I was recently heartened to hear a very good discussion of effective altruism on BBC Radio 4's statistics programme, More or Less, in response to the "Ice Bucket Challenge". They speak to Neil Bowerman of the Centre for Effective Altruism and Elie Hassenfeld from GiveWell.

They even briefly raise the possibility that large drives of charitable donations to ineffective causes could be net negative as it's possible that people have a roughly fixed charity budget, which such drives would deplete. They admit there's not much hard evidence for such a claim, but to even hear such an unsentimental, rational view raised in the mainstream media is very bracing.

Available here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/podcasts/series/moreorless (click the link to "WS To Ice Or Not To Ice"), or directly here: http://downloads.bbc.co.uk/podcasts/radio4/moreorless/moreorless_20140908-1200a.mp3