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Minding the Media
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KCRW's media critic Nick Madigan takes a weekly look at how reporters for newspapers, television and other media are doing their jobs. He explores their methods, evaluates their results and questions their thinking. With his own strong background as a reporter, Nick understands how journalism works, and when it doesn't, he's not afraid to say so.
RECENT SHOWS
Swooning over Obama
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Looking at today's primary in New Hampshire, it's easy to see the extent to which Barack Obama has supplanted Hillary Clinton as the Democrats' front-runner, at least if you heed the pundits...
Mea Culpas
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We all make mistakes once in a while. But for journalists, whose job often involves pointing out the errors of others, getting something wrong can be fatal to a career...
Showcase of Dreams
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In the top tier of glossy magazines, none covers celebrity, politics, culture and scandal with quite the panache of Vanity Fair. Its pages offer a slick, impenetrable view of a world of wealth and status, a vicarious thrill for the lowly aspirants of the nether classes. And yet its editor, Graydon Carter, in a bluntly honest interview in yesterday's London Guardian, tells us that despite the magazine's upscale glow, putting it out every month is a tenuous art, subject to all the fears and failings of imperfect human beings...
Rewriting History
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If journalism is the first draft of history, we've got our work cut out for us. So many politicians are spinning their own fantastical versions of certain events that it's going to take constant reminding by reporters and columnists to expose the truth and make it stick...
Dishonest Debate
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So Karl Rove, after deciding things were a little too toxic in Bush's White House, was out looking for a job. He knocked on the door at Time magazine, offering his services as a columnist. But the wise editors there said, "Naaah. Too much baggage..."
Bedfellows Unite
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Did you hear the one about an executive at Fox News Channel telling a New York publisher to lie about her affair with a former cop because it might damage Rudy Giuliani's presidential aspirations?
Gender Dynamics
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Hillary Clinton can't catch a break. At least if you listen to her husband...
Smoke and Mirrors
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I received a very unusual phone call yesterday. It was a Bush administration official, apologizing. With what seemed like genuine contrition, R. David Paulison, the administrator of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, was calling to say that some of his subordinates had apparently lost their minds last week when they decided to hold a televised press conference about the California fires without actually including any reporters...
Sorrow in the Fire
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One of the most traumatic things you can do as a reporter is cover a wildfire, not only because of the danger but because you're documenting the devastation that nature visits on defenseless, frightened human beings, many of whom lose everything they own to the flames...
Pain and Potential
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Before I get to how the media reacted to Al Gore's Nobel Prize, I want to mention the death of yet another journalist in Iraq...
Take Name, Wag Finger
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I could start a regular feature called something like "Media Misdeeds and Mistakes," and I’d never lack for examples...
Ignorance and Buffoonery
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I don't usually pay attention to Bill O'Reilly and Rush Limbaugh, mostly because they deal in ideologically-driven opinions and don't fall under the standard definition of what a journalist is...
The New Order
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What will the journalism of the future look like? Will it continue to obsess over absurd, half-in-the-bag teenybopper celebrities, and insist on making up silly headlines to describe criminal sports figures and tin-pot dictators?
Zip It
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It's amazing how determined the people at Fox are to paint a rosy picture of the Iraq war...
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Host
Reporter for The Baltimore Sun, KCRW's media critic Nick Madigan covers the latest scandal, intrigue or issue consuming the print and broadcast media.
Tapes & Transcripts
Click the Full Details link to view the complete transcript. Tapes are not available.
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