Today on GRITtv our media roundtable looks at last week’s big stories. NBC fights to keep a lid on pirated videos coming out of Beijing. During the 2006 winter Olympics, there were only two hours of video online. This year there are more than 2,200. Can the big media keep up and maintain its monopoly?

Here to discuss the sea change in media coverage are Rory O’Connor the author of Shock Jocks: Hate Speech and Talk Radio, blogger and co-founder of Living Liberally, Katie Halper, and Esther Armah co-host of “Wake Up Call” on WBAI Radio. They also take on the mainstream media’s refusal to cover John Edwards’ affair. Whose interest were they serving? And why did they wait so long? According to Armah the same story would have been handled much differently in the UK.

Halper says that the interest in Edwards has overshadowed McCain’s own philandering. When will the media take up that story and, more important, the hypocrisy of both men who argued that the “sanctity” of marriage was a reason to deny gays and lesbians that very same right?

We also pay tribute to Mahmoud Darwish, the great Palestinian poet who died on Saturday. Here to discuss his work and read his poetry are Mahdis Keshavarz, founder of the Make Agency, poets Nathalie Handal and Naomi Shihab Nye, and Kathy Engel, co-editor of We Begin Here: Poems for Palestine and Lebanon.

Finally, an interview from The Real News Network with Naomi Klein on China’s growing security and surveillance industry. Find out why the corporate media are not asking the right questions. All that and more on GRITtv.