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Andrew Tyndall raises an interesting question: Is it right to call the men who allegedly plotted to attack the Fort Dix army base "terrorists?" Tyndall says no, because the term terrorism "refers to violence against civilian targets for political aims."

On the "Evening News" last night, Correspondent Bob Orr referred to a "homegrown terror cell," and over at ABC Charlie Gibson spoke of a "terrorist plot." Today CBSNews.com is calling the attack "terror" in its headline. Writes Tyndall: "It is hard to escape the conclusion that 'terrorist' is used as a sloppy synonym for 'Moslem gunmen.'"

I asked Orr for his take.

"I think you're talking about guys that surveiled targets, trained with weapons, and stated more than once that they wanted to kill Americans," he said. "So at a minimum they were terrorist wannabees. Now, there are difference kinds of people who sponsor terror. We're not saying they're Al Qaeda."

Orr noted that federal officials have been calling the men "terrorists."

"I think it's an academic debate on what you think qualifies," said Orr. "I would suggest one person with an automatic weapon in a crowded area could terrorize people."

Orr added that there was not much of a debate when putting the piece together about whether the group should be called a terror cell. "These were guys who aspired to terror, no doubt about it," he said.

You can find definitions of the word "terrorism" here.

Andrew Tyndall raises an interesting question: Is it right to call the men who allegedly plotted to attack the Fort Dix army base "terrorists?" Tyndall says no, because the term terrorism "refers to violence against civilian targets for political aims."

On the "Evening News" last night, Correspondent Bob Orr referred to a "homegrown terror cell," and over at ABC Charlie Gibson spoke of a "terrorist plot." Today, CBSNews.com is calling the attack "terror" in its headline. Writes Tyndall: "It is hard to escape the conclusion that 'terrorist' is used as a sloppy synonym for 'Moslem gunmen.'"

I asked Orr for his take.

"I think you're talking about guys that surveiled targets, trained with weapons, and stated more than once that they wanted to kill Americans," he said. "So at a minimum they were terrorist wannabees. Now, there are difference kinds of people who sponsor terror. We're not saying they're Al Qaeda."

Orr noted that federal officials have been calling the men "terrorists."

"I think it's an academic debate on what you think qualifies," said Orr. "I would suggest one person with an automatic weapon in a crowded area could terrorize people."

Orr added that there was not much of a debate when putting the piece together about whether the group should be called a terror cell. "These were guys who aspired to terror, no doubt about it," he said.

You can find definitions of the word "terrorism" here.

It's Thursday, and that means it's time for the latest installment of the Public Eye Chat. This week's subject is correspondent Bob Orr, who was recently announced as CBS News' new Justice Department correspondent. Until now, he's been covering transportation and Homeland Security issues. In our conversation, Orr discusses the effects of over-hyping terrorism stories, why we don't hear much about transportation safety anymore and how he's going to approach his new beat. Excerpts are below and you can listen to the entire interview by clicking below.

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Click here to listen to the interview.

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We've had a number of conversations about over-hyping coverage with regard to transportation issues or homeland security issues. When we spoke to you about covering the transatlantic terror plot, you had said: “The facts have to rule. We can’t get outside the facts. That said, you know up front that terrorism is a scary topic … and terrorism and aviation is even more frightening to most people. You don’t want to sugar coat it … but we also have a responsibility not to hype it.”

We later spoke again about another story – or kind of a non-story—about possible threats to NFL stadiums, which you said that many in the media did over-hype. What do you think is the overall affect for news consumers when this kind of thing perpetuates, in terms of their view of the media?

I think the problem for news consumers is that we're confusing them … when I say "we" I mean the media as a whole. We're throwing a lot of information at people often without proper context, often without perspective and we're essentially saying, "Here, this is what we know so far, figure it out." I think that’s a disservice. You have to find a sensible middle ground, somewhere between giving people a timely notification and giving them some really useful information. I don't know that anybody is well served by trotting out this raw, unvetted, uncorroborated information with no context, because what are they supposed to do about it? What are they supposed to make of it?

I think post-9/11, there is considerable concern -- and it's justified -- about terrorism. People are afraid. I think even some of the officials are afraid of what they don't know. So we have to go at this very seriously knowing that the terrorist want to harm us, that they are insidious in their methods and there is nothing that they won't try. So that's the backdrop.

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Baseball, hotdogs and apple pie were replaced yesterday in the news by football, dirty bombs and media over-reaction. That’s the conclusion drawn by CBS News transportation and homeland security correspondent Bob Orr about television’s coverage of the “threats” against NFL stadiums over the past day. In this dispatch to Public Eye, Orr wonders if TV news will learn from this example:

At the risk of offending some of my television news colleagues and competitors, I think we blew it.

Here’s the headline: there is not now, nor was there yesterday, any credible threat against the National Football League or any of seven stadiums hosting games this Sunday. Period.

So, we should stop the breathless, breaking and live coverage updates of a non-event.

To be accurate, there was a threat made on an English language website, posted October 12th by some joker using the name “Javness.” In one fantastic paragraph Javness detailed a coordinated apocalyptic attack in which seven trucks carrying radiological bombs would be detonated simultaneously outside seven NFL stadiums.

Intelligence analysts immediately dismissed the threat as “non-credible” – a polite bureaucratic way of calling it nonsense. Authorities say they checked multiple threat streams and sources and found no evidence to corroborate the threat and no reason to believe it had any validity.

But, then a funny thing happened on the way to putting all fears to rest. In an effort to keep the NFL and various state and local law enforcement agencies “in the loop”, the feds shared the questionable threat information. Homeland Security officials insist they provided full context in detailing the threat and explaining why it was dubious at best, and more likely bogus. They claim they only shared the information out of “an abundance of caution,” providing a sort of FYI to their local partners. Now, cynics might argue with some validity, that the memo was also a bit of a CYA. Maybe so, but it’s clear it was nothing more.

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The foiled transatlantic terror plot is getting a tremendous amount of attention from news outlets everywhere. Even those who aren’t typically news junkies are likely flipping on cable news or checking news Web sites during the day more than they otherwise would. So, how does that affect the way the network evening newscasts report the story?

“We’ve got to be guided totally by the facts,” said correspondent Bob Orr, who handles the aviation beat for CBS News and is one of those covering the foiled terror plot story. “There’s always pressure to match or beat the competition,” which includes cable news. “The challenge [for the evening newscasts] is to take all the information that’s out there, and distill it to something that’s factual and clear and put in proper context.”

According to Orr, the ability to add such context is an advantage the network broadcasts have over cable. “When you’re covering something in real time,” as cable networks are, said Orr, “There’s a lot of flack, a lot of coverage of the hot button issue of the moment. I think it’s tough for those outlets to editorially police what they’re saying” as events are unfolding on the air.

That cable news provides a continual flow of developing information throughout the day for news-hungry viewers, however, indeed poses a challenge for the evening newscasts -- to provide something unique. “The challenge for us is that the raw material has been out there, so by the time the ‘Evening News’ rolls around, [the audience] has seen a lot of the stuff. So we have to bring another dimension to it, one that hasn’t been exploited yet.”

UPDATE: Correspondent Sheila MacVicar, who has been covering the thwarted terror plot from London, adds some more thoughts about her approach to the story and its challenges.

“Stories like this are suddenly in front of you, and require immediate response. There's usually not a lot of time before you have to get on the air and start reporting what you know, when you know it. It's constantly rolling. In this case, I was actually on my way to Heathrow early in the morning to catch a flight for another assignment. I heard the news, the first reports, which begin with the words 'We are just hearing…' and immediately diverted. I've covered terrorism and terrorism-related issues for more than a decade, and that depth of knowledge is enormously helpful in trying to sort out what's real from what's not."

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I’m likely not shocking anyone by noting that the Internet offers a venue in which rumor and speculation can spread further and faster than it could 10 years ago. One prolific rumor in the blogosphere recently – is Fidel Castro dead? St. Petersburg Times media critic (and one-time PE “Outside Voice”) Eric Deggans took note on his blog of the buzz lately, wondering why at least some discussion of the rumor’s existence hadn’t yet seeped into mainstream coverage, as such “blogosphere buzz” stories often do. “The benefit of such stories are,” writes Deggans, “they can introduce the rumor to your audience without requiring you to verify it -- since you're talking about the rumor itself and its impact. Crafty, eh?” Of course, the real challenge of good reporting is checking out a rumor and determining if it’s actually true before you report it. But in this age of a much more prolific rumor mill on the Web, what are the challenges that reporters face? When do reporters have an obligation to simply address something unsubstantiated on the air, if only to note that it’s unsubstantiated?

Monday is the 10-year anniversary of a story that was enveloped in a whole lot of speculation at the time – much of which surfaced on the still young Internet. It was the July 17, 1996 crash of TWA Flight 800, which ended up being one of the most investigated crashes in aviation history. Correspondent Bob Orr covered the story from the beginning until the conclusion of the National Transportation Safety Board’s investigation four years later, which determined that the probable cause of the plane’s explosion was a spark – likely from a short in the plane’s wiring -- that ignited the airliner’s center fuel tank. Throughout the years that Orr covered this story, and continuing today, there are those who question whether the explosion was the result of something else – a missile, friendly fire from the U.S. navy, a terrorist bomb.

It became known as the “grassy knoll in the sky,” Orr told me, primarily because “we spent more time knocking down rumors and false leads,” than in any story he’d covered before then.

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There are only two certainties in life: Death and obligatory stories about tax day.

Wait, that's not quite right. It's just hard to think straight when one is inundated with all of these "tax day" stories. Turn on the cable news channels, read the newspaper, click over to CBSNews.com, and there it is – a story about how today - is - the - day - and - oh - my - god - did - you - file - yours - yet - because - I'm-such - a - procrastinator!

I mean, is there really anyone out there who doesn't know it's tax day? The big day has been in the news for months, and besides, most of us pay taxes – which means we probably checked the date by which we need to finish them. And yet we get ledes like this, from the CBSNews.com/AP story: "For most Americans who have put off doing income taxes until the last minute – time's up." I think most Americans, regardless of whether or not they've put off doing their taxes, would respond with a resounding "no duh." But that doesn't mean that just about every station in the country won't feature the obligatory shots from the local post office on the 11:00 news.

I understand why news outlets feel compelled to do these stories. There's something in the American psyche that makes us need our media outlets to point out the obvious, even if everyone already knows it to be true. It doesn't just happen on Tax Day – around holidays like Memorial Day, Labor Day and July 4, for example, correspondents are forced to do the obligatory boy-there-are-a-lot-of-people-traveling stories. "When you are the transportation correspondent, for some reason, editors feel compelled to have you handle the 'holiday travel' piece," Bob Orr grumbled to us in March. "Here’s the way my Memorial Day story will begin: 'Across America, highways are crammed, airplanes are jammed and travelers are short on patience.'”

Short on patience for travel, that is. We seem to have infinite patience for stories about travel, even if we've seen them a hundred times before.

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You'll probably be hearing Bob Orr's voice this Memorial Day, and if you read on, you'll find out that he already knows what he's going to be telling you. As a correspondent who covers transportation issues for CBS News, he'll be the lucky guy working while you're on vacation. He took some time out of that swell schedule to answer a few of our questions and yours about his job. Read on to find out why he thinks that the pressures of a 24-hour news cycle mean bad news for good reporting, why the midwest deserves more air time and what he thinks about media coverage of the Dubai ports deal.

What do you do at CBS News?

I cover the transportation and homeland security beats and a wide range of breaking stories, occasionally including the kitchen sink.

What single issue should be covered more at CBS News?

Middle America. The coasts are dominant in terms of power and politics so they draw huge media attention. There are some great people with interesting stories who live somewhere between New York and Los Angeles.

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Had any frustrating travel experiences lately? Correspondent Bob Orr, who covers transportation and homeland security issues (among other subjects) has certainly covered his share. You can check out his recent report on the “Early Show” here that examined why some airlines are more likely than others to cancel flights during nasty weather. He’s covered a long line of other stories, including the Columbia shuttle disaster and the Washington, D.C., sniper attacks – not to mention a host of major air accidents over the past decade. Got some questions about what that’s been like? Here’s your last chance – send us an e-mail or post your questions for Bob in comments and he’ll answer them tomorrow.

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Correspondent Bob Orr has covered the transportation beat for CBS News for more than a decade and since 9/11, that role has expanded to include homeland security. So he's a pretty busy guy. Along the way he’s won three national Emmys for his reporting on the Washington, D.C., sniper attacks, the crash of TWA Flight 800 in 1996 and the 1999 crash of an Amtrak train near Chicago. The debate over the Dubai ports deal has kept him particularly busy lately (you can check out his recent “Reality Check” on foreign investments in America ) so if you’re wondering about his take on the matter, here’s your chance. Take a look at his biography here for some more background on his experience and shoot him a question via e-mail or post it in comments. He’ll report back on Thursday.

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