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interventional radiology and cancer care. More information at www.wholidem.org. From W.N.Y.C. in New York, this is NPR's On the Media. I'm Brooke Gladstone.

Bob Garfield is out this week. I'm Mike Pasca. USA Today's recent scoop about how three big phone companies were handing their customer call

records over to the National Security Agency generated more headlines this week.

Verizon said it had never been asked for the data and never provided it, and Bell South asked

USA Today to retract its, quote, false and unsubstantiated statements.

Also this week, in Senate confirmation hearings, Michael Hayden, who's nominated to head the CIA,

insisted that the NSA programs are legal and necessary. And another phone-tapping news,

ABC News claimed that calls made by their reporters were being tracked.

According to ABC, the government knew about calls placed by reporters Brian Ross and Richard Esposito.

Ross, who is ABC's chief investigative correspondent, suspects the stories that put the feds on the telephone trail

may have been their reporting on seven approved techniques for interrogation

or their story on so-called black-site prisons in Romanian, Poland.

But Ross never would have known if he hadn't received a call from someone in the know who rang with

...