After being held in detention for six weeks, the Libyan government announced on Wednesday that they will release four foreign journalists. Just a day earlier, the Libyan government had sentenced the journalists to one year of captivity on charges of illegally entering the country. And a fifth journalist, Dorothy Parvaz who works for Al Jazeera, arrived safely at the network’s headquarters in Doha after disappearing in Syria and being sent to Iran. We talk with Diane Foley, the mother of James Foley, a reporter for the Global Post who was among the four detained in Libya.
This morning New York Times reporter Stephen Farrell was rescued by military commandos during a raid in Afghanistan. A British soldier and Farrell's translator, Sultan Munadi, were killed during the rescue. Farrell and his translator were kidnapped on Saturday by a group of Afghan fighters calling themselves the Taliban while reporting on a story in the northern province of Kunduz. The story was kept quiet out of concern that media attention would worsen the situation, so most did not know of the kidnapping. For more of the back story, we talk to New York Times Executive Editor Bill Keller.
In early 2003, Jayson Blair went from writing headlines for the New York Times to making headlines when it was discoverd that he had plagiarized dozens of stories. It was a scandal the Times itself called "a low point in the 152-year history of the paper." Blair "resigned under pressure" from the Times shortly thereafter and entered treatment for bipolar disorder. Even after a forced resignation, however, everyone needs to make a living. After such an inglorious and public fall, how would you pick yourself up and start over again?
Well, the hard lessons Jayson Blair learned can be taught to you: for a price, and potentially by Blair himself. He is now working as a life coach. We talk to Jayson Blair along with the man who hired him, Dr. Michael Oberschneider, founder and director at Ashburn Psychological Services.
"For a lot of people who are in mental health recovery, it's very appealing to them to see someone who's fallen so far, and then to see that person from their fate, rebuild. ... The one thing that I can say about crisis: don't make the mistake I did and not reach out for help. If I had reached out to the kind of people who have helped me since I left the Times, before, I probably never would have been in that situation."
—Jayson Blair, ex-reporter for the New York Times, on why his past experiences help him speak authentically as a life coach
It's no kind of overstatement to say that CBS News legend Don Hewitt invented television news. As a producer he helped shape the careers of such respected news luminaries as Edward R. Murrow and Walter Cronkite at a time when broadcast television was just emerging from radio's shadow. He made news into hour-long, genre-spanning programs. Hewitt created 60 Minutes in 1968; the show was a huge success and helped turn correspondents like Morley Safer, Diane Sawyer, and Mike Wallace into household names. His death at 86 comes as another new medium, the internet, looms over the future of existing broadcast and print media. To talk about the life and legacy of Don Hewitt, we talk to New York Times reporter Jacques Steinberg and Hewitt's long time friend and former CBS producer Jeff Gralnick.
American Journalists Laura Ling and Euna Lee have been detained in North Korea since March, after they were accused of illegally crossing the border from China. Their trial was supposed to begin yesterday. If convicted, they could face 10 years of hard labor. The women’s families remained silent for the first two months of their captivity, but this week family members were on the Today Show, Larry King Live, and other programs, appealing for the journalists' release.
Steve Romano, a Former Chief Negotiator for the FBI and now a Senior Advisor with the Center for Personal Protection and Safety, joins The Takeaway to talk about how experts advise families what to say to the press when a loved one is held captive.
Here is some footage of vigils being held for the captive journalists.
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