BBC Mundo - Podcasting Versus "Pod" People

One of the most important resources that I have loaded on my school webpage is a link to BBC Mundo (BBC World Service in Spanish language): http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/spanish/news/. Each Monday, to start the week and to practice listening and reading comprehension, we look at a few videos and/or short text articles. These items also provide excellent models for World Language podcasts because of the quality of the writing and presentation, and the vast, ever-updated range of topics. When I survey my classes, they inevitably mention BBC Mundo and the link to the Discovery Channel in Spanish on my webapge as two of their favorite resources.
Not only are they getting language enrichment and high-level reporting, but they are also learning that our own news media generally present a limited range of views.
With the decline of conventional newspapers and the explosion of "news" blogs biased to a particular point of view, it is crucial that we offer our students examples of high-level professional journalism from around the world.
For an interesting read on "self-segregation" in U. S. society based on points of view, including on the Internet, (what I would term "pod-peopling") see The Big Sort: Why the Clustering of Like-Minded America is Tearing Us Apart by Bill Bishop (New York: Houghton Mifflin, 2008).