Bob Garfield

Late night ads for lawyers on TV seem like the lowest form of advertising - they prey on the weak and sleep deprived, encouraging them to monetize their misery by starting frivolous lawsuits. But might they actually serve a purpose? In a piece that originally aired in 2011, Bob talks to legal experts as well as the grandfather of legal advertising, and finds that even the sleaziest ad does something for the common good.

 

First Amendment lawyer Marc Randazza disagrees with the Electronic Frontier Foundation's position on the Crystal Cox case despite being the target of one of her attacks. Randazza talks to Bob about that experience and whether it has tested his faith in the First Amendment.

 

Tanlines - Rain Delay

President Obama addressed journalists at an Associated Press luncheon and warned them against practicing “false equivalency” – pretending that both sides in a disagreement are equally at fault, even when they’re not. The Atlantic’s James Fallows talks to Bob about the President’s attempt at media criticism.

Bob reads from a few of your letters and comments.

With gas prices on the rise, the cost of fuel is set to become a defining issue of the presidential race. Bob speaks to NPR's Planet Money reporter Adam Davidson about how the media haven't done a good job correcting misconceptions about the president's role in rising fuel costs and how the staggering price of gas doesn't really change consumer behavior.

 

Errors - Tusk

Last week marked the anniversary of the first public cell phone call. It was 1973, ten years before cell phones would become commercially available and many more years before they would become wildly popular. Bob speaks with Martin Cooper, the former Motorola-man who made the first call about his company's rivalry with AT&T and the future of cell phones.

 

The Durutti Column - Sketch for Summer

OTM recently looked at the phenomenon of "Reply Girls," the cleavage baring women crowding YouTube with nonsensical videos. YouTube says it is trying to fix the problem of irrelevant videos on its site. Bob speaks to YouTube engineering director Cristos Goodrow about how the site is changing its algorithm to show users more of what they want to see.

 

Smog - Held

In November, an Oregon Federal court awarded a $2.5 million judgment against a blogger named Crystal Cox for defamation. In his opinion, the judge took controversial positions about whether bloggers deserved the protections granted to traditional journalists. The Electronic Frontier Foundation's Trevor Timm tells Bob that even though the judgment against Cox may be warranted, that opinion could set dangerous precedents for all online journalists.

Media coverage can influence public opinion, but can public opinion really influence the Supreme Court? With its lifetime appointments the court is designed to exist above the fray. Bob speaks with Slate's Dahlia Lithwick who says that despite that, public opinion was a big factor in this week's arguments.

 

Dustin Wong - Tea Tree Leaves Retreat

Last month, the NatGeo channel unveiled "Diggers," a show about treasure hunters with metal detectors that the Society for American Archaeology said glorifies looting. "Diggers" is only one of a slew of pulp non-fiction shows on the NatGeo Channel that would surprise anyone familiar with the more-then-century-old National Geographic Magazine. Bob speaks to SAA president Fred Limp, National Geographic Society CEO John Fahey, and NatGeo Channel CEO David Lyle.

 

Oddisee - All Along The River

Most of us think nothing of putting our lives in the cloud; photos in Flickr, videos on YouTube, most everything on Facebook.  But what about when those services abruptly go away, taking all of our collective contributions with them?  Well Jason Scott operates on the assumption that everything online will one day disappear.  He explains to Bob why he and the Archive Team are dedicated to saving user-generated content for posterity.

In the lead-up to the Alabama and Mississippi presidential primaries the media seized on poll results which revealed surprising views on interracial marriage and Barack Obama's religion among likely Republican primary voters. Public Policy Polling, who conducted the poll, also asked people who they'd be voting for, but that information wasn't as attention-getting. Bob speaks with Michelle Cottle, a Southerner herself, who has been keeping tabs on media coverage of the polls for The Daily Beast. 

 

New Country Rehab - Ramblin' Man

This week, two class action lawsuits were filed by privacy advocates against Google, because under their new privacy policy, the company can pool user data collected from all of its web services into one place. Software researcher Tom Henderson reacted in a different way: he decided to stop using all of Google's services. Bob speaks with Tom about how he “divorced Google.”

 

Daniel Rossen - Up On High

The impulse to archive isn't restricted to dying languages or ancient relics. Sometimes you archive something simply because you love it. Fanchants.co.uk is a repository of more than 20,000 soccer fan chants from all over the world. It started as a business and remains one - but it's become a labor of love. Bob speaks with Michael Dennis, a co-founder of Fan Chants. 

Lowes pulls their ads from the show All-American Muslim after pressure from anti-Islam groups. Now the chain is facing criticism. Bob Garfield, host of On the Media and author of The Chaos Scenario, discusses the controversy.

Steve Jobs was a bona fide liberator. A revolutionary. A visionary leader. First, he liberated his customers from DOS. Then from Windows. And with each such effort, he pried the thumb...

The Obama Administration decided not to release photos of Osama Bin Laden's corpse. The New Yorker's Philip Gourevitch and The American Prospect's Paul Waldman debate the decision.

On the Media host Bob Garfield discusses the 10^-year anniversary of the WNYC show On the Media, how technology has transformed the media landscape in the last decade, and what we can expect going forward. He’ll also talk about On The Media’s project Blow The Whistle, a collaboration with Government Accountability Project to uncover the identity of the senator who last December put an anonymous hold on the Whistleblower Protection Enhancement Act (Bill S.372), essentially killing it at the last minute.

Brooke Gladstone and Bob Garfield, co-hosts of NPR's "On the Media," analyze this year's bumper crop of bizarre campaign ads.