All Blog Posts from Public Eye

What do Thanksgiving and grocery stores and winter reading and hi-tech gadgets have in common?

This guy.

“The Kojo Nnamdi Show” -- heard from noon to two daily on Washington, DC's NPR affiliate -- has invited me to sit in as guest-host for the next few days, so I’ll be digging into those topics and more on Tuesday and Wednesday.

Pieces will be posted in this space as MediaLand dictates. Regular posts will begin after I awake from a tryptophan-induced slumber next week.

I talk about print media from the position of writing everyday. I write about cable news from the vantage point of a regular participant in some of the programming. And yes, in my never-ending commitment to educate my opinions and commentary with real-life experience, I do National Public Radio from time to time as well.

That said, I’ll be hosting Tuesday’s “Kojo Nnamdi Show” on Washington, DC’s NPR affiliate WAMU. For the first hour, I’ll be tackling the question “If every country’s perception of freedom of speech is different, how does the Internet deal with that?” The second hour will be focused on the deal of gentrification.

Regular posts will return on Wednesday, but for now get the “face for radio” jokes ready.

The political magazine National Journal has a daily newsletter they send via e-mail called “The Hotline” – a rundown of the day’s major political news.

Each Friday, they interview a DC media/political type. And today, your trusty Public Eye Editor’s number came up.

So, since we’ve never had a formal introduction, I thought this exchange would contribute to your awareness and build a sense of … Ah, it just answers the question you’ve probably had: “Who is this guy?”

------------

Matthew Felling is the editor of CBSNews.com's media blog "Public Eye." Before joining the site in May, Felling served for 8 years as the media dir. at the Center for Media and Public Affairs. He just wrapped up a couple of weeks as guest co-host on MSNBC's "Morning Joe" program and is also a frequent guest host of WAMU's "Kojo Nnamdi Show." But today he's our Friday Feature:

Where's your hometown? What was it like growing up there?

The mean streets of Annandale, VA -- and I was lucky to get out alive. Seriously, though, the town's diversity taught me a lot. On my grade school basketball team, we had a Cambodian, a Phillipino, a Korean, a Palestinian. And we didn't lose a game for more than three years.

Read full post…

As regular PE readers may have noticed, Matthew Felling has been carrying the load here lately, in the time he has available between Krusty the Clown imitations. That’s because I’ve been preparing for something new: Starting today, I’m officially becoming a political reporter for the new CBSNews.com politics section, which will be relaunching in its shiny new form soon. And that means, after two years, I’m saying goodbye to Public Eye.

Public Eye remains a unique and important experiment in the media world, and two years in, we continue to experience new successes – and face new challenges. I'm happy to say that I'm leaving the site to Mr. Felling, who came on board in May and immediately began generating sharp, entertaining, and insightful work. I'm thrilled to be leaving PE in such capable hands, and can't wait to see where he takes it from here.

First and foremost, I want to thank our readers, especially those who engaged with the site. You make PE better than it ever could be in a vacuum. I want to extend my thanks to all those who have been supportive of our mission, even though it hasn't always been popular to do so, including Mike Sims, Dick Meyer, Betsy Morgan, and Larry Kramer. I also want to tip my hat to those many CBS News folks, whether correspondents, executives, cameramen, or producers, who understand the mission of Public Eye and have engaged with us. Chief among this group is Linda Mason, senior vice president for standards and special projects, who helped us understand CBS News policy and responded to our questions with notable candor.

And then, of course, there is Vaughn Ververs, my predecessor as Public Eye editor, who just happens to be my new editor over in politics. I first met Vaughn when we were set up as adversarial talking heads on MSNBC, and as those who sit around me in the newsroom can attest, the argument hasn't stopped since. But this site could never have been what it is without Vaughn, who steered the ship in the early going and taught me countless lessons along the way. I can't imagine anyone I'd rather be working with as I cover the '08 campaign.

PE may be entering its third year, but we've only been able to tell a small portion of the fascinating stories out there in the media world. Even as I immerse myself in the world of politics, I remain committed to keeping my eye on those stories, and PE will be my primary resource for doing so. It's been a great run so far, and I wouldn't be surprised if the best is yet to come.

As you may have story
read in this space earlier this week or happened upon while flipping the story
channels the past few mornings, I’ve been guest co-hosting MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” program, broadcast from 6-9am (EDT).

Read full post…

If there’s no such thing as a java hangover, then there should be.

This morning, I had the opportunity to co-host MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” program – which airs from 6am to 9am (EDT) – and will be repeating the performance again tomorrow, so pardon the delay in posts today.

And tune in tomorrow, if you get a chance.

People are like cell phones or iPods. Or – wait – is it the other way around? Either way, we here at Public Eye are going to take a break to recharge our collective batteries. Then, once there’s nobody on the road and nobody on the beach – we’ll be back after the boys of summer have gone.

So yes, we’ll be back on September 4th, ready to catch up and charge ahead. In the meantime, we encourage you to take advantage of this downtime to peruse our material and catch up on some things you may have missed. If you’re new to the site, check out the Editor’s Picks on the right-hand side of the page to get a feel for our mission and style. In the interim, feel free to e-mail us with your observations, questions or suggestions – or even if you just see a Deadhead sticker on a Cadillac.

CBS White House Correspondent Mark Knoller missed a Bush press conference earlier this month. In this dispatch he shares/vents other frustrations about the logistics of covering President Bush this past summer.

It costs CBS News a fortune to cover the President – especially when he travels. And it sure looks like it didn’t get its money’s worth this month.

Three times in recent weeks, those of us who were covering the President’s trips to Kennebunkport, Maine; Crawford, Texas; and today to Bellevue, Washington were totally out of position for the big stories of the day.

On the morning of Thursday, August 9, members of the traveling press were on the press plane en route to Maine – just as Pres. Bush was holding a formal news conference back at the White House.

We had returned to Washington three days later, but were airborne again Monday morning flying to Waco, Texas in advance of the President beginning a two-week stay at his ranch in Crawford.

So what happens, while we’re half-way to Central Texas? The president walks out to Marine One to announce the resignation of his senior advisor Karl Rove.

And again this morning, the President ends his two-week ranch stay and arrives at TSTC Airfield in Waco – to makes his first public statement on the resignation of Attorney General Alberto Gonzales.

Read full post…

We're not gonna be clearing brush or attacking photographers, but with August being a slow news month, we here at Public Eye will be posting a bit less frequently than usual this week. We'll post when news warrants, but for the most part, content will be on the light side.

In the meantime, feel free to browse the archives, Editor's Picks and leftovers (if they're half as good cold … ) for some of our recent work. As always, we welcome your input, so feel free to e-mail us your thoughts about CBS News, the media at large and any comments, complaints or suggestions for Public Eye.

If you're a regular Public Eye reader, you've followed this week's dustup over Jeff Greenfield's "Evening News" piece on Michael Moore's new film "Sicko."

A quick recap: Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting (FAIR) posted an "Action Alert" complaining that the piece was flawed. Because the "Action Alert" told readers to write in to CBS and request a correction they felt warranted, we received more than 500 emails criticizing the piece.

Not long after the first such email arrived, we contacted Greenfield and asked him to respond to FAIR's critique. He did so. FAIR did not acknowledge his response until late yesterday, however, and the vast majority of the emails that have come in have simply followed FAIR's script and not engaged the response in any meaningful way.

Now the latest: Today, an "Evening News" employee has been contacting many of those who wrote to us to make sure they were aware of Greenfield's response. (He decided against replying to those who simply copy/pasted the FAIR piece or loaded their email with expletives -- and, to be honest, I'm sure a few more worthwhile messages have fallen through the cracks.)

So to review: Public Eye immediately acknowledged the complaints and got the correspondent to respond to them. An "Evening News" employee then took the trouble to make sure that many of those who had not seen the response were able to see it. That's pretty decent engagement with the viewer, isn't it? News organizations have not, historically, gone to such lengths to address issues like this; CBS News' competitors still, for the most part, do not.

But this has apparently not been enough. I just received an email from someone who heard from the "Evening News" employee but felt that CBS News' efforts to engage her were insincere. She offered a list of questions that she expected CBS to address on an individual basis and harshly criticized CBS News for not doing so.

The relentless beat of media criticism over the past few decades, combined with the rise of niche media outlets, many of them ideological, has conditioned news consumers to expect that they get exactly the news as they believe it should be. Or else. Some, like the e-mailer above, actually seem to believe that news organizations should spend their time and money offering detailed responses to every single person who writes in as part of an astroturfing campaign.

In an era when news budgets are shrinking and overseas bureaus are being closed down, that doesn't strike me as the best use of resources.

Read full post…