The divide between the Black Lives Matter movement and the police is often portrayed as unbridgeable. This week: finding common ground and working on addressing the real problems of policing in America. Plus, reviewing the Republican National Convention as well as conventions past. And, after Turkey’s failed coup, a Breaking News Consumer's Handbook for how to successfully cover, and carry out, a military coup. And a Turkish journalist talks about what happened when the coup plotters took over h...
Jul 22, 2016•51 min
Brazil's crises have been very good for Sensacionalista , a site that's based on The Onion and now one of the most popular "news" sites in the country. Two years ago, the group had 30,000 likes on Facebook. Today, it has 2.8 million . At times, real Brazilian headlines can seem absurd. For example, military police killed a jaguar, the national animal, at an Olympic-torch lighting ceremony; the interim president's new cabinet only has white men; and just weeks before the Olympics, the tourism min...
Jul 20, 2016•12 min
OTM is in Brazil this week. We delve into the web of challenges ensnaring the country: a recession, crime waves, corruption scandals, the Zika virus... all in the run-up to the Olympic Games. Plus, the complex crises facing the media industry at a time when rigorous reporting is more essential than ever. And, when 30,000 journalists descend on the country from around the world in just a couple of weeks, many will likely produce facile reports about Rio's notorious favelas. We hear from activists...
Jul 15, 2016•50 min
The deaths of Alton Sterling in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, and Philando Castile in Falcon Heights, Minnesota, were both captured on video. So were the deaths of Walter Scott, Eric Garner, and so many others. That’s not new. But technology has become more and more sophisticated, and so have the bystanders using it, primed by grim history to turn the camera on, and, increasingly, involve an audience. We explore the role of Facebook Live in the events of the last week and offer you our Breaking News C...
Jul 11, 2016•13 min
This election season has been rife with misinformation, half-truths, and pure deceit... but lying in politics dates back centuries. This week we devote a whole hour to LIES: the ones our leaders tell us, and the ones we tell ourselves and each other. On the Media is supported by listeners like you. Support OTM by donating today ( https://pledge.wnyc.org/support/otm ). Follow our show on Instagram , Bluesky , TikTok and Facebook @onthemedia, and share your thoughts with us by emailing onthemedia@...
Jul 08, 2016•51 min
The Brexit fallout continues. Before he was mayor of London, Boris Johnson covered the EU... badly. We hear how his reporting created a caricature of Europe, and why that story about Brits Googling the EU is too good to be true. Plus: two stories of transparency -- good news on FOIA, and bad news on dark money. And speaking of transparency: do we know enough about the gene editing program CRISPR? Plus, Brooke explores what we learn about cloning from movies and t.v. shows, including Orphan Black...
Jul 01, 2016•51 min
This week, the Supreme Court upheld constitutional protections for abortion rights. To mark the occasion we have a story about the history of abortion in the US that first aired last winter, when the spread of Zika and the resulting deformities in newborns was causing panic across South and Central America. Abortion is illegal in those traditionally Catholic countries, but so many women were giving birth to babies with microcephaly and the brain damage associated with it, that the UN high commis...
Jun 29, 2016•11 min
Democrats in the House of Representatives staged a dramatic sit-in this week to protest inaction on gun legislation, but are they just preaching to the choir? This week, we look at bridging the gap over guns in America and how the media can better understand both sides. Plus, new algorithms claim to provide more accurate models for policing and sentencing, but they actually might be making things worse. On the Media is supported by listeners like you. Support OTM by donating today ( https://pled...
Jun 24, 2016•51 min
As the media have watched the ascent of Donald Trump with disbelief-going-on-horror, pundits have returned frequently to the question of who exactly his supporters are. Terms like "angry" and "white working class" are mentioned frequently, but the National Review several months ago put it the most pointedly and viciously. In an article lambasting Trump supporters, Kevin Williamson characterized them as lazy drug addicts, compared them to animals, and even suggested that they deserved to die. Tho...
Jun 22, 2016•14 min
The aftermath of the Orlando shootings has been marked by grief...and also politics, with LGBT rights, gun control, and terrorism all vying for center stage. We talk with a gay Muslim writer who found himself in "double jeopardy" this week, delve into the semantic tousle over the words "radical Islam," and consider whether forgetting is an appropriate response to violent extremism. Plus, as the debate over gun control ratchets up again, a look at how the meaning of the Second Amendment has evolv...
Jun 17, 2016•50 min
The attack on Pulse nightclub in Orlando has renewed calls for anti-terrorist action from politicians across the board. For presumptive Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton, this has meant a revival of her call for a government/Silicon Valley alliance that would analyze social networks in order to thwart terrorist plots and impede potential radicalization. It's an attractive solution but one, as we've explored before, that is far more complicated than it might sound. This week we revisit two conve...
Jun 15, 2016•16 min
The Associated Press declared Hillary Clinton the presumptive Democratic nominee the night before voters went to polls. We hear from the AP and consider the ethics behind their decision. Plus: How should journalists be treating Donald Trump? The presumptive GOP nominee has had a year-long codependent relationship with the media, but we may be at a turning point. Paul Waldman of The American Prospect argues that old-school investigative reporting is the best way to engage with Trump's sketchy cla...
Jun 10, 2016•50 min
This week we want to share with you a piece that we really liked from our friends at Radio Diaries . It’s a personal, revealing, surprising story told by a teen from a region that usually gets discussed only in terms of oil and conflict. For two years, Majd Abdulghani recorded an audio diary of her life in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia -- where women cannot drive, and where they only make up 16 percent of the workforce. But the society is changing, and Majd's story of studying to be a scientist, learning...
Jun 08, 2016•31 min
This week, a baby girl was born in New Jersey with microcephaly, a reminder that the Zika virus is not a distant threat. What is known and still unknown about Zika has fueled pseudoscience and paranoia. We look at a study about Zika-related conspiracy theories online, and how to debunk them. Plus: The Obama administration may soon release 28 remaining pages of the Congressional 9/11 report -- and they're likely about Saudi Arabia's role in the attacks. We dig into what's in there and why it matt...
Jun 03, 2016•50 min
Last week’s show, “ Kidnapped ,” featured an interview with Debra and Marc Tice , parents of Austin Tice, the freelance American journalist who disappeared in Syria nearly four years ago. We received many comments from people who were deeply moved by that conversation, so we thought we’d offer you a longer version. At age thirty, Austin Tice went to Syria with the purest of intentions: to report, firsthand, what befell the people there. He had little experience but a lot of verve, and nerve, ven...
Jun 01, 2016•17 min
The threat of kidnapping in Syria has made it one of the most dangerous places in the world for journalists. A special hour on how we get our news from a country that's nearly impossible to visit, and why the world's tangled policy on hostages means that some live to tell the tale, and others don't. On the Media is supported by listeners like you. Support OTM by donating today ( https://pledge.wnyc.org/support/otm ). Follow our show on Instagram , Bluesky , TikTok and Facebook @onthemedia, and s...
May 27, 2016•51 min
This week, President Obama will become the first sitting US president to visit Hiroshima. To mark the occasion, we're revisiting two segments we produced in 2005 relating to the dropping of the atomic bombs on Japan. First, author and journalist Greg Mitchell discusses the case of George Weller, the first reporter on the scene after the bombings, whose first-hand accounts of the aftermath, and the mysterious illness that followed, were never published, only to be discovered in 2005. Then, David ...
May 25, 2016•13 min
Seventy-one years after the bombing, President Obama is set to be first sitting US president to visit Hiroshima, raising questions that many are keen to avoid. Plus, revisiting a notorious murder that the press got wrong; the long reach of a WWII slogan; and attempts in Ukraine to whitewash the nation's history. A special hour on memory, both historical and personal, and how what we remember shapes our world. On the Media is supported by listeners like you. Support OTM by donating today ( https:...
May 20, 2016•51 min
There’s comedy, and there’s news, and then there’s that amalgamation of the two -- call it satire or lampoonery or, in the parlance of Jon Stewart, “Fake news.” But how does it get made? And does it help or hurt if your background is in real news? Last month Brooke moderated a discussion put on by the Journalism + Design program at The New School in New York City featuring writers and producers from The Daily Show with Trevor Noah , The Nightly Show with Larry Wilmore , and Full Frontal with Sam...
May 18, 2016•33 min
What's worse: potentially biased humans controlling the news you see or a "neutral" algorithm? Accusations that Facebook's Trending Topics feature isn't purely data-driven have highlighted the platform's power. Plus: Margaret Sullivan, the former public editor of The New York Times , is on her way to the Washington Post . How much did she change at the paper of the record? Also: Bob's take on how the political press is normalizing the presumptive GOP nominee; and a new documentary looks at Antho...
May 13, 2016•50 min
Last Tuesday Donald Trump won the Indiana primary and became the presumptive nominee of the Republican party. In the days that followed, hands were wrung over the question “how did we get this so wrong?” New York Times columnist Jim Rutenberg was particularly critical of data journalism , which one election cycle ago seemed so heroic but in Trumpworld turned out to have feet of clay. Singling out Nate Silver’s FiveThirtyEight (our partner this election cycle), Rutenberg wrote that in relying on ...
May 11, 2016•19 min
Now that Donald Trump is the presumptive Republican nominee, the nay-saying pundits have one last-ditch idea: a centrist third party candidate to save the day! Just like they said in the last election, and the one before that... This week On the Media explores the media's recurring fixation on a technocratic third party candidate and why exactly it's bogus. Plus, how the US helped create Puerto Rico's crushing debt crisis and revisiting the Iranian Revolution via video game. On the Media is supp...
May 06, 2016•50 min
The story of a man's rise from local media firebrand to out-sized TV personality superstar to political demagogue. Sound familiar? It's actually the plot of Elia Kazan's 1957 film "A Face in the Crowd", which charts the dramatic ascent of Larry "Lonesome" Rhodes, played by Andy Griffith. WNYC's Sara Fishko, host of the Fishko Files, explores what the film's story about a rise and fall can tell us about our current political moment. You can find more Fishko Files at wnyc.org/shows/fishko . On the...
May 04, 2016•8 min
The alliance between Ted Cruz and John Kasich to stop Trump was over before it began, but it's just the latest in a long history of political plots. We examine the shadowy history of election scheming, and trace the origins of the notion that the people, not politicians, should get to pick the president. Plus, how the haunting disappearance of 43 students in Mexico may finally prompt a reckoning with institutionalized violence and corruption. Also, disturbing collusion between super PACs and pre...
Apr 29, 2016•50 min
The Belfast Project is an archive of interviews with militia members from both sides of Ireland's "Troubles," the war that raged in Northern Ireland from the 1970s to the 1990s. The archives, which are housed at Boston College Library, are off-limits to the public and law enforcement, due to the fact that those interviewed agreed to speak on the condition that their testimonies not be published until their deaths. But since 2011, British authorities have launched a series of attempts to get thei...
Apr 27, 2016•15 min
It's been four hundred years since the death of William Shakespeare, and the Bard is as popular as ever... and just as mysterious. For centuries, a war has raged over the question: who is Shakespeare? We explore how the answer has evolved through the ages, and what that tells us about our changing perceptions of class, art, genius, and religion. Plus, a look at Shakespeare's enduring global relevance, with an inspiring and perilous performance of Love's Labor's Lost in Afghanistan. On the Media ...
Apr 18, 2016•50 min
With an aging listenership and the rise of podcasts, the future of NPR is thrown into question. Bob digs into the recent conversation about how the public broadcasting giant is reacting to changes in the industry, and what member stations want from the network. Then, a work of lewd satire has strained Germany's understanding of free speech -- and highlighted an uneasy relationship with Turkey. And, twenty-five years ago, the testimony of Anita Hill turned the Supreme Court confirmation hearings ...
Apr 15, 2016•50 min
Last August, Flibanserin -- or "Addyi" -- became the first FDA-approved drug aimed at treating sexual dysfunction in women. Sprout, the company that developed the so-called “female Viagra” was understandably excited, and even more so the next day when they were bought by pharmaceutical giant Valeant, for one billion dollars. But after a rocky year, Valeant announced Monday that they had dismissed the entire sales force associated with Flibanserin and would reintroduce the drug later in the year....
Apr 13, 2016•20 min
One week after the Panama Papers thrust the shadowy world of the ultra-rich into the spotlight, the massive trove of data is still being sifted as world leaders scramble to explain-away offshore accounts. How 400 journalists from 76 countries worked in secret for over a year to decipher the largest leak ever, and how we got here in the first place. On the Media is supported by listeners like you. Support OTM by donating today ( https://pledge.wnyc.org/support/otm ). Follow our show on Instagram ...
Apr 08, 2016•50 min
The Panama Papers is by sheer volume of documents the largest whistle-blower leak in history. With over 100 news organizations from over 80 countries involved it is also the largest journalistic collaboration ever. And it has already claimed its first scalp. On Tuesday, Iceland Prime Minister Sigmundur Gunnlaugsson resigned over revelations of undisclosed investments in three of Iceland’s failed banks. But the 11.5 million documents from the Panama law-firm Mossack Fonseca also expose shadowy de...
Apr 06, 2016•17 min
