Story Archives of 'NPR'

Jamie Tarabay has reported for NPR from some of the world’s hotspots. She arrived in Israel days before the second intifada broke out and spent three years covering the war there. After that she worked for two years as NPR’s Baghdad Bureau Chief and was part of the news team that won the prestigious Alfred I. DuPont-Columbia University Award for their coverage of the Iraq War. Today she has a new assignment: for the next two years she plans on reporting on America’s 6 million Muslims. We’ll talk with Tarabay about her time reporting in the Middle East and her new focus on Muslim America.

Guest

• Jamie Tarabay, National Desk Correspondent for National Public Radio

On November 7, 1967, President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the bill that created the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. Its purpose was to give a voice to the voiceless and establish radio and television stations that would be free of corporate interests and partisan influence. Tonight on the Front Porch, we’ll look at the past forty years of public broadcasting and discuss whether the CPB has lived up to its lofty goals.

Our guest is Jack W. Mitchell, author of Listener Supported: The Culture and History of Public Radio. Jack is professor of Journalism and Mass Communication at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He was also the very first employee of National Public Radio, and the original producer of All Things Considered.

Tonight on the Front Porch, we're listening to your stories. For the past month or so, the StoryCorps booth gave the citizens of New Hampshire a chance to interview each other about their lives, their loves, their struggles and their accomplishments. We'll listen back to some of our favorites with NHPR Production Manager Andrew Parrella.

For 16 years, Liane Hansen has been delivering the news of the world, stories about changing trends in our society, and in societies across the globe. As host of National Public Radio's Weekend Edition Sunday, she's kept us up to date on the latest news, introduced us to a huge variety of up and coming musicians, and of course, each week she helps us try to out-do Puzzle Master Will Shortz. Liane's a career journalist who began at NPR as a production assistant for All Things Considered in 1979, and she's been at the network ever since. Tonight on the Front Porch, we'll talk with her about her career and the state of radio journalism today.

Click here to see photos of Liane Hansen interviewed on the Front Porch.

***This interview originally aired on October 23, 2006***

Recently, the chair of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting put PBS and NPR in the spotlight by raising concerns over levels of objectivity and balance. We will talk with critics from both the left and the right about their reaction to the allegations, and ask them where they see instances of bias at NPR and PBS. Laura is joined by Mark Handley, president of New Hampshire Public Radio, Fergus Cullen, columnist for the New Hampshire Union Leader and Sunday News and Peter Hart, Activism Director at Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR).