“To Catch a Predator” aired on television as a segment of NBC’s Dateline in the early 2000's. Men would be lured into talking online to a decoy posing as a child then would show up at a so-called 'sting house' fitted with hidden cameras where the truth of their situation would be revealed.

The show eventually became one of the biggest and most influential true crime shows ever, drawing seven million viewers per episode by its final season in 2007. The main draw? Watching the humiliation of the would-be child predators play out in front of your eyes. 

David Osit, is a filmmaker whose recent documentary “Predators,” probes the ugly legacy of the show -- how it blurred the lines between justice and entertainment and what it says about us that we watched it. 

On the Media is supported by listeners like you. Support OTM by donating today (https://pledge.wnyc.org/support/otm). Follow our show on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook @onthemedia, and share your thoughts with us by emailing [email protected].

Netflix is backing out of a bid to acquire Warner Brothers Discovery, clearing the way for Paramount to take over. On this week’s On the Media, what happens to journalism and democracy when a tiny group of billionaires are calling the shots. Plus, four years since Russia’s war on Ukraine began, a look at the legacy of the first American reporter who was killed there.

[01:00] Host Micah Loewinger speaks with  Victor Pickard, professor of media policy and political economy at the University of Pennsylvania, to discuss why what’s happening at CBS, The Washington Post, and Paramount is simply the latest stage of a phenomena called "media capture," and what we can do to free ourselves from its binds.

[17:58] Micah first sits down with Miriam Berger, a Pulitzer-finalist who spent two years reporting from Israel on the war in Gaza for The Washington Post, to talk about what we’ve lost with the termination of the paper’s Middle East bureau, and then Jodie Ginsberg, CEO of the Committee to Protect Journalists, on why her organization labeled 2025 the most deadly year for the press since it began collecting data–largely due to Israeli forces in Gaza. 

[35:49] Micah talks to filmmaker Craig Renaud about his Oscar-nominated documentary, “Armed Only With a Camera,” which is part tribute to his brother, Brent Renaud, the first American journalist to be killed by Russian soldiers while covering the war in Ukraine, and part salute to war journalists who are still reporting and risking their lives. 

 Further reading / watching:

• “The American Media Polycrisis: Cascading Layers of Capture,” by Victor Pickard
• “Lack of tents, food and warm clothes leaves Gazans exposed ahead of winter,” by Miriam Berger
• “Record 129 press members killed in 2025; Israel responsible for 2/3 of deaths,” by CPJ Staff
• Armed Only with a Camera: The Life and Death of Brent Renaud, directed by Craig Renaud and Brent Renaud

On the Media is supported by listeners like you. Support OTM by donating today (https://pledge.wnyc.org/support/otm). Follow our show on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook @onthemedia, and share your thoughts with us by emailing [email protected].

As media empires, from The Washington Post to CBS News, continue to be dealt significant blows, uncertainties abound about the remaining strength of a once robust American press landscape—but media scholars have long questioned how strong our system was to begin with. For this week's podcast extra, Micah sits down with Victor Pickard, professor of media policy and political economy at the University of Pennsylvania, to discuss why what we're seeing now is simply the latest stage of a phenomena called, "media capture," and what we can do to free ourselves from the downward slide. 

On the Media is supported by listeners like you. Support OTM by donating today (https://pledge.wnyc.org/support/otm). Follow our show on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook @onthemedia, and share your thoughts with us by emailing [email protected].

Late night host Stephen Colbert has accused CBS of spiking an interview for fear of backlash from the Federal Communications Commission. On this week’s On the Media, hear about the MAGA movement trying to shift television to the right. Plus, the legal theory that the FCC is using to put pressure on the networks.

[01:00] Host Brooke Gladstone speaks with  Jim Rutenberg, writer-at-large for The New York Times, about how Trump’s FCC is reviving a nearly century-old rule to crack down on late-night talk shows. Rutenberg explains why MAGA’s embrace of the FCC’s regulatory powers to go after “liberal bias” in the media signals a shift within the Republican party. 

[25:44] Brooke sits down with Daniel Suhr, the president of a legal advocacy group called the Center for American Rights and the architect behind the legal theory that the FCC is using to put pressure on TV networks. They discuss his goal to make network TV look more like the AM radio band. 

 Further reading / watching:

• “How a Century-Old Rule Is Scrambling Late-Night TV,” by Jim Rutenberg
• “The MAGA Plan to Take Over TV Is Just Beginning,” by Jim Rutenberg
• “The FCC’s Public Notice on ‘Bona Fide News,’” by Daniel Suhr
• “The end of an agency,” by Daniel Suhr
• “Straight Talk on FCC 'Jawboning'” by Daniel Suhr
• The Divided Dial: Episode 3 - The Liberal Bias Boogeyman

On the Media is supported by listeners like you. Support OTM by donating today (https://pledge.wnyc.org/support/otm). Follow our show on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook @onthemedia, and share your thoughts with us by emailing [email protected].

In 1946, Orson Welles, the actor and director behind Citizen Kane, was at the pinnacle of his career. At the time, he had a national radio show called Orson Welles Commentaries on ABC. After a year on the radio, discussing politics and Hollywood, Welles heard of a shocking crime. It was the end of World War Two. A Black soldier, heading home, was brutally beaten by a white police officer in South Carolina. No one knew the identity of the officer. No one even knew the town where it happened.

Welles pledged to solve the mystery… on the air...

In this midweek podcast we're bringing you episode one of a new series from our friends at Radio Diaries called Orson Welles and the Blind Soldier. It’s the story of a crime in a small, southern town…that became a spark for the budding civil rights movement. For the rest of the series, go to the radio diaries website.

On the Media is supported by listeners like you. Support OTM by donating today (https://pledge.wnyc.org/support/otm). Follow our show on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook @onthemedia, and share your thoughts with us by emailing [email protected].

In a landmark trial in California, Meta and Google are being accused of addicting children to social media. On this week’s On the Media, hear how the dramatic proceedings are playing out, and how measures to protect kids online can backfire. Plus, why are betting companies showing up in newsrooms?

[01:00] Host Brooke Gladstone speaks with  Madlin Mekelburg, a legal reporter at Bloomberg, about the landmark lawsuit against Google and Meta that went to trial this week. The social media giants are being accused of deliberately designing their platforms in a way that is addictive and harmful to children’s brains, and the verdict of this case will influence the outcomes of thousands of similar cases across the country. Plus, neuroscience researcher Ian Anderson explains why the ‘addiction’ framework  misses the complexity of what social media does to our brains. 

[20:00] Brooke interviews Julia Angwin, investigative journalist and founder of Proof News, a nonprofit journalism studio. They discuss the tools that users can employ to protect themselves against doomscrolling, and how social media bans across the world can sometimes do more harm than good. 

[34:41] Host Micah Loewinger speaks with Judd Legum, the author of the accountability newsletter Popular Information, about the explosive rise of prediction markets, and the implications of their growing partnerships with newsrooms.  

 Further reading / watching:

• “Social Networks Face Big Tobacco Moment Over Addiction Cases,” by Madlin Mekelburg
• “Overestimates of social media addiction are common but costly,” by Ian Anderson and Wendy Wood
• “I Killed Color on My Phone. The Result Shocked Me,” by Julia Angwin
• “Social Media Use and Well-Being Across Adolescent Development,” by Ben Singh, Mason Zhou, Rachel Curtis, et al
• “Evidence for link between digital technology use and teenage mental health problems is weak, our large study suggests,” by Qiqi Cheng and Neil Humphrey
• “The casino-fication of news,” by Judd Legum

On the Media is supported by listeners like you. Support OTM by donating today (https://pledge.wnyc.org/support/otm). Follow our show on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook @onthemedia, and share your thoughts with us by emailing [email protected].

At the end of December, familiar scenes of protest in Tehran were being documented and shared across the world. But on January 8th, the images stopped coming after the Iranian regime cut off the internet in an attempt by the authorities to prevent protestors from organizing and posting videos online for the outside world to see. Under the cover of darkness the regime is reported to have killed up to 30,000 people.

Brooke spoke to Mahsa Alimardani, the Associate Director of the Technology Threats & Opportunities program at WITNESS, where she works on distinguishing visual truths in the AI age. She says that the internet has started flickering back on after a nearly three-week-long national blackout–the longest the country has ever seen–but that a thick fog of disinformation still covers Iran.

On the Media is supported by listeners like you. Support OTM by donating today (https://pledge.wnyc.org/support/otm). Follow our show on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook @onthemedia, and share your thoughts with us by emailing [email protected].

In the latest batch of Epstein files, hundreds of pages are redacted, shielding the names of prosecutors and possible co-conspirators. On this week’s On the Media, what the files say about how the criminal justice system failed Epstein’s victims. Plus, the toppling of a statue raises questions about who represents Puerto Rican culture. 

[01:00] Host Brooke Gladstone speaks with Julie K. Brown, investigative journalist for The Miami Herald, whose reporting back in 2018 led to sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein’s arrest. Brown is pouring through the Epstein files and finding new information about how prosecutors failed to bring Epstein to justice for so many years. She is documenting what she finds in her substack newsletter, The Epstein Files by Julie K. Brown. 

[19:24]  We’re celebrating the launch of Season 3 of La Brega from Alana Casanova-Burgess and Futuro Media by featuring episode one: about the toppling of the statue of a Spanish colonizer in San Juan a few years ago, what that reveals about Puerto Rico’s champions, and who deserves that pedestal.

 Further reading / watching:

• “What I found today in The Epstein Files,” by Julie K. Brown
• “Did the FBI investigate Trump and Epstein?” by Julie K. Brown
• Season 3 of La Brega

On the Media is supported by listeners like you. Support OTM by donating today (https://pledge.wnyc.org/support/otm). Follow our show on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook @onthemedia, and share your thoughts with us by emailing [email protected].

In 2022 Brent Renaud became the first American journalist to be killed by Russian soldiers while covering the war in Ukraine. Brent’s collaborator for many years was his brother Craig. When word got back to Craig that Brent had been shot, he did what he and his brother had always done. He kept filming. 

Craig and his producer Juan Arredondo used that footage along with material from their archive to make the Oscar nominated short documentary “Armed Only With a Camera.”

The film is part tribute to his brother, part salute to war journalists who are still out there, risking their lives. Micah spoke to Craig about how the brothers got started in the journalism business. 

On the Media is supported by listeners like you. Support OTM by donating today (https://pledge.wnyc.org/support/otm). Follow our show on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook @onthemedia, and share your thoughts with us by emailing [email protected].

The Trump administration called Alex Pretti, who was shot and killed by federal officers, a “domestic terrorist.” And then bystander footage flooded the internet. On this week’s On the Media, how the real-time verification of video evidence is transforming public discourse. Plus, what the anti-ICE protests in Minneapolis have in common with the Boston Massacre.

[01:00] Host Brooke Gladstone speaks with Brandy Zadrozny, senior enterprise reporter at MS Now, about the informal network of far-right content creators traveling to anti-ICE protests in Minneapolis, and why the right-wing narrative is losing power in the face of an outpouring of bystander footage. 

[17:45] Host Micah Loewinger talks with Radley Balko, author of The Rise of the Warrior Cop: The Militarization of America's Police Forces, about similarities between the conditions that led to the Boston Massacre in 1770 and what we’re seeing today in Minneapolis and other cities targeted by ICE operations today.

[31:43] Brooke sits down with Eliot Higgins, the founder of Bellingcat, to discuss his framework for the essential functions of democracy— verification, deliberation, and accountability—which have broken down into hollow performances or simulations in the United States today. 

 Further reading / watching:

• “In Minneapolis, far-right influencers frame ICE resistance as terrorism,” by Brandy Zadrozny
• “Two cities under siege,” by Radley Balko
• “Verification, Deliberation, Accountability: A new framework for tackling epistemic collapse and renewing democracy,” by Eliot Higgins and Natalie Martin

On the Media is supported by listeners like you. Support OTM by donating today (https://pledge.wnyc.org/support/otm). Follow our show on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook @onthemedia, and share your thoughts with us by emailing [email protected].

Stars and Stripes, the venerated, independent award-winning newspaper that has served the armed services for roughly a century, may be getting an uninvited makeover, courtesy of Pete Hegseth’s Defense Department. 

In a statement posted on X earlier this month, Pentagon spokesperson Sean Parnell said that Stars and Stripes would no longer be carrying wire reports from  the Associated Press, and that it would steer away from all that is woke or might sap morale. Parnell said the defense department would be bringing the newspaper “into the 21st century.” 

Brooke spoke to Erik Slavin, Editor-in-Chief of Stars and Stripes.

On the Media is supported by listeners like you. Support OTM by donating today (https://pledge.wnyc.org/support/otm). Follow our show on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook @onthemedia, and share your thoughts with us by emailing [email protected].