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This week, the 2006 Pulitzer Prize winners were announced. Almost immediately, some slammed the awards as showing an anti-Bush bias. Escaping the controversy was Washington Post fashion writer Robin Givhan, winner of the prize for criticism. But a closer look at her writing shows that in Washington, even getting dressed in the morning can be a political act. Brooke chats with Givhan about what’s under our leaders’ clothes.
To many Latinos, the immigration policy debate is plagued by all sorts of misunderstandings about immigrants themselves. But a columnist for the OC Weekly in Orange County, California is doing what he can to change that. Gustavo Arellano started inviting readers to “Ask a Mexican” as a joke, but has continued to provide real information to combat stereotypes. Bob Asks-a-Mexican about the power of a column.
Knight Ridder, publisher of 32 papers across the country, was bought this week by the McClatchy Company – an outfit roughly half its size. McClatchy plans to keep only 20 of its newly-purchased properties and put the rest up for sale. Buzz Merritt was a Knight-Ridder employee for more then 40 years and is the author of Knightfall. Merritt joins Bob to explain why the newspaper industry might not go gently into that good night.
The Newspaper Guild represents the interests of some 34,000 journalists and they’re preparing to bid on the 12 newspapers that McClatchy is selling. If their offer is successful the purchase will create an unprecedented chain in which employees own the majority of the stock and thus the papers themselves. Linda Foley, president of the Newspaper Guild, discusses the deal with Bob.
If China can limit the reach of American media companies, it can completely quash its own recalcitrant party-run publications. In late January, the Propaganda Department shut down Freezing Point, a popular weekly insert to the China Youth Daily. Although the supplement was known for taboo reporting on farmer protests and other social unrest, New York Times Beijing Bureau Chief Joseph Kahn tells Bob that it wasn't one of those stories that put the freeze on Freezing Point.
It was only a handful of newspaper cartoons, but it was apparently enough to trigger angry protests - some of them violent - throughout the Middle East and Asia. This week, Bob gets several perspectives on the uproar over the Danish Mohammed caricatures. First, he talks to an American newspaper editor who quit after his bosses refused to reprint the images. Then, he speaks with a law scholar who's worried by the post WW-II European legal tradition of restricting hate speech and "incitement." And finally, he hears from a Middle East historian, who thinks that framing the controversy as a free speech conflict misses the real story.
Rarely does a debate over free speech include as many people, in as many different countries, as has the Danish "cartoon controversy." In the months after a series of caricatures of the Prophet Mohammed were published in Denmark, Muslims in Europe and the Middle East have responded with boycotts and angry demonstrations. This week the tension escalated, after several European newspapers reprinted the images. Bob discusses the flap with Susan Caskie of The Week.
Newspapers around the world reprinted sections of Pope Benedict's first encyclical this week. No problem. But if you'd like to use a portion of the Pope's writing in a book you're working on - get ready to pay up. The Vatican publishing house will henceforth enforce copyright fees on the reprinting of its texts. Bob discusses the implications with John Allen, Vatican correspondent for the National Catholic Reporter.
