Transcript
Letters
November 24, 2001
BROOKE GLADSTONE: We're back with On the Media. I'm Brooke Gladstone.
BOB GARFIELD: And I'm Bob Garfield. And here's when we dig into the OTM mailbag. We have this about our interview with Fouad Ajami about the Middle East news station Al-Jazeera. Norman Bauman [sp?] of New York City says Ajami's complaint is that Al-Jazeera has moderators and guests who express opinions Ajami doesn't agree with. And he notes, the Wall Street Journal seemed to be impressed because Al-Jazeera had great journalists getting exclusive stories, interviews with major figures and reporting from places like Kabul that nobody else could get into. I think you as a journalist should respect Al-Jazeera because they do a good job. I'm not sure your work would compare favorably.
BROOKE GLADSTONE:And this from Corin Cranford [sp?] of Charlotte, North Carolina about our interview concerning recent news stories that describe in detail weaknesses in homeland security. She writes reporters can say that these stories are informative and will bring change until they are blue in the face, and I still say it's a security breach. Everyone is re-evaluating security and has been before September 11th. It is not news. Regarding our discussion about whether the press is hurting the war effort by being reflexively cynical, Jack Wall [sp?], also of Charlotte, had this to say about reporters: it's almost as if the perceived "right to know" and the role of "protecting the people" give reporters license to do whatever they want to or behave in whatever way they want.
BOB GARFIELD:Our discussion of the big media recount of the presidential election in Florida drew a strong response. We said that newspapers buried the finding that Gore would have won a statewide recount. Manny Shulze [sp?] agrees that the headlines were confusing. My guess, he writes, is that this was intentional on the part of the editors. They wanted to avoid saying that the commander in chief of the U.S. forces fighting terrorism is not our duly-elected president. But Kevin Bishop [sp?] says boo to us. Gore lost a very close election but he did lose the election under the rules that were operating at the time. On that point, he adds, the headlines were crystal clear.
BROOKE GLADSTONE:On Sara Fishko's look back at the media coverage of the assassination of President Kennedy, Steven Alexander [sp?], at that time an NBC news cameraman in Dallas writes: I was 5 feet from Jack Ruby as he stepped forward, pulled the gun out and fired into Oswald. I was 24 years old and had been in television news about 14 months. That event changed so many things -- TV news, the presidency and my life. I have never really deeply expressed my feelings about those events until hearing your story today, and I found myself crying.
BOB GARFIELD:And finally here's one of many letters from North Carolina pointing out our mistake when welcoming new station WUNC to the OTM fold. We said the station broadcasts from Raleigh. But as Josh from Durham points out, the U N C stands for the University of North Carolina which anybody who has ever watched a basketball game or two knows is in Chapel Hill. How about a correction he asks. Well, we can do better than that for our new friends in Chapel Hill. [UNC ALMA MATER PLAYS] Go Wolfpack!
BROOKE GLADSTONE: Tarheels!
BOB GARFIELD: I knew that. [UNC ALMA MATER PLAYS]