All Blog Posts from Public Eye

Upon arriving at the office today, this writer came upon a blog post about “CBS Sunday Morning” correspondent Rita Braver’s conversation with Lynne Cheney. The post began:

CBS News correspondent Rita Braver's brown-nose interview with Lynne Cheney on Sunday was reason number 1,342 why I am cynical toward and very distrustful of the mainstream corporate media.

The author of the post, Micheal Petrelis, took issue with two main points:

The lighter tone of the interview.

The fact that Rita Braver’s husband is the lawyer who represents Lynne Cheney with publishers. It's important to note that Braver disclosed this herself during the interview.

I began a conversation with Braver about this issue early today, before finding out the conversation had widened to a couple of letters on Jim Romenesko’s MediaNews – the go-to site for a daily climate check of MediaLand. (It’s so “go-to,” we direct you to go to it in the list to the right ----->.)

There I found a letter from David Fluhrer, a self-described "public relations consultant with a healthy respect for journalism," raising the same points as Petrelis -- where he called the interview "fawning." And another from Lee Rood at the Des Moines Register.

In order to get a sense of the decision-making process, I got in touch with Rand Morrison, the Executive Producer of “CBS Sunday Morning” and shared with him the concerns out there in the blogosphere.

Read full post…

Rand Morrison has been executive producer of “Sunday Morning” since 1999. He has also worked behind the scenes on many other CBS News broadcasts – as executive producer of CBS News Productions, senior broadcast producer for “Public Eye with Bryant Gumbel” and “48 Hours,” and senior producer for “Eye to Eye with Connie Chung,” among others. Below he answers our questions, in the process offering up the shortest – but perhaps most satisfying – response to the question about what should be changed about journalism we've ever had:

What do you do at CBS News?

I’m an executive producer.

What single issue should be covered more at CBS News?

I think we do fairly well in terms of the “issues” we cover. What I’d like to see us do more of is “the explainer” – stories that give our viewers the big picture – the “why” behind the big story… the what-it-means-to-you…

Give us a great behind the scenes story.

I once served a delicious apple cobbler to Imelda Marcos at a buffet at her home on New York’s upper east side. She was most gracious. As you’d expect, nice shoes, too.

Read full post…

Since 1999, Rand Morrison has been executive producer of “Sunday Morning,” and before then, worked on almost every other CBS News broadcast in a host of different behind-the-scenes roles – he was the executive producer of CBS News Productions, senior broadcast producer for “Public Eye with Bryant Gumbel” and “48 Hours” as well as a senior producer for “Eye to Eye with Connie Chung.” Before then, he was a producer for the weekend editions of the “Evening News” and a broadcast producer for the “Morning News.” He began at CBS News in 1982 as a writer for “Nightwatch,” the network’s former overnight news broadcast. Got a question for Rand? Submit it via e-mail or in comments.

Read full post…