The Village Voice (Apparently) Hearts Public Eye
From Sidney H. Schanberg's "Press Clips" column in today's Village Voice:
Journalism's most serious failure, probably, is its reluctance to explain how reporters go about putting together a news story. A large percentage of news stories, for example, begin with a public relations announcement…Sometimes the finished products that appear in a paper are little more than slightly tweaked rewrites of the original press releases. That is known as bad journalism. But we don't talk about it. Even superior newspapers don't write about such things, out of fear that their critics, or the general public, will use this candor against them.This lack of openness about our tradecraft—this non-transparency—is really the mother of most of the press's troubles.
From the mission statement on the Public Eye homepage:
Public Eye's fundamental mission is to bring transparency to the editorial operations of CBS News — transparency that is unprecedented for broadcast and online journalism…Public Eye is an opportunity for our audience to hold CBS News more publicly accountable. It is also an opportunity for CBS News to be more open about how and why it makes editorial decisions that affect what millions of people see, hear and read each news day…
Breaking out of the traditional "ombudsman" role, Public Eye will also try to explain and describe how news is reported and produced at CBS -- a mystery to most viewers.
Public Eye still has a long way to go in making all this happen, of course. But as we find our footing and settle in for the long haul – it's hard to believe, but PE hasn't even hit its two-month anniversary yet – it's heartening to see other media outlets arguing that greater transparency is an essential ingredient for healthy journalism. NBC's Daily Nightly and ABC's Blue Sheet are other examples of the move toward transparency in broadcast journalism. (And for even more examples from across the media spectrum, check out our list of Journo-Blogs.)
Of course, we don't claim to be media watching superheroes here, righting journalism's wrongs one segment at a time. We know still have a long way to go. To that end, let me ask: what do you want to see more of on Public Eye? What could we be doing better? Let us know in comments.