BROOKE GLADSTONE: From WNYC in New York, this is NPR's On the Media. I'm Brooke Gladstone.

BOB GARFIELD: And I'm Bob Garfield. The public is on edge, especially the Democratic half of the public, wondering if, when or how the Bush administration will exploit the threat of terrorist attack in the race for the presidency. Many point to the recent Orange Alert, suspiciously timed, they say, to coincide with the Democratic Convention. There certainly is circumstantial evidence to back the claim of political engineering, but no incontrovertible smoking gun, no document or on-the-record, highly-placed source to prove it. And there may never be.

BROOKE GLADSTONE: The media are in a difficult position. When the political pitch is obvious, as when Homeland Security Chief Tom Ridge praised the president's leadership when issuing his Orange Alert, newspapers all but ignored that part of his statement at first. Then, after a few days, some editorial pages did cite it as contributing, at the very least, to the appearance of a political motive. Should the media ignore these cues to avoid the charge of bias, or should they note them as a legitimate part of the story? We have an upcoming case in point, and we leave it to you, the listener, to observe how the government and the media play it in the weeks to come. On September 9th, Tom Ridge will announce the beginning of National Preparedness Month. That's a month-long slate of activities designed to promote public awareness. Here's the take of Bob Harris, writing in a blog called ThisModernWorld.com.

BOB HARRIS: Why September 9th? That's awfully late, if it's supposed to be the entire month. My guess - thinking like Karl Rove - this year's 9/11 anniversary falls on a Saturday -- so an announcement on the date or even Friday before -- would only get a burst of free media on a weekend. Now, by timing it for the 6 p.m. news on Thursday, it reaches the Friday papers, and thus becomes fully-injected into all the emotion-laden anniversary coverage, plus the Sunday morning talk shows.

BROOKE GLADSTONE: Bob Harris joins us now. Bob, what's the matter with a public awareness campaign? We've reported on this program that the government hasn't done enough to educate the public in the ways that it can protect itself in the event of disaster.

BOB HARRIS: Well, there's certainly nothing wrong with a public awareness campaign in and of itself. There's something terribly wrong with the timing. If America needs a National Preparedness Month, gosh, it only took three years to come around to one after 9/11, and it's happening, conveniently enough, shortly before the election. Gosh. That's not hard to put together, is it?

BROOKE GLADSTONE: Okay. But aren't you making a little more of this than you should? Congress declared February National Cancer Prevention Month. That doesn't mean they weren't actively endorsing cancer prevention all along.

BOB HARRIS: No, not at all. At the same time, we do need to be prepared -- absolutely. But this is an administration which has a record of politicizing virtually anything that they can often at a great cost to national security. I would point out, for example, the New Republic reporting a month before the Democratic Convention that they had three sources in Pakistani intelligence who said that the Bush administration was pressuring them to make a high-level Al Qaeda capture timed specifically to take headlines away from the Democratic Convention. Sure enough, just hours before Kerry's speech, there was a major headline -- we have a major arrest in, in Pakistan! Although, it turned out, if you read closely, that the arrest actually took place, mmmm-- five days earlier.

BROOKE GLADSTONE: Okay. But what do you make of the fact that congressmen and women from both sides of the aisle are helping to kick off the month, and governors from every state are taking part in the local events?

BOB HARRIS: Well, what politician wants to be seen in an election year as potentially not interested in security? To point out the obvious political content of this is to run the risk of being called, quite dishonestly, uninterested in American security, when in fact all you want to do is try to avoid the politicization of stuff. Speaking specifically to the members of Congress who are participating in lending their names to this, I can't help but notice that the Democratic senator who's involved is Joseph Lieberman. He's the guy who proposed Homeland Security in the first place. He wasn't probably a very hard sell.

BROOKE GLADSTONE: Well, what do you think about the role of the media in all of this? You predict that the media will play into the hands of the political machinations and help to give the Republicans a post-convention boost by playing up their strongest issue -- the war on terrorism. You really think journalists are so easily duped?

BOB HARRIS: You were present in the United States prior to the war in Iraq, weren't you? [LAUGHTER] I mean, if you saw television any time in the last several years, you might have heard that like, Iraq was tied to Al Qaeda or possibly that weapons of mass destruction were rampant in Iraq, that our announcement of such could-be-in-the-form-of-a-mushroom-cloud breathless headlines? We have a media full of mea culpas right now. We have the New York Times saying: Gosh, we blew it on the, the war in Iraq. They wouldn't name Judith Miller particularly, but they did say, gosh we really blew it on the WMDs. The Washington Post just issued a mea culpa saying: Golly. We, we had all sorts of information that we sat on and didn't report, and we failed you. And now -- they're refusing to look deeper again.

BROOKE GLADSTONE: I still think you're tossing off the idea that national preparedness is purely politics. What if it is partly politics but it's also genuine public education?

BOB HARRIS: Well that's certainly the case. Absolutely. And I think it's extremely important that we become prepared properly-- by fighting Al Qaeda, for example. I mean I don't want to get blown up any more than anybody else. I just also don't like politicians who manipulate that fear to try to use it against me.

BROOKE GLADSTONE: Bob, when it comes to the so-called war on terrorism and homeland security issues, is there anything the government could do at this point that wouldn't make you doubt their motives?

BOB HARRIS: It would, it would-- Whew! That's actually a very fair question. You know, at this point, with the Bush administration in power, I think that would be almost impossible, and, and that's a shame.

BROOKE GLADSTONE: All right. Bob, thank you very much.

BOB HARRIS: All righty. My pleasure.

BROOKE GLADSTONE: Bob Harris, TV scriptwriter, Jeopardy champion and voiceover artist, posts his political observations on ThisModernWorld.com.