All Blog Posts from Public Eye

Over at Lost Remote, Michael Gay has posted an entertaining rant about iPhone reporting.

"Every station has done this before: some big product comes out, a producer goes to eBay and searches for it, and they quote the highest price they can find to make it sound like a bigger story. Stop it. An extreme is not a story, and it adds hype to a story that doesn’t need your help to be bigger…," he writes. "[W]hat does it add to the story when you report on national TV that the cost [of an iPhone] on eBay is $2,799? I just found one for $20,999,999 (at least shipping is included). That doesn’t mean that’s how much the phone costs."

CBS News fell into this trap on Saturday's "Evening News." Towards the end of a balanced piece on the much-hyped product, reporter Michelle Miller said the following: "Just how hot is the iPhone? Well, at this New York City Apple Store, and others like it across the country, they refor--retail, rather, for between five and $600. On eBay, they're going for as high as $1,300."

The "going for" bit is the issue here. Corey Spring did some research and found that "[a]mong those [eBay] auctions that did close successfully, few were having the large markup that many expected to see the iPhone go for from third-party sellers... and a significant amount were only making their money back, even closing at a loss."

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Get ‘em while they’re young, Peacock. NBC News has announced a new online venture to supplement America’s high school history, politics and English curricula with NBC News footage. The awkwardly-named project, iCue – which stands for Immerse, Compete, Understand and Excel – will provide historical videos for students using mostly archived NBC footage.

As far as NBC figures it, it’s a win-win. They get the public relations boost from informing (iCue …. IQ, get it?!) America’s youth while engaging in some nifty brand management and product placement at the same time. According to the New York Times:

The effort, which the network is spending nearly $10 million to develop, draws heavily on its exhaustive film and video archives chronicling the most important events of the last half century, as well as on its best-known journalists, who will have a chance to report on stories that occurred long before they were born.

When it comes to product placements, I’m far more comfortable having high schoolers exposed to Huntley and Brinkley than Joe Camel or The Funny Sonic Guys. But an unintended benefit of I-Cue may be a positive bump in how America’s youth sees mainstream media.

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On this morning’s CNN "American Morning," Kiran Chetry – she of the now-infamous, poke-your-eye-with-a-stick spelling bee champion interview – informed viewers that Republicans have now codified (in book form!) The Lessons Of George Allen:

It's been called the ‘Macaca Moment’ and the Republican Party is hoping to learn from it. Referring to the comments made by George Allen last year when he was caught on camera, [the Macaca moment] probably cost him the election. In a new guide book, the GOP tells candidates what should be obvious by now: Assume you're always on camera. I think that's a bipartisan advice, to say the least.

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Remember when Time magazine made ”Us” the Newsmakers of 2006. In the interest of accuracy, the word Time used was “You” along with a mirror on the cover, but I held the magazine one time, so my sophisticated magazine cover algebra leads me to the following equation: Me + You = Us. After awarding us this accolade, Time Magazine told Us “you control the information age.”

Thank you, Time. Now “We” have spun that into our own TV news show. And might I just say: After all Our hard work, We really do deserve it.

According to Variety:

ABC is hoping to reinvent the newsmagazine for the YouTube generation with a show produced by ABC News but based on user-generated video.

Hourlong skein "i-Caught" will get a six-week run on the network starting Aug. 6 at 10pm on Mondays with an eye toward a midseason return if it performs as well as the network hopes.

This concept makes sense when one considers how many stories have been covered in part by citizen journalists of late, such as the tsunami of a few years ago, the Virginia Tech shooting and the London Terror attack. (And, in a less high-minded example: the immolation of Michael Richards.)

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Let's say you're a politician who wants to seem down to earth, likeable, and loose. Your speeches are notoriously stiff, and you've been criticized for appearing too ambitious and driven. What, you wonder, do you do to make people feel like you might be an actual human being? Easy – just go to the iPod.

Today brings us the latest in a string of stories in which politicians have offered up the contents of their iPods to seemingly credulous reporters. Hillary Rodham Clinton's iPod, according to what she told the surprisingly sympathetic New York Post, features Aretha Franklin's "Respect," the Eagles' "Take It to the Limit," which includes the line "You know I've always been a dreamer," and U2's "Beautiful Day," which the Post describes as "an upbeat, uplifting single Clinton blares over the speakers moments before she hits the stage to deliver a red-meat stump speech."

What, no "Star Spangled Banner?"

Well, maybe, actually. "I've got everything - a total smorgasbord," she told the Post. CBSNews.com ran an Associated Press rewrite of the story.

I'm not saying Clinton's choices are necessarily tailored to what's going to play well with the plebes. But I have a hard time believing that she chose the songs she did without a little advanced planning. I mean, really, could a political consultant have come up with better selections? It's not just Hillary who has offered up their seemingly poll-tested iPod contents, of course – as the Post notes, President Bush, Vice President Cheney, and Chuck Schumer have all advertised what they've got playing. "Cheney," writes Ian Bishop, "stays true his Western roots and tunes his iPod to Johnny Cash." Wow. And here I thought he was a Trent Reznor fan.

One need not be completely cynical about all this – Bush's iPod, for example, wasn’t completely on message, as CNN points out, containing as it did a song by anti-Bush artist John Fogerty and the somewhat risqué "My Sharona" in addition to the expected country and boomer rock. But the look-what's-on-my-iPod story is fast becoming the modern version of traditional stunts like appearing on Laugh-In, the Tonight Show, or Saturday Night Live to show folks that you're just a regular Joe or Jane. (Not that the latter is completely dead.) And reporters are, for the most part, eating it up without the slightest trace of skepticism.

*Sadly, not an actual quote.

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David Martin’s recent dispatch detailing his decision not to air a story about IED’s in Iraq has received quite a bit of attention inside and outside Public Eye. So we thought you might be interested in his recent interview with Brooke Gladstone at “On The Media” regarding the story behind the story. Check it out here.

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On Monday, we brought you a dispatch from David Martin about his decision to hold a story about the battle against Improvised Explosive Devices in Iraq on the advice of a senior military officer, who said the story would be helpful to the enemy. Now Martin shares his thoughts on the response to his revelation.

I was surprised by the reactions to my account of a decision to kill a story about tactics the military is using in the battle against Improvised Explosive Devices. They ran the gamut from praise for being “highly responsible” to suggestions that I be fired for being such a pushover for the military. In between, there were some people who said, in effect, “Wait a minute. You said you didn’t find the military’s argument for why the story would help the enemy particularly convincing, and you also said that in the past when you’ve held stories it’s turned out that nothing bad would have happened if you had gone with the story. So tell me again why you held this story.”

First, part of my job includes telling the stories of the dead and wounded, so I am acutely sensitive to the human costs of war. One visit to the physical therapy room at Walter Reed Army Medical Center, one look at all those young bodies torn apart by IEDs and all those young families whose lives have been turned upside down, and you know you never want to report anything that could remotely contribute to those awful wounds. So that’s my going in position.

Second, much of the criticism was that I had allowed “the government” to kill the story, the implication being that I had caved into the Bush administration. I wasn’t dealing with “the government;” I was dealing with one senior military officer. He wasn’t making any outlandish threats that I would have the blood of American boys on my hands or that I would never work in the Pentagon again. He was simply telling me that in his opinion the information in that story would help the enemy build deadlier IEDs. I decided to accept his opinion as better than my own, and I decided to accept his opinion as more relevant than my experience that none of the other stories I’ve held over the years would, in retrospect, have done any harm.

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Last night, the CBS "Evening News" led with Jim Stewart's exclusive story about how FBI technicians, "using breakthrough forensic techniques," have made significant progress in identifying the origins of Improvised Explosive Devices, or IEDs. IEDs are homemade bombs, often buried beside roads, which have represented one of the most significant dangers to US troops in Iraq.(Click on the video player to watch the story.)



After providing a number of details about the FBI's forensic efforts in the piece, Stewart said the following:

"At the request of the FBI, CBS News has agreed not to report specific findings about the reconstructed devices. The FBI expressed concerns to CBS that revealing such details might compromise ongoing operations and jeopardize the safety of US personnel in Iraq."

I asked Stewart about the decision not to share the "specific findings." He said, first, that CBS News was not given the story on the condition that certain details be left out – "the FBI is not in the habit of handing out stories and attaching embargoes to them," he said. CBS News got the story through its own reporting, which included a search of the public record, Stewart said, and then shared with the FBI the basics of what it had found, though not the specific script of the report.



The FBI, he explained, subsequently objected to the level of detail CBS News planned to include in the report. The bureau argued that if CBS were to disclose certain facts, it could lead those who make the explosives to alter their methods, "potentially allowing these people to remain free and continue their work killing American men and women," as Stewart put it.

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