
L.A. Synagogue Shooting; Digital Video; Blair Witch Project; Stan Freberg

It's becoming routine: shootings, helicopters, wall-to-wall news coverage. I'm Bob Garfield. This week on NPR's On the Media, we ask if all the media introspection over the coverage of previous shootings had any effect on the coverage of Los Angeles this week . . . Also, making a movie as easy as writing a short-story, and radio legend Stan Freberg. That's all this week on NPR's On the Media.
1 - LA SHOOTING: THE MEDIA GOES APE!
The day's violent events at the North Valley Jewish Community Center in the San Fernando Valley, and the ensuing saturation coverage, provoked some criticism·and an eerie déjà vu of last year's multiple live news broadcasts of a distraught man's suicide. Viewers were outraged and broadcasters were chastened, promulgating various sets of guidelines for news directors to consider in live coverage of terror in progress. But in the wake of the JCC shootings, has broadcasters' public soul-searching yielded sufficient results?
Guests: Margot Hill, Detective Sergeant, Boston Police Department
Jeff Wald, News Director, KTLA TV
2 - BROOKE AND BOB
NPR Media Correspondent Brooke Gladstone talks about current trends and issues in the media.
Guest: Brooke Gladstone, Media Reporter, NPR
3 - DIGITAL MOVIES
Independent filmmakers are gaining more autonomy every day with the help of digital video and editing technologies, and Internet-based distribution. The "D.Film" digital film festival is touring the world with cutting edge examples of the new techniques, as many independent movie makers jump on the bandwagon.
Reporter: Bellamy Pailthorp
4 - THE BLAND WITCH PROJECT
With a box office gross approaching $100,000,000 and a shooting budget of around $60,000, the experimental smash-hit horror movie "The Blair Witch Project" is a media phenomenon on many levels. But do people really like it? On the Media assembled its report from the recovered tapes of Mike Pesca, the radio producer assigned to investigate "The Blair Witch Project."
Guest: Ed Mintz, President, Cinemascore
5 - STAN FREBERG, RADIO LEGEND
Before there was the "Daily Show," before "Saturday Night Live," before Tom Lehrer and Alan Sherman and Weird Al Yankovic, this country had one-stop shopping for cultural parody and satire. Since 1951, on radio, television and hit recordings, Stan Freberg's voice has been mimicking -- and skewering -- the iconography of the pop culture. In short order, he became a pop-culture icon himself.
Guest: Stan Freberg, radio producer
WNYC archives id: 84924