It's kind of a taverna-type society. A lot of people sitting around, a lot of people drinking coffee, smoking cigarettes, leisurely pays two-hour lunches.

Popular misconceptions abound in the reporting of the Greek debt crisis.

From WNYC in New York, this is On the Media. I'm Bob Garfield.

Also on the show this week, the true

story behind Linda Taylor, better known as Ronald Reagan's infamous welfare queen. She was

investigated for homicide, kidnapping, baby trafficking. Reagan didn't mention any of those things.

And Russian comedian Yaakov Smyrnov tells us about dealing with a particularly harsh critic, his own government.

I would say, you know, in Russia they would say we have freedom of speech.

But in America, you have freedom after you speak, which is a nice little feature.

There's more coming up after this. From WNYC in New York, this is on the media.

I'm Brooke Laddstone.

And I'm Bob Garfield.

This week, all eyes have been fixed on Greece, specifically on whether the new leftist

government's

refusal to accept further austerity measures and its subsequent inability to make a 1.6 billion

euro debt payment to the IMF will lead to the country's exit from the Eurozone.

As of this recording, the end game remains unclear.

But a thread running through all of the coverage

is a sense of certainty that Greece has nobody to blame but itself.

Greek got bailed out. You read the Walser's joke, got bailed out by other European countries. It was going broke.

To which much of the world responds, stop whining. Greece's problems are its own fault.

In other words, what goes around comes around,

...