Another episode of On the Media, another reminder that NPR employees are the only people who can pronunce Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s correctly on the first try.
Brooke is back (yay!) and the lead story is the election in Iran and it’s parallels to the 1979 revolution (of course). The Iranian government has been doing all kinds of things – trying to shut down social networking, kicking reporters out of the country, and having a clampdown. In honor of said clampdown, I’m now listening to the Clash. But, I digress.
Apparently, the Iranian state media is trying to spin the unrest as a freak movement that the majority disapproves of. The state has gone so far as to restrict cell phone service and internet access to certain times of the day so that people don’t know what’s going on. But, that’s not accurate, because people still have access to the BBC (via satellite) and Twitter (it’s a tool, not a service). Twitter use in Iran is getting a lot of US media love, but according to Babak Rahimi, it’s not the most popular medium.
I know I shouldn’t be so enamored by this, but I love that Brooke and Bob say “the media are” instead of “the media is’. Media is the plural of medium, and I wish more people noticed that.
In other (extremely unsurprising) news, people are skeptical of government numbers. As a result, the government in the UK formed the UK Statistics Authority to keep government statistics honest. The number situation was pretty egregious. The government changed the definition of unemployment 23 times. Every time the definition changed, the number of unemployed people went down. Hmmmm.
And though it does have to be a bit awkward calling the same government that employs you out on it’s faulty numbers, Bob didn’t have to go and suggest that Sir Michael Scholar eats lunch alone. He’s a Sir. That means someone likes him. Also, Bob didn’t have to call him “Frankenstein’s Monster”.
Someone’s got his grumpy pants on. Judging by OTM’s Twitter feed, Bob was in the studio this week. Maybe Katya and Brooke ganged up on him.
In other news, FOIA’s ombudsman is your homie, the Obamas don’t want you to know who they hang out with, and books can be read four ways.
This recap was written by Kerry and edited by Matthew, who could hear “The Clampdown” playing through my headphones while I was working.
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