Tonight on GRIT TV we look at the best and worst of the fourth estate on our weekly media roundtable. Greg Mitchell, Editor of Editor & Publisher (E & P) and the author most recently of So Wrong for So Long: How the Press, the Pundits—and the President—Failed in Iraq, discusses an important eight month McClatchy investigation (“coverage that trumps the NY Times”) of the US detention system created after September 11 as well as a four part series in Army Times by Kelly Kennedy on the trauma of war and the underreported spike in suicides among American soldiers in 2006. Anthony D. Advincula, a New York based editor and writer for New America Media, the first and largest association of ethnic and community media in the country and former editor-in-chief of The Filipino Express, looks at the crackdown on immigrant workers at a meat packing plant in Iowa and the ethnic press’s support of Barack Obama. What happened to all of Hillary’s Latino supporters? Are they backing Obama? And Carol Jenkins, an Emmy Award winning news anchor and President of the Women’s Media Center, deconstructs the NY Times’s front-page story on sexism and the media coverage of Hillary Clinton. Sexism sells, says Jenkins, but we’re not buying it.

If that isn’t enough to chew on what about this weeks biggest story: The breakdown of talks between the United States and the Iraqi government on extending the US mandate in Iraq and expanding the number of military bases in the country. It’s been covered in the British press but over here you’d hardly know.

Also in this hour, an excerpt from the Real News Network's two-part interview with Michael Ratner of the Center for Constitutional Rights on the Supreme Court’s decision last week on Guantanamo detainees. See the full interview here.

And an interview with Margaret Stevens, a member of Iraq Veterans Against the War on the experience of women in the military. Stevens who joined the NJ National Guard after high school offers an account not only of the inequalities within the military but also of the benefits and opportunities the military provides working class men and women.

Finally, an interview with actor and activist Mimi Kennedy. Best known for her role as Dharma’s mom on the TV series Dharma & Greg, Kennedy has moved firmly onto the political stage. In 2004 Kennedy launched Progressive Democrats of America (PDA) with the far-reaching goal of transforming the Democratic Party and our country. In this interview, Kennedy discusses the emergence of PDA after John Kerry’s defeat in 2004 and what it means to advance an agenda not just a candidate. Working both inside and outside the party the PDA has established chapters in all 435 congressional districts. “We had to take over the two party system,” she says. Find out here how they did it.