All Blog Posts from Public Eye

You know, we really don't write enough about Paris Hilton here. So! Here's your daily dose of Paris commentary, courtesy of a (maybe just a tiny bit sarcastic) Bob Schieffer:

Face The Nation did not get the big interview with Paris Hilton.

I feel terrible about it.

I haven't felt so low since one of our competitors broke into programming to report that the embalming of Anna Nicole Smith's body had begun. Getting scooped on a big story is never fun, not then, not ever. And we never got to first base on that story either, which is why we tried to be competitive on this one.

We held strategy sessions on how to stay ahead on the Paris story. In the finest network tradition, we blamed each other for not getting the interview. We even leaked the infighting to competitors. But nothing worked.

All those big-time bookers dangled all those deals in front of Paris' family, and we were just out of our league. Heck, we couldn't even figure out what league we were in.

Read it all here.

DC Dispatch: Public Eye was sent to be the fly on the wall of today’s internal seminar for new CBS hires and interns about “Television Production 101.” Here’s your intrepid PE correpondent’s report from inside:

(Heck, being “The Mole” worked for Anderson Cooper …)

Bob Schieffer started off the meeting in his standard folksy manner, informing the crowd that he’s nearing his 50-year anniversary in the news business. Then he shared the story of the interview that led to his career, when he applied for work at a radio station. The man running the station pointed across the street and said “tell me what’s over there.” Schieffer observed “it’s the football field.” The interviewer responded “Yeah, but tell me what you see over there, describe it.” Apparently, given this second chance, Schieffer did well enough to earn a spot on the staff and … the rest is history.

After that, a lot of the seminar was spent deconstructing a four minute segment put together in the wake of the Virginia Tech shootings. Cameramen, producers and correspondents discussed the logistical difficulties of trying to wrap their heads around the story in order to condense it to a comprehensive report. "CBS Evening News” producer Andy Triay spelled out the difference between the live cable reporting of the story and the CBS segment analyzed. “A cable reporter's job is to say here is what I can see from this vantage point, but network reporters have to say here is what happened today” when faced with putting together a taped segment tying together all the day’s developments.** Also, overlooked logistical issues were discussed, from the four-hour trip down to Blacksburg, to the difficulties of finding set-up shots and witnesses to the task of trying to identify, you know, tracking down what happened in the midst of confusion and chaos.

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"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.

As correspondent Richard Roth noted earlier, covering tensions in the Middle East is a very delicate business, fraught with “loaded” assumptions, terms and language. It’s not hard to offend one side or another even when trying hard not to. And when you mix in any opinion at all, you’re certain to come under fire from some quarters. When CBS anchor Bob Schieffer dedicated his weekly “commentary” on “Face the Nation” to the fighting in the region, he was sure to face plenty of scrutiny.

The liberal media watchdog group Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR) has sent out an “action alert,” criticizing Schieffer for failing to provide more context in his commentary. FAIR urged readers to contact the show and Public Eye to register their displeasure. Since the alert was issued yesterday, we’ve received at least 100 e-mails that do just that. First, the basics. Here is the transcript of Schieffer’s Sunday commentary (click the picture to the left to watch):

Finally today, when the war broke out in the Middle East, the first thing I thought about the old story of the frog and the scorpion who were trying to cross a river there. The scorpion couldn't swim, the frog was lost. So the scorpion proposed a deal, “give me a ride on your back, and I'll show you the way.” The frog agreed, and the trip went fine until they got to the middle of the river, and then suddenly scorpion just stung the frog. As they were sinking, the frog asked, in his dying breath, “Why would you that?” To which the scorpion replied, “because this is the Middle East.”

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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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We’ve seen that there are a host of restrictions on how much networks other than NBC – which owns the rights to the coverage – can broadcast of the Olympic Games. There’s also a reason why on the evening news broadcasts on Wednesday night, you only caught a few clips of Brit Hume’s interview with Vice President Dick Cheney. To see the entire interview, you’d have to be watching Fox News. Of course, the same standard was true of Bob Schieffer’s interview with President Bush a few weeks back – if you wanted to see the whole thing, you had to watch it on CBS. These programs are considered the property of their respective networks, so they’re subject to copyright laws.

When it comes to news material (among other things), however, something called “fair use” applies. I’m not going to get too deep into the weeds because, well, I’m not a lawyer and you’d likely fall asleep at your keyboard. (For those interested, there’s a good overview here.) Instead, I’ll offer just a bit of insight about how and why these interviews appear as they do.

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Last night we received an email from "DYN175" asking the following:

What are the standards at CBS News for reporting vs. editorializing?

On the "CBS Evening News" tonight, February 14th, [Capitol Hill Correspondent] Sharyl Attkisson gave a report on Homeland Security Secretary [Michael] Chertoff and his actions dealing with Hurricane Katrina. In the Q&A after the report, [anchor] Bob Schieffer turned to her and asked, "Do you think, Sharyl, that Chertoff's job is on the line here?"

Such a question clearly requires the reporter to state a personal opinion. It would seem to me that this would cross the line into editorializing. Does CBS News have any written standards on this?

I talked to Bob Schieffer about that issue and the question and answer portion of the "Evening News" more generally.

"We're not trying to have people give personal opinions," says Schieffer. "We're trying to explain, to put things into context." He added: "There has been all this behind the scenes questioning and whispering about whether Chertoff will lose his job, and that's why I asked her about it."

Schieffer compares the question and answer portion of the "Evening News" broadcast to a sidebar in a newspaper. "The main story covers the who, what, where, why, and when, and the sidebar offers analysis, color, some detail that you couldn't get into in the main story," he says.

Such offerings are essential, he says, if the "Evening News" wants to compete in a crowded news environment.

"If the evening newses are going to survive – and I'm talking about all of them, not just us – they have to evolve beyond what they have been. If all we're going to do is put on a minute and a half piece that's the same as the minute and a half piece that's been running on cable all day, we're not going to make it." He says the question and answer exchange with correspondents, which fall somewhere between straight reporting and cable news-style editorializing, makes for content that sets the "Evening News" apart.

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One of the top stories on CBSNews.com today concerns Pat Robertson's comments about Ariel Sharon. Robertson suggested Friday "that Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's stroke was divine punishment for 'dividing God's land,'" as the story puts it. Robertson, who has been a figurehead of the evangelical movement since he powered onto the national scene as a presidential candidate in 1988, has garnered attention recently because of controversial comments, such as his suggestion that disaster may strike a small Pennsylvania town because residents "voted God out of your city" and his call for the United States to assassinate Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez. Presently he controls a television network, the Christian Broadcasting Network, and hosts its flagship show, "The 700 Club."



Guest blogging on the Web site of the liberal Washington Monthly, Amy Sullivan wrote, "I try not to comment on all of the ridiculous things that come out of Pat Robertson's mouth because 1) he's a moonbat who seems to be reading a very different translation of the Bible than I am, and 2) most evangelicals, even conservative ones, don't think of him as a spokesperson who represents their views."



The response prompted another liberal blogger, Atrios, to ask: "So who would represent the views of conservative evangelicals better than Pat Robertson?" He added: "I'd quite like the views of religious conservatives to be represented by people who are less nuts than Pat Robertson even if I subscribe neither to their religion nor the politics."



I asked "Evening News" host Bob Schieffer for his thoughts on Robertson and whether he thought there were others who better represent evangelicals.



Schieffer, who considers himself a religious person, has covered Robertson and interviewed him several times in the past, and says "at the beginning he represented a particular point of view, and articulated it quite well." But he's reluctant to cover him now.



"I think we have to be very careful about quoting Robertson, because I'm not sure who he represents anymore," he said. "His comments have gone beyond interesting and into bizarre." The "Evening News," he points out, has not covered Robertson's recent comments.

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Public Eye has taken you into the “Evening News” control room and the “Early Show” control room. We’ve even shown you the CBS News morning editorial meeting where CBS executives and producers discuss the news you’ll see each evening, morning and into the future. Now you get to see a lineup meeting, where evening news producers gather to begin the process of putting together a show.



There is plenty of competition to get onto the newscast and much of it takes place before the lineup meeting. But it is here where the decisions begin to solidify and the broadcast starts to take shape. Today was an especially busy news day with a full menu to choose from. There is talk about whether or not to cover Saddam Hussein’s trial even though the accused refused to show up. Anchor Bob Schieffer made a compelling case for explaining how it was Saddam was able to simply refuse. There is talk about where to place President Bush’s speech and a new CBS poll and whether or not some Republican House leadership wrangling should make the show. There’s explanation of an interesting story on the Egyptian elections, a package on the MTV generation of soldiers and lots of talk about the war in Iraq.



Click on the video and find out the answers to these questions and get a first-hand look at how these issues are discussed between Schieffer, Executive Producer Jim Murphy and the rest of the “Evening News” editorial team. The lineup discussed in the meeting is subject to constant change as news develops throughout the day. This video has not been edited in any way other than to add chyrons to identify those involved. It’s an unprecedented look at a small part of the process that goes into putting together a network newscast. The video runs just about 20 minutes.



UPDATE: In case you're wondering why the shooting at the Miami airport did not come up in the meeting, there's a simple explanation: The meeting took place this morning, and news of the shooting did break until the afternoon.

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Public Eye has taken you into the “Evening News” control room and the “Early Show” control room. We’ve even shown you the CBS News morning editorial meeting where CBS executives and producers discuss the news you’ll see each evening, morning and into the future. Now you get to see a lineup meeting, where evening news producers gather to begin the process of putting together a show.



There is plenty of competition to get onto the newscast and much of it takes place before the lineup meeting. But it is here where the decisions begin to solidify and the broadcast starts to take shape. Today was an especially busy news day with a full menu to choose from. There is talk about whether or not to cover Saddam Hussein’s trial even though the accused refused to show up. Anchor Bob Schieffer made a compelling case for explaining how it was Saddam was able to simply refuse. There is talk about where to place President Bush’s speech and a new CBS poll and whether or not some Republican House leadership wrangling should make the show. There’s explanation of an interesting story on the Egyptian elections, a package on the MTV generation of soldiers and lots of talk about the war in Iraq.



Click on the video and find out the answers to these questions and get a first-hand look at how these issues are discussed between Schieffer, Executive Producer Jim Murphy and the rest of the “Evening News” editorial team. The lineup discussed in the meeting is subject to constant change as news develops throughout the day. This video has not been edited in any way other than to add chyrons to identify those involved. It’s an unprecedented look at a small part of the process that goes into putting together a network newscast.

Read full post…