Is the Fourth Branch Losing Power?

KPBS | By KPBS Public Broadcasting

Published February 13, 2007 at 8:58 AM PST

This story was published more than 17 years ago.

Should reporters be able to protect their confidential sources? Since Watergate, how has the use of confidential sources changed? How did the White House use the media to make a case for going to wa

Tom Fudge: Tonight, FRONTLINE begins a four-part series on the modern news media. It's called News Wars: Secrets, Spin and the Future of the News . The series begins tonight on KPBS TV at 10 p.m. The first two programs in this series examine the relationship between government and the media. It focuses on the run-up to the war in Iraq, when even our top journalists believed the Bush administration statements about weapons of mass destruction. Eventually, coverage of the war would devolve into a witch hunt, following the Valerie Plame leak, in which at least one reporter went to jail.

Part one of FRONTLINE's News War: Secrets, Sources, and Spin will air tonight, Tuesday at 10 p.m. on KPBS TV, Channel 15. Parts two and three will air in the same time slot over the next two weeks on KPBS, with the fourth part airing on Mar. 27.

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Guest

Raney Aronson, producer of FRONTLINE's News War: Secrets, Sources, and Spin .

End Music: I Never Liked You by Don Caballero, from the album American Don (2000)