Hi all,
I recently got a new job hosting Your Call, a daily public affairs call-in show airing on KALW 91.7 FM in San Francisco. Every Friday, we have three reporters on the show to discuss how the media covered the week’s news.
On tomorrow’s (Friday) show, we’ll be talking to Mark Seibel, Managing Editor of McClatchy, A.C. Thompson, reporter with the San Francisco Weekly, and Greg Wilpert, editor with Venezuelaanalysis.com.
Mark Seibel wrote a great piece this week called, “Administration leaving out important details on Iraq“
President Bush and his aides, explaining their reasons for sending more American troops to Iraq, are offering an incomplete, oversimplified and possibly untrue version of events there that raises new questions about the accuracy of the administration’s statements about Iraq.
A.C. Thompson has a piece in the Progressive about Ali Saleh Kahlah al-Marri, an “enemy combatant” languishing in a South Carolina brig:
After the FBI arrested al-Marri in December 2001, prosecutors charged him with seven criminal offenses, including unauthorized possession of credit card numbers, making false statements to a bank, and using a phony ID to scam a bank.
His lawyers insist the government has hyped the case against him. “There’s been no evidence presented” that al-Marri is an Al Qaeda operative or ally, says Hafetz, an attorney with the Brennan Center for Justice at NYU School of Law, and one of several lawyers working on al-Marri’s case. Hafetz adds, “He’s asserted his innocence.”
Under normal circumstances, a jury would have considered his guilt or innocence, by now, a half-decade later, and rendered a verdict, pushing al-Marri into a prison sentence or cutting him loose. But these are not normal times.
In addition to talking to these reporters about how they cover stories, we also take calls from listeners about what was reported well, what was reported poorly, and what deserved more attention.
The show airs from 10:00-11:00 am PST on KALW 91.7 FM. You can also listen online.
Next week, we’ll be talking about global warming, Israel/Palestine, and debt. We’ll also have a conversation with Greil Marcus, former editor of Rolling Stone and author of “The Shape of Things to Come: Prophecy in the American Voice”
I’ve been meaning to post for a while because we have great guests on the show, but I’ve been swamped. It’d be great for some of you to weigh in with your thoughts on the show, whether you’re local or not.