GRITtv: "Real Questions, Bodies as Battlefields and From Baghdad to Brooklyn" (with video)

GRITtv, with video:

Why aren’t reporters asking the real questions? That’s what our media panelist Rose Aguilar asked today, and it’s a valid question. With the Stupak amendment and the Fort Hood shootings, new unemployment numbers in the double digits and questions over troop escalation in Afghanistan, not to mention the resignation of embattled CNN host Lou Dobbs, there was a lot to cover this week. Every Thursday, we look at the way the stories of the day get told, point out the problems and offer some solutions with a variety of media makers.

Rose Aguilar, of Your Call Radio and author of Red Highways: A Liberal’s Journey Into the Heartland, John R. MacArthur, president and publisher of Harper’s Magazine and author of You Can’t Be President: The Outrageous Barriers to Democracy in America, Dan Gross, columnist at Newsweek and author of Dumb Money: How Our Greatest Financial Minds Bankrupted the Nation, and Hendrik Hertzberg of The New Yorker and author of ¡OBÁMANOS!: The Rise of a New Political Era look at the media’s biggest hits and misses of the past week.

“Yoga is slow medicine but it is medicinal in character,” Deirdre Summerbell says. She’s the founder of Project Air, where she uses yoga to help women and girls in Rwanda, survivors of the genocide, reconnect with their bodies and heal their spirits. Summerbell joined us in the GRITtv studio to talk about her project and her plans to expand it into the Congo and other areas of the world, like Gaza and Afghanistan.

Last December, videojournalist Jennifer Utz and Mohamed, an Iraqi refugee, joined us at GRITtv to talk about Mohamed’s journey from Iraq to the U.S. This week, we take a closer look at From Baghdad to Brooklyn, a documentary on Utz’s involvement getting Mohamed to the U.S. and his transition into American society.

As Mohamed’s story shows, even legal immigration is a messy, difficult process. We have video from Breakthrough, Esmeralda, a transgender woman who sought asylum from Mexico, tells her story of detention and abuse at the hands of the U.S. government.

Finally, in a GRITtv exclusive, environmental journalist Karl Grossman gets the dirt on solar energy from Dean Hapshe of Majestic Son & Sons Solar Energy.

Howie P.S.: Will Bunch (Philadelphia Inquirer) underlines the failure of our media to do its job: "Jon Stewart continues to break stories the "real" media can't -- or won't," with video about the FAUX News footage switch.