On the Media

Seventy-one years after the bombing, President Obama is set to be first sitting US president to visit Hiroshima, raising questions that many are keen to avoid. Plus, revisiting a notorious murder that the press got wrong; the long reach of a WWII slogan; and attempts in Ukraine to whitewash the nation's history. A special hour on memory, both historical and personal, and how what we remember shapes our world.

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There’s comedy, and there’s news, and then there’s that amalgamation of the two -- call it satire or lampoonery or, in the parlance of Jon Stewart, “Fake news.” But how does it get made? And does it help or hurt if your background is in real news?

Last month Brooke moderated a discussion put on by the Journalism + Design program at The New School in New York City featuring writers and producers from The Daily Show with Trevor Noah, The Nightly Show with Larry Wilmore, and Full Frontal with Samantha Bee. Representing The Daily Show are journalists and bloggers Daniel Radosh and Dan Amira; for The Nightly Show, writer Cord Jefferson (who actually just left the show to be a writer on Aziz Ansari’s Master of None); and for Full Frontal, producers Sanya Dosani and Naureen Khan, both of whom came directly from Al Jazeera America. 

On the Media is supported by listeners like you. Support OTM by donating today (https://pledge.wnyc.org/support/otm). Follow our show on Instagram, Bluesky, TikTok and Facebook @onthemedia, and share your thoughts with us by emailing [email protected].

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What's worse: potentially biased humans controlling the news you see or a "neutral" algorithm? Accusations that Facebook's Trending Topics feature isn't purely data-driven have highlighted the platform's power. 

Plus: Margaret Sullivan, the former public editor of The New York Times, is on her way to the Washington Post. How much did she change at the paper of the record? 

Also: Bob's take on how the political press is normalizing the presumptive GOP nominee; and a new documentary looks at Anthony Weiner's failed run for mayor.

On the Media is supported by listeners like you. Support OTM by donating today (https://pledge.wnyc.org/support/otm). Follow our show on Instagram, Bluesky, TikTok and Facebook @onthemedia, and share your thoughts with us by emailing [email protected].

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Last Tuesday Donald Trump won the Indiana primary and became the presumptive nominee of the Republican party. In the days that followed, hands were wrung over the question “how did we get this so wrong?” New York Times columnist Jim Rutenberg was particularly critical of data journalism, which one election cycle ago seemed so heroic but in Trumpworld turned out to have feet of clay. Singling out Nate Silver’s FiveThirtyEight (our partner this election cycle), Rutenberg wrote that in relying on polling data that gave Trump a 2% chance of winning the nomination 6 months ago, FiveThirtyEight “sapped the journalistic will to scour his record as aggressively as those of his supposedly more serious rivals. In other words, predictions can have consequences.”

Nate Silver on his podcast this week had a response to Rutenberg (and all the other data detractors). Here is an excerpt from that episode in which you’ll also hear Silver’s FiveThirtyEight colleagues Harry Enten, Clare Malone, and Jody Avirgan.

On the Media is supported by listeners like you. Support OTM by donating today (https://pledge.wnyc.org/support/otm). Follow our show on Instagram, Bluesky, TikTok and Facebook @onthemedia, and share your thoughts with us by emailing [email protected].

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Now that Donald Trump is the presumptive Republican nominee, the nay-saying pundits have one last-ditch idea: a centrist third party candidate to save the day! Just like they said in the last election, and the one before that... This week On the Media explores the media's recurring fixation on a technocratic third party candidate and why exactly it's bogus. Plus, how the US helped create Puerto Rico's crushing debt crisis and revisiting the Iranian Revolution via video game.

On the Media is supported by listeners like you. Support OTM by donating today (https://pledge.wnyc.org/support/otm). Follow our show on Instagram, Bluesky, TikTok and Facebook @onthemedia, and share your thoughts with us by emailing [email protected].

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The story of a man's rise from local media firebrand to out-sized TV personality superstar to political demagogue. Sound familiar?

It's actually the plot of Elia Kazan's 1957 film "A Face in the Crowd", which charts the dramatic ascent of Larry "Lonesome" Rhodes, played by Andy Griffith. WNYC's Sara Fishko, host of the Fishko Files, explores what the film's story about a rise and fall can tell us about our current political moment.

You can find more Fishko Files at wnyc.org/shows/fishko.

On the Media is supported by listeners like you. Support OTM by donating today (https://pledge.wnyc.org/support/otm). Follow our show on Instagram, Bluesky, TikTok and Facebook @onthemedia, and share your thoughts with us by emailing [email protected].

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The alliance between Ted Cruz and John Kasich to stop Trump was over before it began, but it's just the latest in a long history of political plots. We examine the shadowy history of election scheming, and trace the origins of the notion that the people, not politicians, should get to pick the president. Plus, how the haunting disappearance of 43 students in Mexico may finally prompt a reckoning with institutionalized violence and corruption. Also, disturbing collusion between super PACs and presidential campaigns, and drawing meaning from the deep, dark world of the comments section. 

On the Media is supported by listeners like you. Support OTM by donating today (https://pledge.wnyc.org/support/otm). Follow our show on Instagram, Bluesky, TikTok and Facebook @onthemedia, and share your thoughts with us by emailing [email protected].

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The Belfast Project is an archive of interviews with militia members from both sides of Ireland's "Troubles," the war that raged in Northern Ireland from the 1970s to the 1990s. The archives, which are housed at Boston College Library, are off-limits to the public and law enforcement, due to the fact that those interviewed agreed to speak on the condition that their testimonies not be published until their deaths. But since 2011, British authorities have launched a series of attempts to get their hands on the records, most recently this week when they subpoenaed Boston College for the files pertaining to lead researcher and former militant Anthony McIntyre.

Brooke spoke to McIntyre in 2014, during the last subpoena, about the Belfast Project and his frustration with what he saw as the College's capitulation to authorities. She also spoke with Boston College's Jack Dunn, who defended the College's commitment to oral history and its attempts to protect the records of the Belfast Project.

On the Media is supported by listeners like you. Support OTM by donating today (https://pledge.wnyc.org/support/otm). Follow our show on Instagram, Bluesky, TikTok and Facebook @onthemedia, and share your thoughts with us by emailing [email protected].

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It's been four hundred years since the death of William Shakespeare, and the Bard is as popular as ever... and just as mysterious. For centuries, a war has raged over the question: who is Shakespeare? We explore how the answer has evolved through the ages, and what that tells us about our changing perceptions of class, art, genius, and religion. Plus, a look at Shakespeare's enduring global relevance, with an inspiring and perilous performance of Love's Labor's Lost in Afghanistan. 

It's been four hundred years since the death of William Shakespeare, and the Bard is as popular as ever... and just as mysterious. For centuries, a war has raged over the question: who is Shakespeare? We explore how the answer has evolved through the ages, and what that tells us about our changing perceptions of class, art, genius, and religion. Plus, a look at Shakespeare's enduring global relevance, with an inspiring and perilous performance of Love's Labor's Lost in Afghanistan. 

On the Media is supported by listeners like you. Support OTM by donating today (https://pledge.wnyc.org/support/otm). Follow our show on Instagram, Bluesky, TikTok and Facebook @onthemedia, and share your thoughts with us by emailing [email protected].

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