All Blog Posts from Public Eye

CNN today announced that current CBS White House Correspondent John Roberts will be joining the cable news network as a Senior National Correspondent on February 20th. In a letter to CBS friends and colleagues this morning, Roberts wrote:

For nearly 14 years at the network, and two years at our Miami station, I have been a part of CBS News, and it a huge part of me. Ultimately, though, all relationships must come to an end, and regrettably, it is time to end my relationship here.



When I was a wide-eyed kid, learning the ropes at a 5 thousand watt radio station in the middle of nowhere, never in my most elaborate dreams did I imagine I would become a member of the CBS family. Just to have played a modest part in the history of this grand institution is an incredible reward.



The best part about it has been the fine people who populate this place. Whether it was war zones, natural disasters or the grind of global presidential travel, you demonstrated time and time again an unswerving commitment to excellence. Oppressive schedules and deadlines only seemed to spark a sense of drive and determination that sometimes appeared superhuman. Unending days and nights in the field or in the studio, covering some of this generation's most important stories brought out the best in all of you.

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Some stories you’ll see on the “Evening News” are just breaking, and others have taken weeks to prepare. Today we offer you a look at a day in the life of one story that’s a bit in between. White House Correspondent John Roberts, Producer Max McClellan and Editor Rob Blache were kind enough to let me observe while they developed their story about President Bush’s second speech in his series of remarks on the Iraq war. You can watch the story below.


The Day Begins



I arrived at the CBS booth (and by the way, calling it a “booth” is right on target. I hope Roberts and White House correspondents Bill Plante and Mark Knoller all really enjoy each other’s company, because I own shoeboxes larger that that thing) in the White House press room at around 9:30 to meet with Roberts, who was accompanied by Bill Plante (who was also kind enough to field my questions as he tried to do his job.)



Checking out the “Evening News” lineup at that time revealed that the Bush speech would likely not be leading the "Evening News." With the “Detroit News” reporting that Ford’s board was considering drastic job cuts and plant closings, the lineup had that story potentially leading the broadcast. (For a more detailed look at how the yesterday’s lineup was created, you can watch the midday lineup meeting here.) Nonetheless, Roberts predicted that the Bush speech story would "definitely be in the first section" of the broadcast or the "Inside Story" in the second block.



For Roberts, the approach with stories such as this one is pretty straightforward -- "separating the new stuff from the boilerplate,” he said. With this story, he’ll focus on eliciting what is new about this speech compared to what the president has said in the past about the war and offer a "reality check" of Bush's remarks. A day earlier in preparing for the story, White House producer Max McClellan had found such a reality checker in Stuart Bowen, Special Inspector General for Reconstruction in Iraq.



Roberts was set to interview Bowen that afternoon, but before then, he had a White House gaggle, a briefing and the president’s speech to deal with. Rep. John Murtha was also scheduled to give a press conference responding to Bush’s remarks and Sen. Jack Reed would be responding on camera as well. There was also a new CBS News poll that gauged public reaction to the president and the war, which Roberts was reviewing, and would make it into the broadcast in one form or another.

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OK, Howie, you clearly need to stop writing Media Notes before 9 a.m. Or you need to drink stronger coffee. In Friday’s column you attributed my quote to CBS News anchor John Roberts and today, you’re attributing it to Vaughn Ververs. The correction in today's Media Notes was a worthy effort...

Don't you hate when someone quotes a blog and attributes a comment to the wrong person? Me too! So when I picked up a hurricane account from John Roberts on the new CBS blog written by Vaughn Ververs, I should have realized that the following comment didn't come from Roberts: "And to those reporters (all on cable, of course) who did grandstand, well, you know who you are."

Apparently he's not as snarky as Vaughn.

But, again, it doesn't quite cut the mustard. As I explained last week, IT WAS ME! Never in my life have I bent over backwards this much just to get credit for being a smartass. Vaughn is a friendly, Midwestern guy who spent his childhood “roaming the vast expanses of the Western plains” (really, he said that in his bio) and would never make a comment like that. And frankly, he’s not that witty anyway.



Signed,



Dick Meyer

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In his Media Notes column today, Washington Post's Howard Kurtz includes an excerpt from a CBSNews.com feature in which CBS News correspondent John Roberts responded to a viewer who argued that news organizations were not using their resources to help hurricane victims. But Kurtz mistakenly put one of my sentences in Roberts' mouth -- and no one should have to suffer that fate.



Here’s what Kurtz wrote:

CBS correspondent John Roberts responds to a viewer who complained that the network should have used its resources to deliver food and water to the needy:

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I have to read a lot of e-mail from viewers and readers for my job. No matter what the inbox, one of the most asked questions since Hurricane Katrina is a variant of this: how come the rich and fancy network teams didn't rescue more people with your helicopters, boats and choppers instead to reporting the news all the time?



Well, I wasn't there but John Roberts was and he answered this question in a recent online feature. I liked his blunt, no-coddling the reader response:

As for what was happening on the ground, let me share with you the following. We were dispatched to the hurricane in such a rush that I brought with me only a few changes of clothing and a handful of breakfast bars. Our camera crews -- some of whom drove in -- brought little more than that, as no one thought this was going to be much more than a three day assignment.



By Thursday, we were out of food and down to our last bottle of water. Our situation was becoming quite dire. Even so, when we came across people on the Interstate, and in the neighborhoods, we gave them what we could to help out. And when we finally got re-supplied (Friday morning), we freely shared water and snacks with people who were left high and dry with nothing. On more than one occasion, we gave away everything we had in our crew vehicle --even though we still had hours of work in the hot sun ahead of us.

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