PBS Debuts ‘NEWS FLASH FIVE’

PASADENA, Calif., Jan. 15 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ — 2007 PBS Press Tour – - PBS today announced the launch of NEWS FLASH FIVE (http://www.pbskids.org/newsflashfive), a pioneering Web site to encourage 8- 11 year olds to learn about current events, and bring them a fresh way of receiving — and reporting — news online. The announcement was made at the Television Critics Association Press Tour.

A recent survey of pbskidsgo.org users and children of pbs.org and pbsparents.org users revealed a high level of interest in the news. The survey showed almost four in five kids described themselves as interested or very interested in the news, but only one in four thought most news stories are “very easy” to understand.

At the heart of NEWS FLASH FIVE is an original, age-appropriate weekly newscast presented online by five animated kids covering five beats: national news, world, sports, entertainment & technology, and weather & science.

In addition, the site will feature educational games associated with each newscast — “Just the Facts” (a news quiz), “Pin Point” (locate places in the news on a map) and “Match It,” (matching photos and names of news makers). A larger activity — “Get the Scoop ” — is a guided news gathering and writing activity. There will also be opportunities for users to submit their own stories that can be used on the site.

NEWS FLASH FIVE will also offer comprehensive guides showing how the site can be used by both parents and teachers. These guides include:     News & Current Affairs Primer     Featuring activities for the home and school, tips for talking to kids about the news, how to make news relevant to kids, and how to watch the news with a critical eye.

Current Events Lesson Plan:     Here, students will analyze the role current events play in their lives.
Making News Lesson Plan:     In this activity, students critique news reports and compare the different media that are used to report the news.
Get the Scoop Lesson Plan:     In this lesson, students will practice and perfect the skills necessary for reporting a news story.

NEWS FLASH FIVE is produced by Thirteen/WNET New York, in consultation with the Online NewsHour, and is funded by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.

About PBS KIDS     PBS KIDS, for preschoolers, and PBS KIDS GO!, for early elementary school kids, are committed to providing the highest quality non-commercial content and learning environment for children across the country. Providing age- appropriate, diverse programming for kids, PBS KIDS and PBS KIDS GO! programs consistently earn more prestigious awards than any other broadcast or cable network. Only PBS KIDS and PBS KIDS GO! have earned the unanimous endorsement of parents, children, industry leaders and teachers. With additional PBS resources to complement its programming, including PBS KIDS online (http://www.pbskids.org), PBS KIDS GO! online (http://www.pbskidsgo.org), PBS Parents (http://www.pbsparents.org), PBS TeacherSource ( http://www.pbsteachersource.org), PBS Ready To Learn services and literacy events across the country, PBS is providing the tools necessary for positive child development. PBS is a nonprofit media enterprise owned and operated by the nation’s 354 public television stations, serving nearly 90 million people each week and reaching 99% of American homes.

BILL MOYERS JOURNAL Returns to PBS Line-Up in April

PASADENA, Calif., Jan. 15 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ — Veteran journalist Bill Moyers returns to PBS in April with a weekly public affairs series entitled BILL MOYERS JOURNAL — the name of his first important series on public television 35 years ago.

Moyers is re-inventing the broadcast for the 21st century, as viewers will see when they tune in for the premiere on Wednesday, April 25 at 9 p.m. for his documentary report: “Buying the War” about the role of the press in the run-up to the invasion of Iraq. The series will then air in its regular timeslot: Fridays at 9 p.m. (check local listings) on PBS.

Moyers, who recently received the Lifetime Achievement Emmy Award, said in a statement, “When I retired from NOW WITH BILL MOYERS two years ago, I said that I wasn’t retiring from television. Sure enough, we produced two gratifying series in 2006 — FAITH & REASON and MOYERS ON AMERICA — and the response to those broadcasts, and the work itself, simply whetted my appetite for more. People keep writing or stopping me on the street to suggest stories that are not being reported and voices that are not being heard. A lot of Americans long for more than conventional wisdom, celebrity pundits, predictable opinions and safe analysis of the obvious. There’s a vacuum across the media spectrum, and several funders have stepped forward to say they would support us in our effort to fill it with independent journalism on the arts and letters, science, religion, business, foreign policy and the media. I’m as eager and charged as I was over 30 years ago when I entered this game. Ponce de Leon would still be around today if he had given up his search for the fountain of youth and just entered journalism.”

“We are excited to have Bill’s voice back in the public affairs line-up,” says PBS Chief Content Officer John Boland. “As I have traveled the country in recent months, I have heard friends of public television everywhere acclaiming his two series of 2006. We are proud to be bringing his journalistic instincts to our audience each week.”

The premiere of BILL MOYERS JOURNAL, “Buying the War,” explores the role of the press in the lead-up to the invasion of Iraq, including how the government’s claims about weapons of mass destruction and terrorist ties to Saddam Hussein were largely accepted at face value by the mainstream media and cheer-leaded by the “partisan press.”

The marketing of the war has been much examined, but BILL MOYERS JOURNAL looks at how key elements of the media bought into the propaganda. “Buying the War” features interviews with Dan Rather, formerly of CBS; Tim Russert of “Meet the Press”; Bob Simon of “60 Minutes”; Walter Pincus of the Washington Post; Walter Isaacson, then president of CNN; editor at large of The New Republic and author Peter Beinart; talk show host Phil Donahue; and James Wolcott, Jonathan Landay and Warren Strobel of Knight Ridder, which was acquired by the McClatchy Company in 2006. Virtually alone, Knight Ridder asked for the hard evidence to back up the president’s justification of the war.

“We’re sending young men and women, and nowadays not so young men and women, to risk their lives. And everyone wants to be behind them. And everyone should be behind them,” says James Walcott, Washington bureau chief of Knight Ridder. “The question for us in journalism is, are we really behind them when we fail to do our jobs?”

BILL MOYERS JOURNAL is supported by an extensive companion Web site at pbs.org/moyers where visitors can interact, give feedback and sign up for the Moyers podcast, which was listed in iTunes Best of 2006 People’s Choice top 100 new podcasts. After the broadcast, each episode will be available in its entirety for viewing online.     BILL MOYERS JOURNAL is funded by the Partridge Foundation, the Park Foundation, The Herb Alpert Foundation and sole corporate funder Mutual of America Life Insurance Company.

Marie Antoinette

Airing on WOSU TV, Monday, September 25, at 9 PM.
“Marie Antoinette and the French Revolution”
Her name has become synonymous with the French monarchy and all its excesses, but there is more to the story of Marie Antoinette than the simplistic tale of how a frivolous sovereign helped provoke the uprising that became the French Revolution.  She was, in fact, a tender-hearted, complex woman, whose tragic awakening came too late to save her from the guillotine.

Without losing sight of the dire inequities in 18th century France, the film paints  a surprising portrait in which Marie Antoinette emerges as a sympathetic and, in the end, courageous figure.  The two-hour film traces her journey from the splendors of her childhood in the palaces of the mighty Austro-Hungarian Empire to her final hours in a squalid French prison cell. To tell the story of Marie Antoinette is to relive the great revolution that unleashed the forces that shaped our modern world.

From her disastrous marriage which remained unconsummated for seven years to her tortured relationship with her iron-willed mother, Marie Antoinette’s life was a long list of humiliations. Sacrificed to 18th century power politics, she arrived in France when she was fourteen, a naive foreigner eager to please, hardly prepared for the intrigues of the court at Versailles. Light-hearted, charming, graceful, she threw her energies into an endless whirl of extravagant parties, never troubling to ask who was paying for the luxuries she took for granted.

The revolutionaries who stormed the Bastille found the Queen a ready target for all that was wrong with France.  Torn from her 100-room palace when a mob of some 7,000 women marched on Versailles, thrust into a common jail, she was plunged into despair, only to be transformed by her suffering.  “Tribulation,” she said, “first makes you realize who you are.” Her wealth and crown had made her heedless of the poor and the powerless.  With new awareness and regal dignity, she mounted the steps of the scaffold, conscious of her failures, doomed by her own tragic flaws, a young woman trapped in a tumultuous moment of history.

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