All Blog Posts from Public Eye

It’s a YouTube world and we’re just living in it. This much is clear, as the Web site seems to find a new way to generate media buzz every day. Take a look at these recent samplings…

Andy Warhol Online:

We’ve had Obama Girl. We’ve had Britney-loving weeper Chris Crocker. (That's 'him' above.) Now we’ve got a woman singing with her hands? According to the Canadian Globe and Mail, an odd-even-given-the-company-it-keeps video showing a pair of hands ‘singing’/grooving to a Daft Punk song is the flavor of the week.

Ad Nauseam:

Google’s ad network and YouTube are teaming up to spread advertising around the web. According to the New York Times:

The Internet search giant is expected to introduce a service on Tuesday to allow Web sites in its ad network to embed relevant videos from some YouTube content creators. A Web site or blog specializing in hiking, for instance, might choose to embed hiking videos from YouTube.

Just another example that wherever you are online, commerce is going to find you … somewhere, somehow.

Off The Radar, On Computer Screens:

You can’t find Al Jazeera English on most American cable providers, but you now can find them online via YouTube. TechCrunch reports that Al Jazeera has signed a deal where they share advertising revenue with the website.

Two weeks ago we discussed former Marine and present-day author Josh Rushing, whose career path has taken him from press liaison in Iraq -- where he was featured in the documentary "Control Room" -- to correspondent for Al Jazeera’s English-language network. Today we continue with the second installment of Public Eye's conversation with him, where we talked about American media, Pat Tillman, Jon Stewart and how, when you really think about it, Qatar is a little like Delaware.

Matthew Felling: Have you been following the Pat Tillman story? What do you make of it, from a media standpoint as well as as a former Marine?

Josh Rushing: I’m actually fortunate enough to be invited back to the senior leadership of the military’s public affairs frequently. I bring up the story. I have some coverage that we did of the Senate hearing where Pat Tillman’s brother and Jessica Lynch testified. I show them that story to show them the effect, what happens when you lie. The truth always gets out; institutionally the military knows that. At the Defense Information School, where they train all their media liaison officers, the number one thing they teach them is “Maximum Information, Minimum Delay.” They’re there to do Public Affairs, not public relations. And the difference is, public affairs is meant to assist the media and get the information out because the American public has a right to know. As taxpayers, they have a right to know what’s going on within the ranks. And that’s what a public affairs officer does. He doesn’t spin or sell the message. He’s not PR; he’s not looking for good publicity. That’s not what his job is supposed to be.

So institutionally, they’re teaching the right thing. But the problem is your public affairs officer is generally the junior officer on the staff, and he doesn’t have a lot of sway. It’s the senior officers that get to make the final decision, and that’s what happened in the Pat Tillman case. It was just a bald-faced lie.

And it’s not just a little cover-up. They wrote him up for a silver star. That requires witnesses and an investigation. It’s a big deal and they awarded it to him. Which means this is beyond a small cover-up – it’s a huge fabrication.

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When it comes to Al Jazeera and its approach to newsgathering, it’s tough to figure out where they’re coming from. You can listen to me. You can listen to Aaron Barnhart out in Kansas City. Or you can listen to Josh Rushing, a former Marine who was press liason in Iraq in the early days of the war in Iraq.

Rushing, who first caught my eye in the film “Control Room” – a documentary about how different media outlets were covering Iraq – was born in Texas. He moved up the ranks in Iraq to deal directly with the foreign press, ultimately accepting a position with Al Jazeera after he left the Armed Forces. It was clear in the film that he was committed to his stance that America was in Iraq to do good and liberate Iraqis from Saddam Hussein, but he was curious enough to ask why the Iraqi people didn’t see it the same way. As the Los Angeles Timesreported at the time:

Rushing, a Central Command spokesman assigned to escort the documentary makers during their time in Qatar, is among the film's most sympathetic characters, portrayed as a thoughtful young man moved over time by the grim reality of war.
At no point is he shown doubting the justness of the U.S. effort in Iraq, yet the film documents a budding friendship between Rushing and Al Jazeera reporter Hassan Ibrahim, and moments on camera when Rushing is wrestling with the film's central themes: war, bias and the Arab world's most powerful media outlet.

Talk about cred.

Rushing was on “The Daily Show” last night, where he discussed his military career, working for Al Jazeera, and the media.

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Sick of Paris Hilton? Don’t particularly care about Anna Nicole Smith’s baby’s daddy? If you're a cable news consumers and are hunting for information from around the planet, your options are limited.

And while there is much hand-wringing over how information and news from the west can be distributed in the Middle East, we tend to think less about how the news from the rest of the world is being passed along to us here in the states.

There are obvious reasons why a cable company would be reticent to broadcast a foreign-based outlet, beginning with the language barrier. If you’re a cable provider, why do you want to cater to a very narrow Francophone niche? Or Farsi? But one channel – that magnet of Middle Eastern media controversies, Al Jazeera – has taken its programming to the English-speaking audience with a network that’s about a half-year old. And it has succeeded in convincing one of America’s top TV watchers – Aaron Barnhart of the Kansas City Star – of its importance and value in the media landscape:

I’ve been monitoring the new channel for several months over the Internet, paying $6 a month to watch a video stream supplied by Real Networks. And I am convinced it is the most important English-language cable channel to come along since Fox News.

It’s everything our cable news isn’t: global, meaty, consequential and compelling in the best sense of the word. And I’m not the only one who thinks so.

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Al Hurra, the United States-funded Arabic TV network, has come under fire for airing controversial material that some consider anti-Semitic. Initially envisioned as a counterweight in the Middle East to the popular-yet-polarizing Al Jazeera network, Al Hurra’s programming choices have led one naysayer to write “Our taxpayer-financed Arabic network was set up to counter Al-Jazeera, not echo it.” The board that oversees the network’s programming has formed a panel of academics and Middle Eastern journalists to investigate the concerns.

What prompted all this? According to the AP:

A broadcast in December included a lengthy speech by Sheik Hassan Nasrallah, the leader of the Lebanese Shiite militant group Hezbollah. The network later said the speech had not been screened for anti-Israeli content before it was broadcast because no supervisor spoke Arabic.

In another broadcast, Ismail Haniya, the Palestinian prime minister and a leader of the hard-line Hamas faction, appeared to support the assertion that the Holocaust was a myth. Also, the network’s coverage of a Holocaust deniers’ conference in Iran has been criticized as insufficiently skeptical.

“Insufficiently skeptical” is a tough characterization to pin down, and one that rational people can disagree on. Airing a speech by the leader of Hezbollah, however -- without paying attention to what he is saying -- is irresponsible oversight. How can a media outlet that is trying to promote free and responsible debate – and yes, less objectionable content than that offered by Al Jazeera — not have someone (who speaks the language) paying closer attention?

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Al Hurra, the United States-funded Arabic TV network, has come under fire for airing controversial material that some consider anti-Semitic. Initially envisioned as a counterweight in the Middle East to the popular-yet-polarizing Al Jazeera network, Al Hurra’s programming choices have led one naysayer to write “Our taxpayer-financed Arabic network was set up to counter Al-Jazeera, not echo it.” The board that oversees the network’s programming has formed a panel of academics and Middle Eastern journalists to investigate the concerns.

What prompted all this? According to the AP:

A broadcast in December included a lengthy speech by Sheik Hassan Nasrallah, the leader of the Lebanese Shiite militant group Hezbollah. The network later said the speech had not been screened for anti-Israeli content before it was broadcast because no supervisor spoke Arabic.

In another broadcast, Ismail Haniya, the Palestinian prime minister and a leader of the hard-line Hamas faction, appeared to support the assertion that the Holocaust was a myth. Also, the network’s coverage of a Holocaust deniers’ conference in Iran has been criticized as insufficiently skeptical.

“Insufficiently skeptical” is a tough characterization to pin down, and one that rational people can disagree on. Airing a speech by the leader of Hezbollah, however -- without paying attention to what he is saying -- is irresponsible oversight. How can a media outlet that is trying to promote free and responsible debate – and yes, less objectionable content than that offered by Al Jazeera — not have someone (who speaks the language) paying closer attention?

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Have you been watching Al Jazeera English? What about France 24?

Yeah, didn't think so.

The cable news networks, after all, are hard to track down here in the U.S.: The former is available to most of us only online, and the latter runs in only a few U.S. markets.

That's a shame, according to Newslab's Deborah Potter, who argues that the networks offer stories and perspectives one can't find in American media.

"Newscasts on Al Jazeera English are dominated by coverage of the Middle East and Muslims. AJE covers stories that others ignore, and gives the stories everyone else covers much more time," she writes. Potter cites packages on Muslim refugees in Bangladesh and women opposing the enforcement of Sharia law in Indonesia as examples.

As for France 24, which seeks to "convey the values of France throughout the world," Potter notes that it offers "more stories from Africa and lots of serious talk about issues like whether Turkey should be allowed to join the European Union." That's not stuff you see much on the U.S. news networks.

Concludes Potter: "Maybe no one much cares that neither Al Jazeera nor France 24 is widely available to a U.S. audience, but they should. It wasn't that long ago that many Americans woke up to the reality that much of the world doesn't like us very much. If we'd been watching the news through their eyes, maybe we wouldn't have been so surprised."

Each week we invite someone from outside PE to weigh in with their thoughts about CBS News and the media at large. This week, we asked Camille Elhassani, the Deputy Program Editor at Al Jazeera English in Washington, D.C. Previously, she was news director and advisor to Al Iraqiya TV in Baghdad. Prior to that she was at ABC News for six years. She is an Iraqi-American and lives in the Washington, D.C., area. Here, Elhassani argues that saying Americans aren't interested in foreign news is circular logic – the less they know about it, the less they will care. As always, the opinions expressed and factual assertions made in “Outside Voices” are those of the author, not ours, and we seek a wide variety of voices.


Other contributors have written on "Outside Voices" about the need for more international news on CBS. But the point is worth saying again.

I spent time this week watching different CBS News programs and came away feeling ill-informed about the world. I learned what’s happening in Congress, the White House, with schools and the Super Bowl… but I didn’t get a sense of what’s happening in the world. Events overseas affect Americans and our interests abroad – economically, politically, and increasingly, militarily.

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"Bloggers and website owners can all breathe a very big sigh of relief." That's Gregory Herbert, an Orlando lawyer who specializes in First Amendment issues, talking to USA Today about a ruling by the California Supreme Court that the groups "cannot be sued for posting libelous or defamatory comments written by third parties." Not breathing a sigh of relief? Nancy Grace, her producers, and CNN Headline News, which have been sued by the relatives of Melinda Duckett. Duckett killed herself following aggressive questioning from Grace concerning the disappearance of Duckett's son. Family members are arguing that the interview caused Duckett severe emotional distress and led to her suicide.

It's been a week since Al Jazeera English went on the air, and the reviews are starting to come in. "…delivering updates on an Israeli missile strike against Hamas officials in Gaza, the channel kept returning to images of two children wounded in the attack," writes Troy Stevens. "Others might have detected something propagandistic in the way the camera lingered on their blood-splattered faces, but it just looked liked old-fashioned tabloid style to me. The last couple days of Al Jazeera English suggest that its main bias is the universal one in favor of juicy drama."

And this week on PBS, Democracy on Deadline is looking at the role journalists play around the world – and the challenges they face. "The Global Struggle for an Independent Press follows teams of journalists into some of the most dangerous and secretive corners of the world to show how they obtain their stories in the face of suppression, lies, imprisonment and threat of physical harm," notes the program's Web site. Related: Today is Jailed Journalists' Support Day. Notes the Christian Science Monitor:

Reporters Without Borders says that 130 journalists worldwide are currently imprisoned for reporting the news or expressing their views in print or on the air. The nation with the most jailed journalists? China (32). It's followed by Cuba (24), Ethiopia (21), Eritrea (13), and Burma (7). Those in prison include Sudanese national Sami al-Haj, assistant cameraman with Al Jazeera TV, who has spent four years at Guantánamo, Cuba; and Eritrean poet Fessehaye Yohannes, who is considered a "threat to national security" for forming a labor union for journalists.

You can find out more here.

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While the launch of Al-Jazeera English – the English-language sister network to Al Jazeera – isn’t getting any major U.S. satellite cable distribution, Americans can read plenty about its launch within American newspapers this week. In addition to the fact that it has no major US television distribution, there’s one more element of the new venture that’s getting traction -- the gap that Al-Jazeera is trying to fill. It’s one that many a media critic has griped about in American television news: a lack of foreign news coverage.

Former CBS News correspondent Tom Fenton has discussed the matter in detail here on Public Eye. So did Washingtonian Editor-at-Large Garrett Graff. And when we ask CBS News employees in our weekly “10 Plus 1” feature what they think the network could spend more time covering, one of the most common responses is, you guessed it, foreign news.

In its profile of the network, The Los Angeles Times notes an interesting fact: AJE has “more foreign correspondents in world capitals than all the U.S. networks combined.”

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