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After a summer of intensely scrutinizing the Bush Administration's selling of the war in Iraq, many media outlets seem to be backing off. But not the Washington Post. More and more, the paper that expressed editorial sympathy for the war has relentlessly pursued government misrepresentations of the Iraqi threat. Bob talks to Washington Post Executive Editor Leonard Downie.
The media is frothing with every development in the Kobe Bryant story. It has all the elements of an American scandal - money, celebrity, sex…and race. Long before jury selection and the first utterance of defense, the media have begun to speculate on the role of race in the case. Bob talks with Leon Wynter, author of American Skin: Pop Culture, Big Business, and the End of White America, about whether the media can afford to play the race card with the prince of the NBA.
Two years after being conspicuously passed over for the top job at the New York Times, Bill Keller was named Executive Editor of the paper this week. He replaces Howell Raines, who resigned in disgrace last month in the wake of the Jayson Blair scandal, but who maintains that he was just trying to do what was best for the paper. Brooke speaks with Keller about the job that lies ahead.
It was another week of eyebrow-raising for New York Times-watchers, after Washington Post columnist Howard Kurtz raised serious questions about the war reporting of the NYT's Judith Miller. According to Kurtz's sources, Miller wielded so much power as an embed that she actually influenced the military decision-making process. Brooke talks to Slate columnist Jack Schafer about Kurtz's expose.
When The Washington Post first reported the capture and rescue of Private Jessica Lynch, some critics challenged the paper's reliance on "battlefield intelligence" and unnamed sources. This week, the Post revisited the story with a lengthy investigation that acknowledged the facts were "far more complex and different" than initial reports. Brooke talks to Dana Priest, a staff writer for the Washington Post who contributed to both iterations of the Lynch story.
Try as they might, newspapers can never completely correct the record. Once an error goes to press, it becomes part of history. But online publications can simply fix the gaffe, and in doing so make the error disappear forever. Brooke and Slate Editor Jacob Weisberg take a look at corrections in the age of ones and zeroes.
The eyes of journalists around the world may be turning away from Baghdad, but Baghdadis themselves have more options than ever for reading about their city. A recent estimate pegged the number of new newspapers in Baghdad at more than 100, up from just five during Saddam's reign. NPR's Deb Amos gives Brooke a view from the ground, and tells Brooke about how the American occupiers are attempting to manage the explosion of new voices.
The New York Times may have to hand over one of its Pulitzers as penance for a journalistic sin committed 7 decades ago. The Pulitzer Board is reviewing its 1932 prize for Moscow correspondent Walter Duranty, who deliberately suppressed information about the famine that killed millions of Ukranians on his watch. Bob talks with historian Bert Patenaude about Duranty's prize-winning disinformation.
