All Blog Posts from Public Eye

Bridget Moynahan, the former girlfriend of New England Patriots quarterback Tom Brady, is having a baby. The Boston Globe put the story on its front page – above the fold, no less. As Adam Reilly notes, the placement prompted outrage from some boston.com users. Wrote one:

"My view is that for the Boston Globe to think this is news of the slightest interest to the public, let alone put it on the front page, is just one more sign of the slow, relentless death of a once great newspaper. If I wanted to read the National Enquirer, I would buy it. What I want is a newspaper, a daily journal that covers the meaningful local, national and international events of the day, provides analysis and context, investigates what the powerful wants to hide from us, and helps us be informed and effective citizens. Instead we get this voyeuristic trash. For shame."

Only one problem: As Reilly points out, "the Brady story is currently the most emailed item on Boston.com. Also, 'Tom Brady' is the most popular search."

He adds: "So maybe Boston's just getting the journalism it deserves here."

Media outlets are increasingly turning to their traffic stats to measure what stories their audience is interested in, which may be part of the reason the she's-having-her-ex-boyfriend-Tom-Brady's-baby story got such good play in the paper. Howard Owens looks at the dustup and wonders: "Are we in danger of letting reader stats dictate coverage?" Notes Owens: "There has always been an underlying conflict in journalism — readers complain about sensationalism, but accidents, crimes, natural disasters and gossip help sell papers and spike TV ratings. On the web, we just get to witness the conflict in real time. Journalists want to be high minded, but they also want an audience."

Will Sullivan is also weighing in, though he focuses on a slightly different topic: Bald Britney.

"Does Britney Spears' shaved head really warrant being on the home page for three days straight?" he asks. "You don’t need to preach to me about using click-throughs as a tool for users to tell us what they want (which for so long most newsrooms have ignored, instead just force-feeding their definition of what’s 'news') … But it’s really a slippery slope. Just because there are stale editors that don’t want to acknowledge that people’s interest are different than everything traditional journalism preaches, doesn’t mean [journalism] should swing the total other direction and just become E! Entertainment Television."

Last January, the Washingtonpost.com closed its blog comments in response to a flood of less-than-civil postings about Washington Post Ombudsman Deborah Howell. At the time, the episode was seen by many as a lesson in the dangers of engaging with the often anonymous and occasionally profane blogging audiences. Now, however, the Post.com has some words of warning for Washington Post reporters about keeping their online chats civil. Here is part of an internal Post memo sent by Len Downie, editor of the print edition of The Post and Jim Brady, editor of the Washigntonpost.com, courtesy of FishbowlDC:

There have been a few cases in recent months where Post or post.com staffers have used questionable language in live discussions on washingtonpost.com, so we wanted to remind everyone of a few key rules and policies for Live Online.

-- Interaction with readers is essential to the success of Live Online. Disagreeing -- even strongly -- with the premise of a reader's question is part of that dialogue, but we should not use profanity or call readers names in our responses.

It’s unclear specifically what incidents the memo is referring to but it’s great to see the acknowledgment that these conversations are two-way streets. Bloggers and online commenters aren’t going to get a lot of respect simply by being the loudest and foulest voice out there and mainstream media types certainly don’t help their own cause by being rude or dismissive of the rest of us.

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In the immediate aftermath of the Washingtonpost.com’s dust up that led the site to close comments on its blog, the future of the comments feature there seemed to be an open question. But instead of scaling back, the paper has expanded its comments forum and is planning on taking it even further. According to Editor & Publisher:

Washingtonpost.com, taking a bold step, has enabled user comments on many of its stories for over a month now -- and the move has been deemed a success by the site's editors. But eventually the feature will be put to the test as it is extended to every article on the site, including those in the Politics, World and Nation sections.

Jim Brady, editor of the site, says readers have responded enthusiastically, posting comments on stories in the sports, metro and style sections and the site will soon include every article on the site:

So far, comments have been both "high-level" and on-topic, says Brady, and in many cases the newspaper's journalists have, in fact, learned more about issues based on reader comments. He notes that the paper has only had to remove only about 30 comments from the site in the five weeks since comments were launched.

He admits, however, that "once you open there door, you can't choose who comes in the door," and that there will naturally be complaints about which comments are accepted and which are deemed worthy of removal. Brady anticipates this to be an especially complicated issue as the site extends comments capability to all of its articles, enabling readers to weigh in instantly on controversial articles of national and international signifigance.

"There are always going to be people who are abusive and try to ruin things, so we've been taking baby steps in rolling out comments into the other sections," he says.

The conversation rolls on.

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If Washingtonpost.com executive editor Jim Brady was looking to heat up his ongoing feud with the blogosphere, his Sunday Outlook column was a pretty effective way to do so. In his missive, Brady reflects on what he learned from the Deborah Howell episode (see here if you need the background details). Here’s a bit of what Brady wrote:

Out in the Web woodshed, a handful of bloggers called me gutless or a puppet; some of them compared me to assorted body parts and characterized me as the worst person to come along since, well, Deborah Howell. And any nasty posts I didn't see myself, my friends gleefully provided to me via e-mail. A few friends said they came close to jumping online to defend me, but chose not to for fear they'd be next in line for a public flogging.

This all raises a question: Why are people so angry? It was a mistake, it was corrected. Part of the explanation may be the extremely partisan times we live in. For all the good things it has brought our society, the Web has also fostered ideological hermits, who only talk to folks who believe exactly what they do. This creates an echo chamber that only further convinces people that they are right, and everyone else is not only wrong, but an idiot or worse. So when an incident like this one arises, it's not enough to point out an error; they must prove that the error had nefarious origins. In some places on the Web, everything happens on a grassy knoll.

Another culprit in Web rage: the Internet's anonymity. It seems to flick off the inhibition switch that stops people from saying certain things in person. During the Howell flap, many of the e-mails I received that called me gutless, a coward or both were unsigned.

Maybe this level of anger has been out there for a long time, waiting to be enabled by technology. Forget about writing a letter, getting a stamp and mailing it in. Anger now has an easy and immediate outlet.

The reaction from those easy and immediate outlets was fairly predictable.

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It was pretty clear what to expect from the Washingtonpost.com’s online forum on “the evolving nature of Internet commentary and ethics.” After all, the views of those invited to participate are hardly foreign to most of those who pay any attention to this debate (or blogs themselves). The group was made up of Jim Brady, executive editor of Washingtonpost.com, Buzzmachine’s Jeff Jarvis, Pressthink’s Jay Rosen and Jane Hamsher from firedoglake. But, hopefully many of those who tune in to read the conversation haven’t been exposed to all of this before and there were some interesting points made, so let’s dive in. (This was set up in response to last week’s blowup on a post.blog where comments to the site were closed after a flood of criticism. If you’re not up to speed on this story, see here).



In today’s forum, there was a lot of chatter about the difficulties involved in opening a site up to outside comments and the gist was: Registration systems help and the discussion usually takes place on a higher plane of civility when identities are attached to comments in some way. The downside to that approach is that it limits participation. Interactivity is important, especially for major media organizations and the Web is a pretty unrestrained place but those who own and operate sites have the right to do what they feel is right with comments. A few of the more interesting highlights follow:

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During a Washingtonpost.com chat today, the site’s executive editor, Jim Brady, answered readers questions about the chain of events that led him to close and remove all comments to a posting regarding ombudsman Deborah Howell. See here for the history. A couple highlights from today’s chat:



Asked why all comments were removed, even those which were well-argued, Brady said:

“There were lots of good posts, and over the next few days, we'll go back through them and restore the ones that did not violate our rules, though we're still going to leave comments off on that blog for the time being.”

Brady addressed charges that the paper was attempting to “silence” its critics:

“How has The Post ‘silenced its critics’? We're having a discussion right now in which -- believe me -- I can assure you there are more critics than supporters. We shut down comments on one blog on a site than has 30. You can e-mail or snail mail letters to the editor. Deborah's e-mail is available on the site. There are plenty of avenues to critique what happens at the newspaper or web site. We don't have an obligation to keep every one of those avenues open if we run into problems like we did yesterday.”

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There were some loose ends remaining when we last left the story of “60 Minutes” correspondent Mike Wallace and his appearance at a birthday party for columnist Art Buchwald -- a party that just so happened to also be a fundraiser for the Brady Center, a prominent advocate of gun control laws. We’ll tie up those loose ends below.



First, some quick background. Wallace’s appearance raised questions for CBS News from some quarters, most notably from Cam Edwards, host of the Cam and Company show on nranews.com. At issue were comments made by Wallace at the event and the fact he showed a 47-second video of a past “60 Minutes” segment that, by Wallace’s own admission, cast former NRA President Charlton Heston in a less-than-favorable light.



We were asked what CBS News standards are on appearances such as these. Linda Mason, senior vice president for standards and special projects at CBS News at the time informed us that if a CBS correspondent becomes identifiable with one side of a controversial issue, that correspondent would no longer be allowed to cover that issue. When we asked if Wallace’s appearance in this case made him “identifiable” on this issue, Mason said CBS was looking into the matter to determine that.



I spoke with Mason late yesterday and she told me how CBS News will deal with this issue in the future. Mason said that if Wallace “suggests a story that we feel is a potential conflict, we’ll look at it and if we see a conflict, we’ll turn it down.” I take that to mean we won’t be seeing Mr. Wallace doing any more stories involving Second Amendment issues.

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Here’s a question we received from Cam Edwards, host of the Cam and Company show on nranews.com:

“On Sept. 28th of this year, Mike Wallace from ‘60 Minutes’ appeared at a Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence Event at the French Embassy in Washington, D.C. During his appearance, Mr. Wallace used a clip from a ‘60 Minutes’ interview he conducted with then-NRA President Charlton Heston.



Does CBS have a policy regarding on air talent appearing at special interest events like this, and does CBS have a policy regarding use of their broadcast material at events like this? Further, do you believe Mr. Wallace and ‘60 Minutes’ have an ethical obligation to disclose Mr. Wallace's support for the Brady Center the next time the program does a story on guns and/or gun control?



I look forward to your response.

Since this is just the kind of question PE is here to help answer, I spoke with Linda Mason, the senior vice president for standards and special projects at CBS News and asked her what the policy is regarding these types of appearances. Here’s what she told me:

“We allow CBS correspondents to speak at various functions and occasionally show video. We have strict regulations that if a CBS correspondent becomes identifiable with one side of a controversial issue, they will not be allowed to cover that issue in the future.”

I asked Mason whether this appearance by Wallace raised him to the level of being “identifiable” with the cause of gun control and she told me, “we’re looking into it to determine” that.

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