Scene On Radio

When it comes to using AI in the creation of "journalism," just how far could things go? 

We're sharing a fresh episode from the excellent podcast, Question Everything. In Scene on Radio's latest season, we looked at the news media in crisis and some of the ways the work of journalists can get corrupted. In this episode of Question Everything, reporter Zach St, Louis got a tip about a strange local news site in Florida whose reporters didn't seem to exist. He started digging and discovered a nationwide network of fake, AI-generated local news sites. The episode is called, The Curious Case of the Fake Florida News Site. 

You can listen to Question Everything wherever you get your podcasts, and subscribe to their Substack at questioneverything.substack.com. 

Co-hosts John Biewen and Chenjerai Kumanyika respond to questions sent in by listeners in response to Scene on Radio Season 8: The News. Questions about AI and propaganda, journalistic bias, America's plummeting press freedom ranking, about whether we got it wrong about the media's coverage of Trump -- and about pathways to a better news and information system.  

Music by Brian Blade and the Fellowship Band and Lili Haydn. Music consulting by Joe Augustine of Narrative Music. 

We're sharing an episode from a new series: Occupy! An Unfinished Uprising, from Future Hindsight.

In 2011, in the wake of the financial crisis and Great Recession stemming from Wall Street wheeling and dealing gone bad, protesters gathered in lower Manhattan to take a stand. The movement quickly spread across the U.S. and beyond, inspiring hundreds of occupations and a new generation of activists. Occupy went quiet after a couple of months, but the movement changed the national conversation about capitalism and awakened a generation of activists. 

Occupy! An Unfinished Uprising, is told through the voices of people who took part, with host Mila Atmos.  

Find the rest of the series wherever you get your shows, or at Future Hindsight. 

We're sharing an episode from another series we think will be of interest to our listeners -- one that's closely related to our Season 8 series, The News: The Battle for Free Speech. 

As the United States marks its 250th anniversary this year, our most basic freedom — the freedom of speech — is under attack. This immersive series takes you on a journey to look at the threats to free speech, from Trump to Silicon Valley. Series co-hosts Michael Fox and Marc Steiner explore the history of the fight for free speech and the battle being waged over it today, within the United States and abroad.

In this episode, Michael Fox is joined by Real News investigative journalist and Capitol Hill correspondent Taya Graham to map the assault on the American press.

The Battle for Free Speech is produced by The Real News Network. To hear the rest of the 8-part series, go here. 

The American Revolution wasn’t just a fight for liberty. It was also a sprawling conflict with Indigenous nations over who would control North America. To stake its claim, the United States was willing to commit genocide. 

This is episode 3 of First America, a new show about how America’s current moment is 250 years in the making. Indigenous author and host Rebecca Nagle talks to Maggie Blackhawk (Ojibwe) about how our country’s early treatment of Native Americans set a template for authoritarianism in the United States. 

There are more episodes in the First America season which we are not sharing with you here. Find the rest of the series wherever you get podcasts. 

We’re back with Episode 2 of First America, a new show by Indigenous author Rebecca Nagle about how the United States really came to be and how we got to today’s present moment. Rebecca and historian Phil Deloria (Dakota descent) head to Boston to try to understand Americans’ obsession with playing Indian. In the early republic, pretending to be Indian symbolized freedom and helped the colonists form a new, national identity. From Boy Scouts to new agers and sports fans, the American tradition of White people dressing up like Natives never went away. 

Find First America wherever you get podcasts. 

We're sharing the first of three episodes from a new series we think our listeners will want to hear. 

Americans have been told our Revolution was fought over taxation and representation. But the last entry of the Declaration focuses on the founders' contempt for the “merciless Indian savages.” 

How does a whole country miss a key point of its own founding document? That's the question at the heart of First America. Hosted and reported by Rebecca Nagle, an Indigenous author and former host of the This Land podcast, and featuring leading Native historians, First America unveils how the founders’ treatment of Indigenous nations—and their resistance—shaped US democracy. 

First America reveals the real story of why the colonists rebelled, what kind of government they created, and, crucially, how our current political moment was 250 years in the making. 

This season we've explored how the news media are failing the American people and our democracy. In this concluding episode, we look at solutions -- how to help good journalism survive, and how we might imagine a better, more democratic media system. 

By John Biewen, with co-host Chenjerai Kumanyika. Interviews with Les High and Victor Pickard. 

Story editor: Diane Hodson. Assistant Producer, Arlene Arevalo. Fact-checking by Anna Pujol Mazzini. Music by Brian Blade and the Fellowship Band, Michelle Osis, Lili Haydn, Alex Weston, James Nathan Jones, goodnight Lucas, and Jason Hill. Music consulting by Joe Augustine of Narrative Music.  

Many people in the United States and around the world view the rise of Donald Trump and his MAGA movement as a grave crisis. At the same time, most Americans are angry with the news media. What role did the media play in making a President Trump possible? 

By John Biewen, with co-host Chenjerai Kumanyika. Interviews with Nicole Hemmer, Dan Froomkin, Michael Tomasky, and others.

Story editor: Diane Hodson. Assistant Producer, Arlene Arevalo. Fact-checking by Anna Pujol Mazzini. Music by Brian Blade and the Fellowship Band, Michelle Osis, Lili Haydn, Alex Weston, James Nathan Jones, goodnight Lucas, and Jason Hill. Music consulting by Joe Augustine of Narrative Music.  

Ever thought about whether America's overwhelmingly corporate, for-profit news system is working as it should? It didn't have to be this way. In the 20th century, reformers fought for a more democratic and more accountable news media in the United States. They won victories, including the creation of the nation's public broadcasting system. What happened next? 

By John Biewen, with co-host Chenjerai Kumanyika. Interviews with John Lowery, Dan Schiller, Victor Pickard, and Mark Lloyd. 

Story editor: Diane Hodson. Assistant Producer, Arlene Arevalo. Fact-checking by Anna Pujol Mazzini. Music by Brian Blade and the Fellowship Band, Michelle Osis, Lili Haydn, Alex Weston, James Nathan Jones, and Jason Hill. Music consulting by Joe Augustine of Narrative Music.  

The early history of the news in Europe and the U.S. offers surprising lessons about the best traditions of journalism, and about the news we need in our own time of crisis. 

By John Biewen, with co-host Chenjerai Kumanyika. Interviews with Pascal Verhoest, Rachael King, Joseph Adelman, and Victor Pickard. 

Story editor: Diane Hodson. Assistant Producer, Arlene Arevalo. Fact-checking by Anna Pujol Mazzini. Music by Brian Blade and the Fellowship Band, Michelle Osis, Lili Haydn, Alex Weston, James Nathan Jones, and Jason Hill. Music consulting by Joe Augustine of Narrative Music.  

For more on the relationship between democracy and journalism in the U.S., see Victor Pickard's book, Democracy Without Journalism?: Confronting the Misinformation Society.

Scene on Radio requests and receives an independent analysis of its own journalistic biases. We then return the favor, examining the examiner. The exercise leads to fresh insights into the muddled ways people often think about bias.

By John Biewen, with co-host Chenjerai Kumanyika. Interview with Vanessa Otero.

Story editor: Diane Hodson. Assistant Producer, Arlene Arevalo. Fact-checking by Anna Pujol Mazzini. Music by Brian Blade and the Fellowship Band, Michelle Osis, Lili Haydn, Alex Weston, James Nathan Jones, and Jason Hill. Music consulting by Joe Augustine of Narrative Music.  

Link to the Ad Fontes Media Bias Chart

For generations, many on the political right have claimed that major news media in the U.S. have a pronounced liberal bias. Is it true? And why does it matter? We take a fresh look. 

By John Biewen with co-host Chenjerai Kumanyika. Interviews with Michael Massing, Peter Beinart, and William Youmans. 

Story editor: Diane Hodson. Assistant Producer, Arlene Arevalo. Fact-checking by Anna Pujol Mazzini. Music by Brian Blade and the Fellowship Band, Michelle Osis, Lili Haydn, Alex Weston, James Nathan Jones, and Jason Hill. Music consulting by Joe Augustine of Narrative Music.  

Many people know that the journalism industry is struggling financially, especially at the local level. But the disastrous depths of that crisis, and its impact on communities and American democracy, are not as well understood. We visit a news desert in southeastern North Carolina. 

By John Biewen with co-host Chenjerai Kumanyika. Interviews: Penny Muse Abernathy, Mark DeLap, Angelica Das, and others. 

Story editor: Diane Hodson. Assistant Producer, Arlene Arevalo. Fact-checking by Anna Pujol Mazzini. Music by Brian Blade and the Fellowship Band, Michelle Osis, Lili Haydn, Alex Weston, James Nathan Jones, Goodnight Lucas, and Jason Hill. Music consulting by Joe Augustine of Narrative Music.  

The Local Journalism Index map discussed in the episode, from Muck Rack and Rebuild Local News. 

Americans have access to a flood of news, and yet we're in a deep information crisis. What's really wrong with the news media? Is it what we think it is? And what about news consumers? Most of us don't trust the media, but can we trust ourselves? 

By John Biewen with co-host Chenjerai Kumanyika. Interviews: Ethan Jordan, Dannagal Young, and others. 

Story editor: Diane Hodson. Assistant Producer, Arlene Arevalo. Fact-checking by Anna Pujol Mazzini. Music by Brian Blade and the Fellowship Band, Michelle Osis, Lili Haydn, Alex Weston, James Nathan Jones, Goodnight Lucas, and Jason Hill. Music consulting by Joe Augustine of Narrative Music. 

For more info, and transcripts, go to sceneonradio.org.

Everybody's mad at the media. And Americans seem helpless to solve our problems, in large part because we have no shared narrative and few shared facts. A well informed citizenry we are not.

In Scene on Radio's 8th season, producer and host John Biewen and returning co-host Chenjerai Kumanyika will examine the deep crises facing American journalism, how things got this way, and what it might mean to build a better and more democratic news and information system. 

From the Kenan Institute for Ethics at Duke University and PRX. Find more, including episode transcripts, at SceneonRadio.org.

We're happy to share this episode from award-winning climate journalist Amy Westervelt, co-host of Scene on Radio's 5th season: The Repair. Amy returns with a new season of Drilled, her podcast about the deception, disinformation, and power structures keeping real climate solutions out of reach. Drilled: Carbon Cowboys exposes how Midwest Republican corn ethanol mogul Bruce Rastetter sold "sustainable aviation fuel" to world leaders, from North Dakota to Brazil. Find Drilled wherever you get podcasts and hear episodes early and ad-free with a Pushkin+ subscription. Sign up on the Drilled show page on Apple Podcasts or at pushkin.fm/plus.  

We are sharing a special episode from Master Plan, the award-winning investigative series from our friends at The Lever. Its new season, The Kingmakers, traces the decades-long effort to manufacture an all-powerful presidency. Host David Sirota and his team of journalists investigate the rise of a once-fringe legal idea that has hijacked the machinery of American government.

In this episode, you’ll go back more than 50 years, to a moment when Americans feared the rise of an “imperial presidency.” Richard Nixon’s attempts to seize the power of the purse and secretly expand the Vietnam War sparked a constitutional crisis, and a backlash, and set a template for the imperial presidency.

To hear the rest of season two, follow Master Plan on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you get podcasts. 

We're sharing this guest episode from the podcast More Muslim. Reporter Aina Khan reports on the oldest Muslim community in Cape Town, South Africa -- the Cape Malay community. The community, with roots in Indonesia, has survived through centuries of colonialism and oppression, but now faces a new crisis: gentrification. 

To find out more about More Muslim: https://moremuslim.org/

A guest episode from the podcast Proxy: Nicole is an organizer who's good at channeling her anger. The trouble is she can't always downshift -- or even allow herself to feel sad about the problems she's fighting against. That doesn't seem healthy. Maybe it'll help if Nicole can talk with someone who's been there -- years before, in a movement Nicole idolizes. With Proxy host Yowei Shaw.