BROOKE GLADSTONE: This is On the Media. I'm Brooke Gladstone.

BOB GARFIELD: And I'm Bob Garfield. It seems like we struck a nerve last week. We had letters on nearly every topic. Like this one, on our interview with Brooks Jackson of FactCheck.org and the argument over the president's plan for Social Security. Doug Hofeling of Salt Lake City writes: "I found it interesting that your guest performed veritable linguistic gymnastics in order to avoid saying that President Bush had intentionally deceived or lied, saying instead that people (quote) 'might get the wrong idea' from the president's words. He then engaged in those same gymnastics in reverse order, to say flat out that the MoveOn.org ad about the same subject was just not true, calling it a false ad because of its juxtaposition of words and pictures. Who's fact-checking the fact checkers?"

BROOKE GLADSTONE: Several listeners thought Bob was too tough on Jackson Herald editor Mike Buffington, who excoriated Wal-Mart for seeking free PR from community newspapers while never buying any ad space in them. Julian H. Breen, of Pennington, New Jersey writes: "The cracks in your ivory tower were showing when you tried to make the story into a morality tale of journalism ethics. If, as you attempted to badger Buffington, there should be absolutely no relationship whatsoever between paid advertising and news coverage, then the automotive and real estate industries would see many fewer stories than they do now, amid reams of paid advertising, even in such bastions of journalistic integrity as the august New York Times."

BOB GARFIELD: And, we got a strong response to the interview with Allan Pizzato of Alabama Public Television, one of many PBS affiliates who chose not to run an episode of a kids' show called Postcards from Buster, because it showed lesbian parents. Gary Washburn saw the episode aired by WGBH Boston, and he found it, (quote) "about as offensive as a church picnic." But then he's writing from Jamaica, Vermont. What really bothered him, he writes, "is that viewers were not informed of the decision of many stations not to air it." He writes, (quote) "This amounts to a sort of stealth censorship which, added to the more crypto-censorship we receive from commercial counterparts to PBS, presents an edifice of deception and manipulation in which it's impossible to trust anything we see or hear. Without the censor's stamp or blacked out pages or bleeped out four-letter words, the work of the censor is unaccountable to the actual consumers, however much attention it might receive in alternative media."

BROOKE GLADSTONE: Many listeners wrote in to cheer Bob's treatment of the Jeff Gannon story, the man with the false name who threw softball questions during presidential press conferences. David Christian of Iowa City wrote: "Ohhh, snap! That's what I yelled to myself in my empty house after hearing Mr. Garfield's thoughts on Mr. Gannon and his non-role as a journalist. Thank you."

BOB GARFIELD: But Danielle Mazur of New York City said we skipped over some key points, among them the fact unearthed by the Daily Coast blog that Gannon had access to the government source who outed CIA official Valerie Plame. "Why, for god's sake's," she writes, "was this guy given access to confidential government documents? Somebody other than the diligent bloggers needs to investigate this - somebody with access to the hallowed halls of our so-called 'liberal mainstream media.'"

BROOKE GLADSTONE: Keep those letters coming to onthemedia@wnyc.org, and don't forget to tell us where you live and how to pronounce your name. [MUSIC]

BROOKE GLADSTONE: On the matter of Valerie Plame, the CIA official named in a column by Bob Novak, the investigation into who leaked her name goes on. It's not known whether Novak has cooperated with investigators. He has not been charged. But there have been serious consequences for two other reporters - Judith Miller of the New York Times, and Matthew Cooper of Time magazine. They did not leak Plame's name, but they are alleged to have received that information and have been charged with contempt of court for refusing to reveal their source.

BOB GARFIELD: This week, Cooper and Miller lost their appeal and may soon be heading to jail. They say they won't reveal their source, because it would discourage other whistleblowers if they did. In this case, the leaker was up to no good, but frequently, leakers expose government wrongdoing that would otherwise be secret. They are a check on the abuse of power. They can change history.