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"Yes, I think that a lot of politicians have, let's say, a nodding acquaintance with reality, and some of them have barely nodding acquaintance with the truth. So if we can provide a more formal introduction, I think that's part of our job."

--CBS News Correspondent Allen Pizzey, speaking on CNN's "Reliable Sources." Pizzey, who has criticized John McCain's comments about the level of safety in Baghdad, was addressing this question from Howard Kurtz: "[E]ven in an opinion piece, is it the role of journalist to say that a senator and presidential candidate, essentially, is full of it?"

It's Thursday, and that means it's time for the Public Eye Chat. This week's subject is Rome-based CBS News Correspondent Allen Pizzey. You can read excerpts, and listen to the full interview, below.

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Click here to listen to the interview.

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Brian Montopoli: You've got a lot of experience covering Africa, even before you came to CBS. Are Africa's stories getting told in Western media?

Allen Pizzey: No, I don't think they are – I think we ignore Africa to a large extent. The only crisis that really gets any attention is the crisis in Darfur, and I don't think we have enough people going there. It's all basically a lot of second hand information.

Somalia – you can't cover Somalia. It's simply too dangerous for somebody to go. But there are a lot of stories in Africa that ought to be covered. Zimbabwe is a catastrophe in the making, and no one's paying a lot of attention, partly because Mugabe won't let people in there. But also because people simply say, "well, you can't go," so we don't go, so we ignore it.

And then there's the whole West Africa Nigeria crisis. For example, the Niger delta supplies a fairly large percentage of America's imported oil. We're not covering that at all. I think Africa is being ignored in many ways. There was the AIDS crisis, we all followed that, people got bored with AIDS, people get bored with famines, but they forget that it's a massive continent with many diverse cultures, many diverse stories, and a lot of people -- their stories need to be told. I don't think we're covering it properly at all, frankly.

Brian Montopoli: Do you think that it's due, primarily, to lack of interest from news consumers? Or is it also an issue of news organizations not having a lot of people out there? Or both?

Allen Pizzey: I think it's a combination of both, although news organizations will tell you "Oh, people don't want to read about it, people don't want to see it on television." Well, how do you know that if they don't?

I think that part of our job as journalists, as news organizations, is to go out and say to people, "this is an important news story. This is something you should know about. This is something that cannot be ignored. This is something that affects you. We've gone and found it for you. Here it is." If you don't want to read it, don't want to look at it, OK fine. But we have a certain responsibility to go out and tell people about things that are happening.

You can't get away not spending money by saying, "Oh, well, people don't want to know about anyway." Well, they may not want to know because they don't know. So maybe we ought to tell them. And that's probably the biggest problem of all.

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On CNN's "Late Edition," John McCain said "[t]here are neighborhoods in Baghdad where you and I could walk through those neighborhoods today."

That prompted a pretty jarring "Reporter's Notebook" from CBS News correspondent Allen Pizzey in Baghdad, who's been on a roll lately. He writes that "perhaps there ought to at least be a rule that says no one should be allowed to seek [the job of president] unless they demonstrate a grasp of reality greater than the reach of their own ambitions." Then comes the not-so-subtle sarcasm:

By an unofficial count, there have been seven major explosions in Baghdad so far today, at least some of them car bombs.

There was, however, some good news, at least in the context of Iraq. The U.S. military reported that only one of two truck bombs used in attacks on Iraqi and American forces in Falluja contained chlorine. And things could improve. It is only one p.m. local time as this is being written.

Pizzey finishes with this:

"For Senator McCain to claim there are places here where all is well is to woefully minimize the dangers faced by the troops he otherwise so admirably supports…Any time Senator McCain wants to walk the streets of Baghdad, unarmed and without a serious security detail, we'd be glad to lend him a camera so he can record his experience."

Read the whole thing here.

I highly recommend checking out CBS News correspondent Allen Pizzey's Reporter's Notebook, which has been posted on CBSNews.com.

"Trying to explain Iraq in a way that American viewers can relate to is a challenge at the best of times. It becomes even more acute when you start the day by watching American newscasts," writes Pizzey.

He continues:

What is depressingly clear is that what seems important here is far removed from what viewers in the U.S. seem to be concerned about.

The pet food "scandal" is a case in point. As far as I can tell from what is coming through the dust-encrusted TV monitors in our office, a dozen or so pets have died, apparently from eating well-known brands of cat or dog food. No doubt the owners paid premium prices for high nutritional value, so they have a right to be upset that instead of the glossy coats and tail-wagging promised by the ads they got organ failure. Being a pet owner, I can understand being upset when one dies.

How 12 dead animals in a country the size of the U.S. rates with the sliding scale of mayhem here is what I'm finding hard to gauge. When only 12 human bodies are found on any given morning in Baghdad with marks of the kind of torture the ASPCA would quite rightly have a pet owner in court for, it is judged as "progress" for the security plan.

Read it all here.

"I think that the networks, they are fed up with the massive bombs. They don't want to see things going bang anymore. What troubles me is that -- what troubles me most personally is when I see children hurt and those are the stories that you really want to get on the air and it really bothers me that we can't."

--CBS correspondent Allen Pizzey on CNN's "Reliable Sources." It has been four years since President Bush announced the start of the Iraq war.

BONUS QUOTE: "Oh, I think absolutely. I think every organization, the war is expensive to cover. It is dangerous as you see from my colleagues, but for reporters…the most important story out there is that you have young soldiers, young people joining the military, wanting to serve their country and they die bleeding out in a back alley of Baghdad somewhere. That's a story that has to be told that none of us can get tired of."

--CNN's Barbara Starr, asked on the same broadcast if news executives are tired of the war.

Some sad news for CBS: Jos Mason, a Rome-based producer and editor and a 30-year veteran of CBS News, died on Friday night at his home after battling pancreatic cancer. Jos is survived by his wife Nuna, a medical doctor and psychoanalyst, and their two children, Lorenzo, 16, and Elena, 15.

Allen Pizzey, a CBS News correspondent based in Rome, and Jos “were brothers in every sense except bloodline,” said Marcy McGinnis, senior vice president of News Coverage. “They traveled the world together and far too often those travels brought them to hell holes, war zones and worse. Allen was the face of the team, Jos the technical, editing and producing whiz behind that face. There were no assignments too hard or too dangerous for them. They were always there for each other.”

The following is Pizzey's obituary for Mason that he shared with his colleagues:

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