All Blog Posts from Public Eye

Meaningless Platitudes! That's what Jack Shafer says the press is offering Gerald Ford in its remembrances of the former president. "…the press applied the word decent to him so often that it stopped sounding like praise and started to sound like an insult," he writes. "…When not calling him decent, the press called him 'honorable.' When not calling him honorable, it praised his 'integrity,' his 'virtue,' his 'common sense,' and his 'humble' style."

Reporters are resorting to clichés because Ford didn't have much of an identity, writes Shafer. Thus the generic platitudes. "When assessing the sons and daughters of that great flyover territory known as the Midwest, the formula suggests pale platitudes about honor, honesty, and being decent, as long as the word means 'adequate' and 'just enough to meet the purpose.'"

Excess Chatter! Washington Post arbiter of conventional wisdom Tom Shales has mostly good things to say about television coverage of the Ford funeral yesterday, though there was a bit of backhandedness in the compliment. "Yesterday's coverage of the funeral of former president Gerald Ford found network correspondents and technicians on their best behavior for the most part, the solemn beauty of the ceremony at Washington National Cathedral virtually forcing them to exercise restraint and good taste," he writes.

Alas, Shales deems CBS' coverage "disappointing." Among his gripes: "[Anchor Katie] Couric and many of her colleagues on the big networks committed the common error of talking over scenes that did not require any talking -- or, to the contrary, called for quiet." Shales also complained that "CBS coverage was marred by a director's or producer's insistence on dividing the screen up in boxes, with a large amount of space taken up by 'The Death of a President,' the title CBS gave its coverage."

Major League A's! As Dana Milbank notes, former anchorman Tom Brokaw eulogized Ford yesterday with a tale about a mock chicken head. (Really.) The story had Milbank wondering which reporter might eulogize President Bush. After all, "[t]he current president would probably have Hugo Chavez deliver his eulogy before he would bestow the honor on a member of the White House press corps."

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Last week, the Chicago Tribune published a column by Phil Rosenthal in which he complains that "[w]hen Gerald Ford died Tuesday, CBS didn't even interrupt a 'Late Show With David Letterman' rerun. It just ran the news as a headline across the bottom of the screen." Rosenthal contrasts the decision not to break into the Late Show with CBS' handling of Lyndon Johnson's death in 1973, when Walter Cronkite took a phone call from the former president's spokesman live on the "Evening News."

"There was pride in relaying big stories first, putting one's stamp on them, reminding viewers this was the channel to watch for the latest news. But that was almost 34 years ago," writes Rosenthal. He argues that the era of people like Frank Stanton, "the man who made it possible for Edward R. Murrow to go after Sen. Joseph McCarthy," has "probably" "passed" at CBS.

I asked CBS News and Sports President Sean McManus to respond to Rosenthal's comments. He did so in an email. "…I think our extensive coverage of the funeral, including breaking in Friday for over 20 minutes during a live football game and the coverage of the Saddam execution and breaking into the network for that, shows that our commitment to covering the news and breaking stores is as strong as it has ever been," wrote McManus.

The decision to break into the football game, in fact, garnered complaints of a very different shade than Rosenthal's. "CBS broke into the Brut Sun Bowl game just to 'let us viewers see' Pres Ford's casket being carried out of the hearse at the family's funeral service. It's the family's private funeral after all! Good grief!," wrote one e-mailer to Public Eye. "Now they have a big mouthy political analyst yapping."

Wrote another: "Please stop interrupting our football game today with long, wasted TV shots of the church and finally Ford's casket.....interrupting for a minute or two wouldn't be so bad....interrupting for a long period of time when obviously anyone watching is on CBS for the football game is stupid."

The death of a former president puts television broadcasters in a difficult position. Obviously, it's impossible to please everyone with your coverage. Ford's death probably did merit at least a brief interruption of the Late Show, and interested viewers could have switched to a news channel or gone online for more extensive coverage. One can even look at the decision not to break in as evidence that entertainment trumps news at CBS. Of course, the decision to interrupt the football game provides evidence in the opposite direction.

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A Break In The Dissembly Line: Gerald Ford was that rarest of presidents: One who actually liked reporters. Howard Kurtz rounds up some of the comments from journalists about the late president, including Bob Schieffer's comment that "Gerald Ford was the nicest and most decent public figure I ever covered." Ford didn't get particularly flattering coverage while in office, and his short term was not marked with great successes, but "the passage of time often brings reappraisals," Kurtz notes. "In an age of intense political polarization," he continues, "the media are now showing a deeper appreciation of Ford's regular-guy persona and his willingness to cooperate with Democratic opponents."

The Medium And The Message: This month "the Project for Excellence in Journalism kicks off an ambitious weekly study of what stories almost three dozen media sources are reporting, what news they view as important and how reporting differs among outlets," reports Peter Johnson. Included in the study are nine daily newspapers, the morning and evening newscasts, prime time cable news talk shows, headlines from national news radio, and posts by prominent bloggers. Every Tuesday, PEJ will issue a report on what has and hasn't been covered, complete with a breakdown of the differences in media and an index of top stories. Writes Johnson: "The study is intended to help consumers see how different media play top stories of the day and could help media outlets better gauge the so-called broccoli-vs.-Twinkie debate, 'the line between what they think the public needs to know and what they want to know,' PEJ director Tom Rosenstiel says."

'60 Minutes' Taking Its Time: Ed Bradley, who died of leukemia late last year, isn't getting replaced on '60' anytime soon. Instead his "workload will be spread around, and, in a unique arrangement for the CBS newsmagazine, his top producer will run a reporting unit for stories available to all on-air correspondents," the AP notes. The existing correspondents don't mind potentially doing a few more stories, writes the AP, since "they're often clamoring for airtime, anyway." Says Executive Producer Jeff Fager: "It's a long-term project to find the next full-time person who can show the abilities that are expected of a `60 Minutes' correspondent."

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