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At the Republican National Convention this week, politicians and their spokespeople levied harsh criticisms at the elitist, " left-wing" media. The main complaint seemed to be reporters' insistence on asking questions about vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin. Will the media fall for it? Brooke and Bob weigh in.
During the presidential campaign, media hang on the results of nearly every poll. But David Moore, former senior editor for the Gallup Poll, says polls inaccurately portray a consensus on issues the public often knows little or nothing about.
Nate Silver created a remarkably accurate computer system that projects stats for baseball players and teams. Now he's turned his attention to polling data for the presidential election with his website Five Thirty Eight. Silver explains how his site can out-perform the polling firms, whose data he relies on.
While teachers and students head back to class, lawmakers in Washington remain at an impasse regarding the reauthorization of the No Child Left Behind Act. The coverage of NCLB was gung-ho back in 2002 but has been negative for a long time since, and education blogger Alexander Russo says that hasn’t always been fair.
Each year college students and their parents face many hefty expenses, including the high cost of textbooks. Cal Tech economics professor R. Preston McAfee says college texts are not only too expensive but too general. That's why he's challenging the traditional economics of the textbook publishing industry with a free textbook of his own.
Teachers are among our most complicated, hard working and important public servants. So why are portrayals of them on the big screen still so black and white? Mary Dalton has studied portrayals of teachers and tells us why Hollywood may show great potential but isn’t really applying itself.
For over 40 years Don LaFontaine was the voice of the film preview. His sonorous, gravelly, ignore-me-at-your-peril delivery has become virtually synonymous with the movie trailer. LaFontaine died this week, we listen back to the world he created.
In the Works
The winner of our very first OTM T-shirt design contest is Phil Mastman from Cincinnati, Ohio. Click Here to see Phil's winning design. You can buy the T-shirt during WNYC's fall pledge drive.
Highlights from Past Shows
Cable news covered and perhaps smothered the historic Democratic National Convention this week. Brooke emerged from the coverage with a bit of a headache.
This weekend, as an estimated 15,000 reporters head to Denver for the Democratic National Convention, Slate’s Jack Shafer asks, why? There hasn’t been a contested nomination since 1976, he argues, and news organizations’ resources would be best put to use elsewhere. Brooke puts his arguments to the test.
On the Media is funded by The Bydale Foundation, The Ford Foundation, The John S. and James L. Knight Foundation and the Overbrook Foundation.
