All Blog Posts from Public Eye

In an email this morning, CBS News Vice President Paul Friedman instructed staff not to use the Cho video without the approval of an executive producer. He also wrote that stills from the video should be used sparingly.

"In no case do we want this video to be used as wallpaper, in much the same way we did not want to use the video of the planes going into the World Trade Center or the buildings coming down," wrote Friedman.

This morning, the video and pictures were all over the CBSNews.com homepage. You could watch the video in the upper left hand corner of the site, and slightly further down on the right side; a large Flash slideshow of Cho's disturbing photos of himself ran in the middle of the page. As of this afternoon, the shooting is the lead story, but the video links are gone from the homepage, and the focus is now on the victims. That's by design, says CBSNews.com Editorial Director Dick Meyer.

"We felt we needed to make it prominent during one news cycle, because we have some readers who are primarily at-work users and they may not have had a chance to see it," said Meyer. "By mid-morning it didn't need to be smack dab in the middle. We're certainly sensitive to how disturbing it is."

I asked Meyer if it really mattered how prominently CBSNews.com showcased the video, since it is so easy for anyone who wants to find the video to do so.

"From a practical standpoint, no, it doesn't matter for most news consumers," said Meyer. "By this morning, it was omnipresent. It was omnipresent for savvy Web users by 8:15 last night."

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Did Lara Logan's piece on the "Battle for Haifa Street," posted to CBSNews.com, include video obtained from Al-Qaeda? That's the question on the mind of a number of bloggers, including Michelle Malkin. Writes Nibras Kazimi:

What I'm interested in is the footage of dead Iraqi soldiers that Lara Logan claims was “obtained by CBS.” But this footage was first released by Al-Qaeda!

Al-Qaeda’s Islamic State of Iraq released 8 minutes of cell phone footage through its media arm, the Al-Furqan Institute for Media Productions, under the title ‘Some of the Casualties of the Heretics in Haifa Street After Sunday’s Fighting, January 7, 2007, in Baghdad.’ The grainy images were of six or seven bodies wearing Iraqi military fatigues with ‘carry-out’ lunch boxes strewn about them. The images were probably taken by a cell phone, judging by quality. In one scene, a close up is shown of a soldier shot through the head, probably executed.

…

The footage “obtained by CBS” is identical to that put out by Al-Qaeda. But Logan makes no mention of Al-Qaeda’s video and does not address the implication that the footage she used was off an Al-Qaeda video. And if it’s not off the Al-Qaeda video, then how did she get footage identical to the one used by Al-Qaeda? This needs to be explained.

I asked CBS News Vice President Paul Friedman about the video.

"I can assure you this was not from Al-Qaeda," said Friedman, who declined to identify the source. "Whenever we can identify the source of information or video, we want to do that," he added. "There are some rare cases when we have to protect the source. In this case, we needed to do so, because it’s literally a matter of life and death."

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It's now been eight days since the roadside bomb attack in Baghdad that killed CBS News cameraman Paul Douglas and soundman James Brolan and critically injured correspondent Kimberly Dozier. The attack also took the lives of Army Capt. James Funkhouser and an Iraqi interpreter.

Covering news involving your own people is a unique challenge for a news organization, particularly when the news is tragic.

"This is what journalism is all about," says "Evening News" anchor Bob Schieffer. "We are trained to deal with tough stories. It's always harder when it involves someone you know, but you always have to fall back on your training."

"I think the basic issue is finding the right balance between covering the incident which in essence happened to involve our people…and balancing that with the fact that there are a lot of other people who this has happened to," says CBS News Vice President Paul Friedman.

CBS' coverage, says "Evening News" Executive Producer Rome Hartman, had to reflect the fact that "this is the kind of terrible news that thousands of families have received, and this time it was our family. It's no more serious or awful or tragic than what other families have experienced, but also no less so." He adds that when people at CBS first heard the news, "our first instinct was compassionate, not journalistic."

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On the heels of CBS NewsOn the heels of CBS News’ announcement of Paul Friedman as the new vice president at CBS News, TVNewser has dug up an op-ed that Friedman wrote for the Wall Street Journal this week last year. The subject? How to re-vamp the CBS “Evening News.” You can check out the full article here, but below are some of his suggestions on April 26, 2005:

Summarize the news of the day in five minutes or so; figure that most people have heard it or read it anyway, and basically need reassurance they haven't missed anything. Don't waste time and resources to illustrate the same stories everyone has. Use anchors or featured reporters in New York, Washington, Los Angeles and London to do quick summaries. Use them to update the news throughout the evening, so people not living in the Eastern time zone aren't neglected.

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We thought it was worth sharing some news about a change at CBS News -- the network announced today that it has hired a new vice president of the news division. From today’s press release:

Paul Friedman, former executive vice president and managing editor of news coverage for ABC News, has been named Vice President, CBS News, it was announced by Sean McManus, President, CBS News and Sports. Friedman will oversee all aspects of the network’s hard news coverage. The appointment is effective immediately.

“Paul brings a wealth of experience and enthusiasm to this new role at CBS News, said McManus. “This completes our senior executive team and I look forward to working with Paul in continuing to make CBS News the best in the business.”

Read on for the rest of the release...

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