TopicsOn The Media is produced by:
Legendary broadcaster Alistair Cooke died this week at the age of 95. For most Americans, Cooke was known as the erudite host of the PBS series Masterpiece Theatre. But for his fellow Britons, Cooke was much more esteemed for his weekly radio dispatches from across the pond, in the BBC's "Letter from America." Brooke reflects on the life and legacy of Alistair Cooke.
When you spin the radio dial, you know when you've hit National Public Radio. Its particular voice has been loved, derided and parodied for years. This week, NPR announced that one of its signature voices will make way for a new one. After 25 years as host of Morning Edition, Bob Edwards will leave his post on April 30th. Bob takes a few minutes on the other side of the microphone to reflect on his departure with Brooke.
This week, one of television's formative personalities passed away. During his reign at the helm of the Tonight Show between 1957 and 1962, Jack Paar chatted with rising stars and established ones. In the process, he showed America the human side of some of the world's most famous and powerful people. Brooke reflects on the career of Jack Paar.
Last week, we got news of a catastrophic earthquake in Iran, a fatal mudslide and another earthquake in California, and a deadly avalanche in Utah. This week, there was another landslide, of sorts, in New York. A Bronx man was rescued after being trapped for two days under a pile of magazines, newspapers, books and junk mail in his apartment. Brooke wonders how much really separates his story from that of the rest of us.
On Thursday, the cable news networks were manic with breaking news. Anchors stoically yanked viewers from one story to another, alternately reporting on twin bombings in Istanbul, street protests in Miami, President Bush's visit to London, and Michael Jackson's impending surrender to California authorities. But the networks' schizophrenia couldn't last, and by afternoon one story had emerged as the clear winner of America's wall-to-wall attention. Brooke and Bob meditate on the world according to cable news.
A new movie out this month depicts the rise and very dramatic fall of the former journalist, Stephen Glass. In 1998 he was exposed as a fraud by his own editor at the New Republic and was immediately fired. In the aftermath it was discovered that most of what he had submitted during his short but stunning career had been fabricated. David Plotz is a writer for Slate and is married to Hannah Rosin, a former colleague of Glass. He spoke to Brooke about the experience of seeing a version of his wife on the big screen.
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.
Comedian Bob Hope, who died early this week at the age of 100, was an American cultural institution and a mass media phenomenon in films, radio and TV. He even had a website of his jokes. But he also filled another role, widely ignored in the coverage surrounding his death. He was the successor of Will Rogers and the predecessor of Johnny Carson as a "public oracle," in his day the preeminent ridiculer of officialdom. Bob speaks with William Robert Faith, colleague and biographer of Bob Hope.
