All Blog Posts from Public Eye

Public Eye has been around for more than a year now, but we’re still very much a work in progress. And that's as it should be: After all, we’re in largely uncharted territory here. Print journalism has long embraced the idea that it is worthwhile for someone within the organization to function as a critic and a representative of the public – this person is usually called an “ombudsman.” But the concept has yet to be widely embraced in television news.

We are not exactly ombudsmen, of course – Public Eye has a mission much wider than that. We are tasked with helping the public understand how the news gets made, get to know the people behind it, and get a handle on the trends and traditions that shape coverage. The basic idea is to make the organization more transparent – even if that transparency sometimes reveals flaws.

That’s why we take people inside editorial meetings, talk to producers and correspondents about how they go about their jobs, and introduce readers to the people that put out the news. It’s also why we take on issues that media outlets like CBS News are sometimes reluctant to talk about. Sometimes we air criticisms from outsiders and ask CBS News decision makers to respond to them. Other times we are the critics ourselves.

I am the second editor of Public Eye, having replaced founding editor Vaughn Ververs, who is now senior political editor for CBSNews.com. When we started Public Eye, I think it's fair to say that many within CBS News viewed us warily. But despite some rocky moments, I believe we’ve earned their trust. And we've established credibility with those outside of CBS News who believed that we would be unable to bring real transparency to the organization.

Now comes the fun part: An opportunity to maintain our standards of fairness and quality while taking the site in a new direction. Look for new features in the coming months as we build on our foundation and try out some fresh ideas. We're looking forward to the challenge of building Public Eye, and we hope that you'll stay with us as we continue to refine the site and help usher in a new era of transparency at CBS News.

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Has it really been sixteen months since Public Eye launched? That’s what the calendar claims but time must have been moving at an unnatural speed because it doesn’t seem possible. Although perhaps we shouldn’t be surprised at how quickly it’s gone, given the amount of change we’ve seen at CBS News and in the media at large since we began. Now, for me it’s at an end. I am leaving Public Eye to work on political coverage for CBSNews.com.

The recent seismic changes that have turned the traditional landscape upside down have opened as many new doors in the industry as they have threatened to close. Even two years ago, the word “blogger” was a strange and disrespected term in the “MSM.” Now, many of those former critics are writing blogs of their own. YouTube has gone from a frat-house curiosity to the top of the media heap. The pre-dotcom-bubble promises of the Internet seem to finally be on their way to fulfillment. And this turmoil has opened up a new opportunity for myself at CBSNews.com, one I’m grateful for and excited about.

But it is with some mixed feelings that I leave Public Eye. As we observed at the time of its launch, this effort is something unprecedented in broadcast news -- an attempt to bring transparency to a business that has traditionally preferred to keep its process behind the curtain. PE is trying to reach out to an increasingly skeptical audience and bring them into a conversation about the news with those who are putting it on the air. It has been a very special privilege to have been a part of the first chapter of such an ambitious project and PE will always hold a special place in my career.

From my perspective, the most important challenge over the first 16 months has been to build credibility – both inside and outside of CBS News. It is understandable that both sides would look at us from a somewhat jaded point of view. Many internally feared that we would be constantly looking over their shoulders, micro-criticizing each move they made. Some on the outside wondered whether this effort wouldn’t end up as a PR vehicle, used to defend the network from criticism rather than address it. The trick has been to be fair and tough on both sides.

Have we accomplished that? On the whole, I believe the answer is yes.

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Today we’re announcing some big changes here at Public Eye and I wanted to take a moment to describe them. First the news: I am stepping aside as editor of Public Eye to become senior political editor for CBSNews.com. Brian Montopoli, who you’ve come to know well over the first 16 months of this blog, will take over as editor of Public Eye. Hillary Profita, also an founding member of the team, will continue to provide her analysis and behind-the-scenes observations as well as produce The Skinny.

These changes become effective January 15 and both Brian and I will have more to say before then. I have had the unique challenge to help launch something as ambitious and new as Public Eye, and now the dramatic changes in the media world have opened up another opportunity for me. Taking charge of political coverage and planning for CBSNews.com is a challenge that allows me to combine my past experience covering political campaigns with the knowledge and insight I’ve gained from looking at the evolution of our industry over the past two years. And I’m excited about it.

Of course, regardless of the opportunities in front of me, leaving Public Eye would be unimaginable if I weren’t completely comfortable that it would continue to thrive, and that’s where Brian comes in. With the experience, institutional knowledge and commitment he brings to the table, Brian will be able to maintain the basic mission of Public Eye while also putting his own stamp on it. He will be aided by Hillary, whose proven ability to bring you informational and important glimpses of what happens behind the curtains at CBS News and spot-on analysis of the news in general will play an even larger role. Change is perhaps the only constant in today’s media world, and it’s probably about time this blog sees a bit of it.

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Okay, okay, we get it – as we hurtle our way through ever-flowing lives of instant gratification, we want everything on-demand. Our appetites are so voracious and our attention spans so short these days, you have to wonder whether Apple’s decision to unveil its much-anticipated iPhone months before it hits the market will create tongue-wagging demand or instead be the cause of impatient riots in the streets of Manhattan.

We even serve up our history lessons before they actually take place. And while it’s not unusual to try and figure out the magnitude of the events we’re caught up in, sometimes we can get a little ahead of ourselves.

Take the obsession over a president’s “legacy,” for example. It isn’t really anything new. We’re always trying to figure out the pecking order in our pantheon of leaders, to take an initial stab at judging records and play fun little parlor games. But isn’t all the speculation mostly useless as a measure of historical judgment? Don’t we need some perspective before we draw our conclusions? Apparently not, considering all the chatter about legacy, especially on the cable news channels.

We’re reminded of the desire to project ourselves forward on days like today, when President Bush’s forthcoming speech on Iraq is eating up the majority of airtime. We’ve seen the usual posturing pundits debating the differences between “surge” and “escalate” and predicting the political impact of tonight’s address. We’ve also seen some historians pop up to talk about how this speech, and this president will go down in history.

The war in Iraq is certainly dominating the national discussion in the nation at the moment, which is entirely appropriate -- even long overdue. With Democrats in power on the Hill and firm evidence of the public’s unhappiness with the war’s course, tonight’s speech is obviously an important news event. But the pundits may want to take the longer view.

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As advertised, the Project for Excellence in Journalism today unveiled its first news coverage index, a weekly attempt to measure what news stories are dominating the media across a wide range of outlets – from network news coverage to newspapers, radio and Web sites. Typically thought of as a slow news period, the first week of this year was pretty busy and that is reflected by the stories we see topping this initial index – the new Congress convenes (with the first woman speaker), the death of President Ford and the execution of Saddam Hussein.

Any attempt to statistically look at the media is worth keeping an eye on (like the Tyndall Report, which has monitored the network broadcasts for years). And considering the number of sources and methodology PEJ is using, this index cuts a pretty wide swath. It should prove to be a useful (though often predictable) gauge of how loud the volume is on individual stories. This graph from today’s report struck me as something to keep in mind:

Different parts of the media had different priorities last week. The Ford funeral, with its pomp and circumstance, was a bigger story on television. It made up 17% of the network coverage and 18% of cable, while accounting for just 4% of the coverage that began on the front page of newspapers (barely making the top five).

Each medium plays stories in different ways and what consumers get may depend in part on what they rely on for their news – TV, newspapers or the Internet. Still, this is a nice addition to the universe of media-watching.

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Washington Post media writer Howard Kurtz digs up the latest development in the convergence of politics and the YouTube generation today, one which raises questions about the use and manipulation of user-generated content tools in the political process. Kurtz looks at a unique video posted on the Web site of Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards featuring the former Senator in an apparent, “behind-the-scenes” moment and asks:

An unscripted moment caught on a cellphone camera? Not exactly. The video of the presidential candidate chatting on his plane is on Edwards's Web site. The former senator seems unusually frank about the absurdities of political life -- or is this just carefully choreographed candor, packaged for the YouTube age?

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Danna Walker contributes part-time for CBS News in the Washington bureau. Danna Walker, Ph.D., is also an adjunct associate professor in residence and the James B. Simpson Fellow in the School of Communication at American University. Here Danna offers the following academic view of the changes the media is currently undergoing:

“Journalism is the art of collecting varying kinds of information (commonly called ‘news’), which a few people possess, and of transmitting it to a much larger number of people who are supposed to desire to share it.” -- Henry R. Luce, 1967.

“The medium is the message.” -– Marshall McLuhan, 1964.

“Freedom of the press belongs to the man who owns one.” -– A.J. Liebling, year unknown.

I told my “How the News Media Shape History” students at American University this semester that someday we would look back on 2006 as a landmark in the evolution of journalism. I didn’t base this on one major announcement or development but on a collection of events in media at the national level. The events signaled to me that leaders at the top levels of the news industry had faced their prospects in the roiling media environment and blinked.

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Ready or not, it’s becoming increasingly clear that mainstream news outlets are going to have to find a way to deal with user-generated content. But now they have some good news: According to one new study, such organizations are well-position to take advantage of the fast-growing trend. Here’s how Reuters sums up the study (hat tip to I Want Media):

The phenomenon of consumers contributing their own photographs, video and blogs took the media industry by storm in 2006 through Web sites such as YouTube and according to a report by consultancy Deloitte on media trends for 2007, that is unlikely to change.

The trend prompted headlines that the traditional media was losing sway with the consumer but Howard Davies, a director of media strategy at Deloitte, said print and TV had been wise to stand back and see how the practice developed.

“(They) are very well positioned to adopt some of the technology and some of the emerging social practice ... but incorporating it alongside traditional media channels to create an overall richer product," he told Reuters.

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With Time magazine already having bestowed its “Person of The Year” award upon “you,” the nation’s editors and news directors are weighing in with their pick for the top news story of 2006. Hold on to your hats folks, the winner is … the war in Iraq! Yes, that increasingly unpopular conflict received a whopping 176 first-place votes out of 242 ballots cast by Associated Press members, according to Editor & Publisher. Now, it certainly seems like a no-brainer to deem the war the single most important story of the year, just like it was no real stretch for Time to recognize the explosion of individual participation in today’s media. Actually, that’s just the point – by the time the press gets around to covering something, it’s pretty much old news.

That’s a logical reality when it comes to mass media and trends. Whether it’s pet rocks, break-dancing or grunge, trends have pretty much outlived themselves by the time they hit a mass audience. And when it comes to cultural and consumer issues like the iPod explosion, that’s just fine. But you have to wonder if the media can’t be a little more proactive on things like, let’s say, war. Here’s how that first-place finished is characterized:

What started in 2003 as a supposedly straightforward drive to topple Saddam Hussein deteriorated during 2006 into a dismayingly complex and savage struggle, with Iraqis by the thousands killed in sectarian reprisal attacks and the U.S. military death toll nearing 3,000. President Bush dropped talk of "staying the course" but balked at embracing many of the key suggestions of a bipartisan study group; Iraqi authorities struggled to assert control and avoid fracture.

Deteriorated during 2006? The situation might be especially bad right now but, let’s face it, 2005 wasn’t much of a cakewalk either. Neither was 2004 for that matter. Of course, that was the year our media seemed much more interested in trying to figure out if President Bush received special treatment to avoid serving in the military and looking into just how John Kerry got those Purple Heart medals.

Maybe if these editors and the rest of us had focused more on what was happening in Iraq between 2003 and 2005, we’d have a different top story for 2006. Just a thought.

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Anyone curious about the future of television news, or television itself for that matter, should go check out this neat video put together by our old friend Jeff Jarvis. In it, Jarvis looks at the old way of doing television and the new. The old way is demonstrated with a behind-the scenes look at recent experiences Jarvis had with ABC News and PBS’s “Frontline.”

Here Jarvis provides a look at just how much work goes into an interview for broadcast news – the four technicians, the set-up time (a three-camera shoot) and all the waiting which accompanies such productions. Then, we see Jarvis shooting some “b-roll” for “Frontline,” which is actually just staged reality. You know all those images of someone walking down the street, sitting at a desk working or seemingly going about their normal business you see on the news? Surprise, they’re really just staged for editing purposes.

Lastly, Jarvis takes us to see how CNBC.com is now doing live TV on its Website – using just one computer. As Jarvis notes about his own video production, it’s fairly limited and simple and not nearly up to traditional broadcast standards – but “it’s still TV.” It makes one wonder how long it will be before that kind of television news becomes the new normal.

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