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More sources about the secret re-classification:

Article with examples: The U.S. Intelligence Community's Secret Historical Document Reclassification Program

transcript with the historian who noticed this happening:DE-DECLASSIFICATION - interview with Matthew Aid

Even at NPR, all things are not what they seem:

http://www.onthemedia.org/transcripts/transcripts_ 123104_curtain.html

Always be careful about numbers like 30,000. Numbers like that are often made up. On the Media did a story recently that looked at the number 50,000 and why it comes up in the media so much. As they called it, it's a "goldilocks number". Not too big and not too small. Not so big that you think it's everywhere, but not to small that you think it won't effect you. If you ever see a nice even number that at first sounds big, be sceptical. Especially if that number is a nice even 50,000.

5% are reporting on the media. The ones discussing sports, entertainment, politics, etc. are on a journalistic bent, whether or not they cover the media.
This is like saying that the only journalists at NPR do the "On the Media" show.
Once again, lies, damn lies, and statistics.

I'm a big fan of On The Media - a weekly NPR radio show which I probably wouldn't hear if it wasn't for their graciously provided RSS feed. The show covers print and broadcast media from an ethical perspective, in contrast from MediaGuardian's obsession with CEOs and ratings. Its not all US centred and they do a lot on Iraq and even the UK. Worth a listen.

BROOKE GLADSTONE: Well you've been quoted as saying you don't think you'll ever work in television again. Do you think you've been blacklisted?

STEVE WILSON: I think journalism -- and I'm talking about mainstream journalism now that's, that's run by large corporations -- fewer than ever before as consolidation goes on -- has made it pretty clear that, you know, people are supposed to keep their heads down and their mouths shut. Journalists are not supposed to stand up and challenge the people they work for. Meanwhile the people they work for now are big corporations, and they look at the news now not as a public service but as a product! And if it's going to cost you a whole lot of money in lost advertising because you offended some car maker or some big company like Monsanto, then suddenly it isn't worth it to give people that information, because from a business standpoint you're not going to make as much money doing that!

BROOKE GLADSTONE: So you think there's a sort of craven spirit that has infected the mainstream press.

STEVE WILSON: I think it's laziness and cowardice. That's what I think. You know. [BOTH SPEAK AT ONCE]

JANE AKRE: There's a great deal of self-censorship, but you certainly wouldn't advocate, Steve, that people do what we do and end up unemployed and-- unemployable! [BOTH SPEAK AT ONCE]

I'm just glad they snuck in a Willhelm among all those screams.

Parent is referring to the Wilhelm, a sound effect that sound artists seem to stick into every film they can as a joke.

From the above linked article:

The Wilhelm has punctuated the death and dismemberment of dozens of characters in some 20 to 25 movies, particularly in those associated with George Lucas. With appearances in some of history's biggest hits, from Star Wars to Raiders of the Lost Ark to Toy Story, clearly this sound gets around.

Listen to the RealAudio of the Wilhelm article.

I'm just glad they snuck in a Willhelm among all those screams.

Parent is referring to the Wilhelm, a sound effect that sound artists seem to stick into every film they can as a joke.

From the above linked article:

The Wilhelm has punctuated the death and dismemberment of dozens of characters in some 20 to 25 movies, particularly in those associated with George Lucas. With appearances in some of history's biggest hits, from Star Wars to Raiders of the Lost Ark to Toy Story, clearly this sound gets around.

Listen to the RealAudio of the Wilhelm article.

Screw that...in the future, everyone will have their own public-access TV show.

Seriously though...

My own opinion is that the technology isn't there yet for anybody to kill "mainstream" TV. But given the sorry state of TV, I'd love to be wrong!

Here is the NPR On the Media podcast feed.

Exactly...So here a couple that I like:

• Lug radio. This is good linux news mixed with humor. Some good interviews and views.
• It Conversations. Just started listening to these a couple of days ago. Seems like good interviews with high profile people.
• On The MediaWell I can't get NPR in New Zealand so I download OTM which is pretty good commment on the media industry.

Coverville: Nothing but covers of songs. Good commentary; takes listener requests.

Firesign Theatre: Snippets of FT albums and commercials they've done. I don't know if the commercials are serious or not, but they're for real companies, and are typical FT.

On the Media: A weekly NPR program. Since I'm rarely in the house Saturday when it's broadcast, I love the ability to listen to it during the week as I have time.

The Radio Adventures of Dr. Floyd: The serialized (and funny) adventures of Dr. Floyd as he travels through time battling his nemesis Dr. Steve.

Safe Digressions: Your daily dose of poetry, and a refreshing break during a day of techie nonsense.

Science @ NASA: Brief reports on various NASA activities. The stories about the Huygens probe have been particularly interesting, especially the description of methane rainbows on Titan.

http://podcast.wfmu.org/

They offer two shows of old 78s which are public domain as well as two other amazing shows (Advanced D & D with Donna Summer.... breakcore / random bedroom electronics and Downtown Soulville which is pure funk 45s from the 60s / early 70s and is extremely addictive. Especially of interest if you like stuff like Peanut Butter Wolf's Funky 16 corners comp from a few years back).

As for npr podcasting you can get on media as a podcast at http://onthemedia.org

Actually, believe it or not, The Thing is Jewish. (Another article.)

The radio show On the Media recently covered a similar thing:
Army of Three
Last month, the FCC hit Fox stations with the largest ever aggregate fine for indecency on TV. The offending material was a scene on the short-lived reality show "Married by America," involving strippers and whipped cream. Regulators said the move was triggered by 159 citizen complaints. But Buzzmachine.com blogger Jeff Jarvis tells Bob that the actual number of angry missives was much, much smaller.
Link to audio and transcript (midway down the page)

I would add to this a couple more:

The American Prospect, which says that, "Though Moore claims to have made a documentary, his examination of American gun culture presents viewers with a more heavily edited fiction than producer Brian Grazer's attempt to clean up Eminem. Whereas the rapper's movie reaches for the sort of truth mere facts cannot convey, Moore's film grabs viewers with the old demagogue's trick of using just as much factual information as is necessary to lead people toward false conclusions."

Additionally, the New York Times review was negative. The review is no longer available on their web site unless you pay to access their archives, but I saved an excerpt from it, "The slippery logic, tendentious grandstanding and outright demagoguery on display in 'Bowling for Columbine' should be enough to give pause to its most ardent partisans...though he seems to be hunting for a specific historical cause for events like Columbine, Mr. Moore, when it serves his purposes, is happy to generalize in the absence of empirical evidence and to make much of connections that seem spurious on close examination."

Neither of these, I'd like to point out, could be called right-wing. The New York Times is center-left, and the American Prospect is left-wing. They are hardly allies of the NRA.

Additionally, NPR, another organization that could hardly be called right-wing or a friend of the NRA, severely criticized Moore yesterday in its program On the Media. The lead-in to the report said:

""Armed with a rifle he got for opening a bank account, and shocking statistics like the ones you just heard, Moore had plenty of fodder. But still, he was not satisfied. To properly emphasize the point that our country is a veritable shooting gallery, Moore embellishes, grandstands, and ignores inconvenient facts. Fine, fish gotta swim, birds gotta fly, provocateurs gotta provoke. For the purposes of this story, a lack of countervailing viewpoints will not be faulted. The use of cliched, happy songs over images of war crimes, not once but twice, will be unremarked upon. As will the point that Michael Moore would have no career if he just called ahead for an appointment. This is a fact check, an accounting of distortions that would give pause to even the most enthusiastic fans of the movie."

Anyway, I don't know the answers to the gun violence question. Personally, I lean towards gun control, but am neither an expert nor speak with dogmatic certainty. However, I would point the original questioner the following routes:

First of all, do not trust Michael Moore's statistics. Moore makes a big deal out of the fact that Canada has as many guns as we do in the US, yet has a much lower crime rate. This is not really true. First of all, in Canada, there is 0.26 guns per capita. In the US, there is 0.62 guns per capita. Secondly, in Canada, there are much stricter gun licensing laws, particularly when it comes to personal handguns. As a result, 6.25% of Canada's guns are handguns - the kind of gun used overwhelmingly in gun violence. In America, 22.9% of guns are handguns. And as someone else noted in this thread, "Another interesting statistic is that in Canada's largest city, Toronto, it is estimated that 3 out of 4 hand guns involved in a crime are imported illegally from the US."

Additionally, I would suggest looking at the relationship between unintegrated minority groups and crime. American whites are twice as likely to be murdered than European whites - but American blacks are 14 times as likely to be murdered as European whites! Blacks, despite accounting for about 13% of the American population, account for 53% of Americans who are murdered. And there is a scale in the US - the more integrated an minority, the lower its crime rate. So Asians have a much lower crime rate than Hispanics, who have a lower crime rate than blacks.

The same pattern appears in Europe - the prisons are being filled with immigrants from Northern Africa, just like American prisons are being filled by African-Americans.

Please note that I am not saying that blacks or other minorities are inherently violent! I am merely saying that there is a natural sociological correlation between groups that are not integrated into society and groups that are more violent.

So, given this, let me propose an explanation. The difference in murder rates is due to a mix of three factors: culture, gun control policies, and immigration/social policies.

I do not know enough about the cultural explanation, but it would not surprise me if American culture were a factor.

Having easy access to guns and having far more guns than other countries is going to make a difference.

Immigration/Social Policies - America's crime rate has gone through a huge drop in the past 10 years, while Europe's has gone through a huge rise. It so happens that Europe is dealing with a large, unintegrated minority for the first time in centuries - and has done an awful job of it so far. Meanwhile, the integration of blacks and Hispanics into America, while far from complete, is progressing. I expect that we will see further drops in crime in the US, the more African-Americans are integrated into society.

But Canada has as high a percentage of immigrants as does the US. So what explains its lower crime rate? Perhaps they do a better job of integrating immigrants. And Canada does have a much more generous social welfare system. I would be very surprised if there were not a correlation between social welfare and crime.

So let's put it together. American whites have twice as high a murder rate as European whites. Couldn't much of that be attributable to the massively easier availability of handguns in the US?

On the other hand, American blacks have 7 times as high a murder rate as American whites. Couldn't much of that be attributable to America's history of slavery and Jim Crow, leading to a poverty-stricken, unintegrated black minority? Meanwhile, Canada has a much less racist history, and many fewer blacks - Canada's population is 2% black, of whom many are recent immigrants from the Caribbean, whereas America's population is 13% black, of whom most are the descendants of slaves.

Again, I am not saying that African-Americans are inherently violent. I am saying that African-Americans went through a terrible history that has made them poor and unintegrated into society. And without a good social welfare system like Canada's, some turn to crime.