On The Media

Unfinished Business

For over a decade one of the few places to read investigative reporting in China was the bi-weekly business magazine Caijing. That effectively ended last week when Caijing’s editor abruptly resigned along with dozens of the magazine’s top staff. Chinese media analyst Jeremy Goldkorn explains how Caijing broke journalistic ground and what China has likely lost.

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Waiting for Info

In 1989, The National Security Archive requested documents from the CIA regarding the Iran-Contra affair. This year, the CIA released them. President Barack Obama promised a new era of transparency and adherence to the Freedom of Information Act, but has he followed through? Yvette Chin, FOIA coordinator for the NSA, tells the story behind the long, long wait for information.

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Sixth Sense

Futuristic films like "The Terminator" and "Minority Report" imagine a time in which the virtual world can be projected onto the physical world. This technology, known as augmented reality, will be commercially available in the form of glasses sooner than we think, says Jamais Cascio, of the Institute for the Future. But, he warns, don’t necessarily believe they’ll be rose-colored.

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Online and Isolated?

Social scientists have long suspected that the internet contributes to our growing isolation. But Lee Rainie, director of the Pew Internet and American Life Project, set out to test that assumption. He says they found that Americans aren't as isolated as we thought and that being active on the internet might actually help prevent social isolation.

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Count Down

When Republican Senator David Vitter introduced an amendment that would require the U.S. Census Bureau to ask residents whether or not they are citizens, the Senate voted it down along party lines. As former Washington Post reporter D’Vera Cohn told us, controversy has often followed the count.

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It's Not in the P-I

When the Seattle Post-Intelligencer printed its final edition last spring, Seattle lost a newspaper and more than 100 journalists lost their jobs. One of them, science reporter Tom Paulson, solicited area-playwrights to produce "It’s Not in the P-I: A Living Newspaper about a Dying Newspaper."

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Prognosis Negative

November 13, 2009

Blue M&M's may cure paralysis! That’s just one claim made recently in a health segment on network TV. For more than three years, HealthNewsReview.org editor Gary Schwitzer has been methodically reviewing TV health news claims for accuracy and responsibility. But no more; he’s found the vast majority of TV consumer health reports sickening.

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Covering the Third War

November 06, 2009

The US is (unofficially) at war in Pakistan, where reporters face pressure to cover the search for Al Qaeda in the Taliban stronghold of South Waziristan. But the area is virtually inaccessible to most journalists and information is tightly controlled by the Pakistani military. Journalist Shahan Mufti says reporting from the region poses several ethical dilemmas.

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