florida newspapers had tips about the emails almost a year ago. Bob talks with Neil Brown, executive editor of the St. Petersburg Times, about why his paper sat on the story. And he speaks with ABC News’ Brian Ross about why his organization ran with it.
On the Media is funded by The Bydale Foundation, The Ford Foundation, The John S. and James L. Knight Foundation and the Overbrook Foundation.
