All Blog Posts from Public Eye

"Try transporting yourself back to the time of Imus. Hard, isn't it? It was just five or six days ago, but it might as well be five months."

--William Powers in the National Journal. He adds: "We really do care about these stories for a few days, sometimes a week. Then one morning you wake up to find that the most urgent topic on the planet (or at least in this intensely self-absorbed corner of it), the five-alarm narrative that everyone from Bush to Obama to Rosie was weighing in on, has vanished from the collective consciousness."

I really, really didn’t want to write about Don Imus today. As anyone who hasn’t been living under a rock will tell you, the story has been covered, rehashed, and analyzed to death over the past week. (By the way, when was the last time a phrase – that would be “nappy headed hos,” of course – went from invisible to ubiquitous so quickly? Suddenly "show me the money" doesn't seem all that bad.)

This is the Evening News Report, however, and last week the “Evening News” was consistently focused on Imus – well, except for that detour down to Raleigh for the Duke story. The then-growing scandal was covered extensively on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday of the week, every new development treated as significant news.

It’s easy to say that the story was over-covered, and not just on CBS News. But it’s not like there wasn’t a lot going on here: Three words uttered by a radio host may be relatively insignificant in the grand scheme of things, but the firestorm they set off – and what they revealed about our culture – are not.

Most of the coverage of the story on the “Evening News” stuck to the basics concerning the latest developments in the case. That’s understandable: This is a show that airs every day, in a relatively short time period, and there isn’t a lot of time to explore cultural issues that aren't easy to get a handle on. Sometimes just getting the facts out clearly is enough.

But with all the airtime the Imus story ate up, it would have been great to see issues like the following addressed: Why did these particular words cause such a firestorm, when Imus has said plenty of offensive things in the past? What does the scandal say about the state of race relations, the ritual of public apology, and the predilections of the media in this country? Are there double standards at play in what is permissible for different members of society, and are they or aren't they fair?

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Former CBS Moscow bureau chief Beth Knobel has passed along a piece by Gregory Papadatos, an army medic. Papadatos, a sergeant, is in New York between tours; he has served in Iraq and will soon be deploying to Afghanistan.

Papadatos writes about a close friend, an active duty Army medic now in Iraq whose tour has just been extended for three months. "She got there in October of 2006 and was expecting to leave in October of '07," he writes. "Now she will be there until January of '08...unless she gets hurt before then."

Here's a little more information about Papadatos' friend:

She joined the Army with a high school diploma and no college. We left the Army's Combat Medic Course just under three years ago, and since then she has spent a year in Korea, a year and a half in Texas, and six months in Iraq. In those three years, she has earned an Associate's Degree, taking classes at night and on the weekends (and, in Iraq, online, in her spare time). She had planned to go to college - a REAL college - full-time starting in January of '08. Now she won't be back in time for the first semester of the year, so she'll have to wait for the summer or fall of '08. And - oh yes! - she enlisted, in the summer of 2003, for FOUR years, but the "Stop-Loss" policy keeps her in uniform until further notice.

Continues Papadatos:

Now, keeping all of this in mind, somebody please tell me why a deejay with a reputation for irreverence calling a basketball player a "nappy-headed ho" should leave that woman "scarred for life" (which is a direct quote from one of the Rutgers basketball players, in Wednesday's newspapers). After that, somebody please tell me why I should care about it. And THEN somebody please tell me why that one incident, which caused no bleeding or dying, is getting more radio air time than the fact that MY little buddy - along with about 100,000 of her closest friends and colleagues - has just been told she has to spend three extra months in a combat zone.

You can read more about Papadatos and other soldiers here.

Happy trails, Don. "CBS today announced its decision to cease broadcasting the Imus in the Morning radio program, effective immediately, on a permanent basis." Release after the jump.

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“I have absolute confidence that Les will do the right thing.”

--Sumner Redstone, chairman of Viacom Inc.,* on whether CBS Corp. chief executive Leslie Moonves will fire Don Imus. NBC News announced yesterday that "MSNBC will no longer simulcast the 'Imus in the Morning' radio program." The program "generates in excess of $20 million in annual revenue for CBS Radio," according to the New York Times.

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"It was a dumb thing he said I don't think it was vicious and he genuinely wishes he hadn't said it. It was really stupid of him to say, but I can't condemn him…I would go back [on the show] if he asked me -- sure -- but I hope he doesn't ask me."

--Andy Rooney, speaking about Don Imus' radio program in the Sun-Sentinel.

Check out this video of soon-to-be CBS News Senior Political Correspondent Jeff Greenfield, who went on the "Early Show" this morning to discuss Don Imus' radio show. Greenfield has been a frequent Imus guest, and he went on Imus' show again yesterday. Greenfield told Julie Chen that to "stay away from the show when he gets in serious and deserved trouble seems to me the ultimate act of hypocrisy and cowardice."

"Will I go back on? If it were anyone else, I wouldn't have anything to do with them. But I'm not going to sever a relationship with someone who has apologized for what he said. He's my friend. I hate what he did, but he's still my friend."

--Bob Schieffer, speaking about Don Imus' radio program in the Washington Post.

Two weeks. That's how long CBS Radio and MSNBC have suspended Don Imus for his characterization of members of the Rutgers women's basketball team as "nappy-headed hos."

The language in the CBS Radio announcement was interesting: "Due to the events of the past week, CBS Radio will suspend Don Imus and the broadcast of his show for a period of two weeks, effective Monday, April 16." Due to the events of the past week. You'll remember that Imus made his remarks last Wednesday; he apologized Friday, and likely hoped the controversy would die down over the weekend.

Instead, just the opposite happened – as Rachel Sklar points out, "the story continued to percolate," with a number of media outlets covering it over the weekend. Imus made one last effort at face saving with a visit to Al Sharpton's radio show, but he was unable to win Sharpton over or sway public opinion. And then, finally: Suspension. "Events of the past week" indeed.

One thing that has struck me about coverage of the Imus affair is the fact that media outlets, including the "Evening News," have had no problem repeating what Imus said. I'm all for that – his words are a central part of the story, and simply writing that Imus made derogatory remarks, without specifying what they were, doesn't give news consumers all the information.

But there does seem to be a double standard here: Remember the Danish cartoon controversy? Most US media outlets, including CBS News, declined to show the cartoons, despite the fact that they too were central to the story. "We could explain it, so we didn't need to show it," Linda Mason, CBS News senior vice president, standards and special projects, told us at the time. "Any rendering of Muhammad is an insult to Muslims, and desecration is even worse."

But "nappy headed hos" is an insult as well. So why allow that particular insult on the air but not the other?

Not So Dapper Don: The weekend doesn't seem to have dampened criticism of Don Imus, the radio host under fire for referring to Rutgers University women's basketball players as "nappy headed ho's." Imus has apologized and said he is "not a racist;" he is scheduled to appear on Al Sharpton's radio show today. (Said Sharpton Saturday: "I accept his apology, just as I want his bosses to accept his resignation.") In the New York Times, David Carr points out that Imus continues to book big name guests from the political and media world, and notes that he "generously provides airtime to those parts of the news media and political apparatus that would generally be expected to bring him to account." Imus' show appears on WFAN, the parent company of which is CBS Radio.

I Got Your Blog Post Right Here: "Is it too late to bring civility to the Web?" wonders the New York Times. ("Yes," responds Public Eye.) The Times writes up an effort to create a blogger code of conduct, which could call on bloggers to ban anonymous comments and delete comments that constitute threat or libel. It's not censorship, says Tim O'Reilly, who is working on the guidelines. He argues that “[f]ree speech is enhanced by civility."

Expert Witness: As Sinbad fans well know, Wikipedia's open-source nature can mean inaccuracies. Citizendium wants to change that – it's meant to be "a smarter, kinder Wikipedia [in which] experts approve all articles posted on the site," as the Los Angeles Times notes. Sounds great, right? Too bad exacting standards mean a whole new set of problems. After six months, "editors have approved only nine of the roughly 1,000 articles that volunteers have written." And the experts may not have the same interests as the unwashed masses: "According to a chart on Wikipedia compiled by one of its contributors, the 20 most-viewed articles in February included 'Anna Nicole Smith,' 'Sex,' 'List of sex positions' and 'World War II.'"