All Blog Posts from Public Eye

The theatrical release of "A Mighty Heart" – the story of Daniel Pearl's kidnapping and murder – has called to mind many Americans' first encounter with the grainy terrorist videos from non-descript locations that have become a grim, regular reminder of current affairs. But we're kidding ourselves if we think that the stereotype of low-tech tools and old school propaganda is the reality in Iraq and elsewhere. A new study from Radio Free Europe/RadioLiberty today makes clear that we're not merely dealing with an occasional fuzzy hostage video:

Iraq's Sunni insurgency has developed a sophisticated media campaign to deliver its message over the Internet through daily press releases, weekly and monthly magazines, books, video clips, full-length films, countless websites, and even television stations. Part of the target audience for insurgent media projects are mainstream Arabic-language media, which often amplify the insurgent message to a mass audience.

The study is harrowing in its details. According to the Washington Post's coverage of the study:

"Top 20," produced by Ansar al-Sunnah, is a compilation video of attacks on U.S. forces, presented as a greatest-hits competition among "insurgent brigades" for footage of the most spectacular attack. It is made with the express intention to encourage "healthy" rivalry among cells of fighters.

"It is very fast-paced and clearly aimed at the video game generation," says [study author Harold] Kimmage, who is an Arabist and a regional analyst for the U.S.-funded Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, which broadcasts into Iraq.

From this pop culture-esque highlight show to more traditional media, it looks as if the Al Qaeda and other terrorist factions are have all the media niches covered. The battle for hearts and minds has gone online and multimedia – and the more the rest of us know this, the better.

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Yesterday on "60 Minutes," Scott Pelley offered up the latest in his series of stories about global warming. You can watch the story, much of which was filmed in Antarctica, by clicking on the video box.

Pelley has spoken with me twice about his coverage of global warming, and in a wide-ranging interview posted March 22, I asked him what he thinks "about the fact that James Inhofe, who until recently chaired the Environment and Public Works Committee, has cited your work as one of the prime examples of the media hyping global warming?"

Here is Pelley's reply:

That interview I did with you has become somewhat famous around Washington, apparently. First of all, let me say I am not familiar with what Senator Inhofe has said about me specifically, although I am aware that he brought my work up on the floor of the Senate. I think it's important to know that Senator Inhofe is a very careful and capable representative of the state of Oklahoma, which is where my family is from. And one thing Senator Inhofe knows is his constituents. And a lot of his constituents are honorably employed by the oil industry and companies that serve the oil industry. There's nothing wrong with that. And there's nothing wrong with him being an advocate for those constituents.

I think Senator Inhofe comes at this from a particular viewpoint, and that is that petroleum products should not be blamed on global warming. The science, however, is overwhelmingly on the other side of the question. The recent international conference on global warming, which was sponsored by the United States, concluded with 90 percent certainty – which is all you can get a scientist to say – that human activity, i.e. greenhouse gasses, particularly carbon dioxide from burning fossil fuels, is the principle driver of the warming trend that we have seen over the last several years.

And there is no debate any longer that there is a warming trend. I've just come back from Antarctica a few weeks ago, where we were shooting a story, and there are manifest, obvious changes down at the bottom of the earth that the earth is warming.

Conservative media bias site Newsbusters is calling Pelley's latest report "alarmist." Wrote Justin McCarthy, sarcastically: "Apparently, when watching a glacier recede, one can jump to the conclusion that SUV driving soccer moms are causing it."

It's Thursday, and that means it's time for the Public Eye Chat. This week's subject is "60 Minutes" Correspondent Scott Pelley. You can read excerpts, and listen to the full interview, below.

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Click here to listen to the interview.

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Brian Montopoli: What do you think about the fact that James Inhofe, who until recently chaired the Environment and Public Works Committee, has cited your work as one of the prime examples of the media hyping global warming? A lot of conservatives have gone to comments you made to me…and said 'this is the mainstream media's attitude, and it's unfair and one sided.'

Scott Pelley: That interview I did with you has become somewhat famous around Washington, apparently. First of all, let me say I am not familiar with what Senator Inhofe has said about me specifically, although I am aware that he brought my work up on the floor of the Senate. I think it's important to know that Senator Inhofe is a very careful and capable representative of the state of Oklahoma, which is where my family is from. And one thing Senator Inhofe knows is his constituents. And a lot of his constituents are honorably employed by the oil industry and companies that serve the oil industry. There's nothing wrong with that. And there's nothing wrong with him being an advocate for those constituents.

I think Senator Inhofe comes at this from a particular viewpoint, and that is that petroleum products should not be blamed on global warming. The science, however, is overwhelmingly on the other side of the question. The recent international conference on global warming, which was sponsored by the United States, concluded with 90 percent certainty – which is all you can get a scientist to say – that human activity, i.e. greenhouse gasses, particularly carbon dioxide from burning fossil fuels, is the principle driver of the warming trend that we have seen over the last several years.

And there is no debate any longer that there is a warming trend. I've just come back from Antarctica a few weeks ago, where we were shooting a story, and there are manifest, obvious changes down at the bottom of the earth that the earth is warming.

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One of the reasons global warming is such a compelling topic is that it exists at the intersection of politics, business, and the environment, a fact made abundantly clear by three major stories that have broken this week. The first story concerns the release of a report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, "a top panel of international scientists," claiming that "warming of the climate system is unequivocal" and that the warming has "very likely" been caused by man. The second is news about an oil company: record profits of $39.5 billion, or about $4.5 million per hour, for ExxonMobil in 2006. And the third story, from the Guardian, is the one that has the blogosphere heating up:

Scientists and economists have been offered $10,000 each by a lobby group funded by one of the world's largest oil companies to undermine a major climate change report due to be published today.

Letters sent by the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), an ExxonMobil-funded thinktank with close links to the Bush administration, offered the payments for articles that emphasise the shortcomings of a report from the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

About a month ago, the news broke that according to the Union of Concerned Scientists, "ExxonMobil Corp. gave $16 million to 43 ideological groups between 1998 and 2005 in an effort to mislead the public by discrediting the science behind global warming."

The latest news has liberal blogger Kevin Drum showing off his sarcastic side. "Seriously? These guys made $39.5 billion but were willing to pay scientists only ten grand each to whore themselves out writing reports and op-eds pretending there's some kind of serious doubt about the reality of human-induced global warming? Even though these scientists have kids to feed?," writes Drum. "That's insulting. For this level of simpering I recommend holding out for at least $50,000."

The flurry of warming news brings to mind Scott Pelley's comments to us after his Feb. 2006 piece on global warming, which largely excluded the perspective of global warming skeptics.

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What are the acceptable terms of interviews with rarely interviewed government officials? Earlier this week we took note of some comments from Gareth Butler, editor of the BBC's "The Politics Show." He wrote that a recent interview with British Prime Minister Tony Blair involved far fewer "shenanigans" from the PM's office ("you can't ask questions about this or that, you can only have x minutes, it has to be such-and-such a location") than most people assumed occurred with such rare sit-downs.

We asked Scott Pelley, who recently conducted a lengthy interview with President George W. Bush for "60 Minutes," about what the terms were – if any – for that exclusive. Pelley, who just returned from Iraq, was able to respond to us today. Here's what he told us in an e-mail:

The White House knows it cannot impose any limits on the scope of questioning. As a result, they never ask for such limits.

The limit they can, and do, impose is on time. When we did the interview at Camp David they were very strict. We had 10 minutes for the walk and talk and 20 minutes for the sit down.

In both venues, a White House staffer stood behind the president holding up time cards (5 minutes, 4 minutes, 3 minutes, etc.) so that I could see them. The time restraint is a clever way to curtail follow up questions.

Every interview with a president is, foremost, a time management game. To compensate for this, a good interviewer narrows the scope of the interview and allows himself time for follow ups. I call this going “narrow and deep.” When people ask me, “Why didn’t you ask him …?” -- that’s my answer.

After every interview with the president, I spend the next several nights, sleepless, thinking about what I should have asked.

Here's Howard Kurtz on Scott Pelley's interview with President Bush:

"I thought it was a reasonably tough interview by Scott Pelley. What you have to understand is that no matter how probing the questions are -- and I've watched Bush be interviewed by everyone from Tim Russert to Oprah -- a disciplined politician can limit himself to saying exactly what he wants to say and no more. So I don't think the 60 Minutes segment broke much new ground, except perhaps to show Bush being rather dismissive toward the notion that Congress could cut off funding for the war."

For what it's worth, I thought both Pelley and Bush were pretty good. Pelley was fair but didn't shy away from pressing the president, and Bush appeared straightforward and largely stayed on message. (Not that the right and left didn't have their quibbles.) It's worth noting that the president continues to reach out to organizations like CBS News, the network, of course, responsible for "memogate" and one of the principal players in a mainstream media that many conservatives have dismissed as biased and unfair.

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Spin Class: Scott Pelley's "60 Minutes" interview with President Bush has Andrew C. McCarthy at National Review Online railing against "the dying paleo-media." In a rambling screed that incorporates many of the traditional right-wing complaints about the press, McCarthy argues that CBS falsely hyped President Bush's statement that "decisions have made things unstable" in Iraq.

What's the problem? It seems that someone at Bloomberg News put the headline "Bush Says Iraq Is Now More Unstable Than Under Saddam, CBS Says" on a story about the interview. CBS never actually made such a claim – the press release from which the story was written offered only "[h]is decisions have led to instability in Iraq, says the President." But that doesn't stop McCarthy from asserting "[t]hese breathless assertions turn out to be slippery in the signature CBS fashion" and using said assertions as a springboard to attack what he calls "the antiwar intelligentsia."

The Katie Chronicles: Back in December, the "Evening News" took some heat over Katie Couric's nine minute interview with the widow of one of the climbers who died on Mt. Hood. Now, as Peter Johnson notes, there is discussion within CBS News about whether Couric's interviews should be abandoned. Says "Evening News" Executive Producer Rome Hartman: "We're not giving up on Katie's interviews, but I did emphasize [in a meeting with staff last week] that in order to be as newsy and fresh and distinctive, that we want those interviews to be real newsmakers, that's all. We don't want to interview the same folks that everyone is doing."

Bloggers Vs. Talkers: The "Spocko" story has made it to the New York Times. A quick primer: A group of bloggers led by "Spocko" had been contacting advertisers to let them know about comments made by KSFO-AM talk radio hosts. "Spocko" was also posting the comments, which included such gems as this one about Nancy Pelosi – “We’ve got a bull’s eye painted on her big wide laughing eyes” – on his Web site...

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Swoosh: Those of you who saw the "60 Minutes" story on mixed martial arts may remember seeing correspondent Scott Pelley hitting the mat for some training. Pelley donned a sweat suit for the experience, one that featured a Nike logo on in the middle of his chest area. Producers tried to hide the logo by blacking it out with a pen, but it was still visible in one shot in the piece.

The incident has the Poughkeepsie Journal asking questions about the ethics of the logo's appearance. It wasn't product placement, however – just a bit of free, inadvertent advertising for Nike – and media critics don't seem too worked up. “You would have a different ethics issue if they had just fixed it by blacking it out in post-production,” The Poynter Institute's Al Tompkins told the Journal. “That would have been altering reality. But inking over it in the field is a great fix to a problem. The camera recorded what was actually there and it aired as the camera saw it.”

The Bleeping Irony: The hearing at which television networks are challenging the Federal Communications Commission’s indecency rules is taking place today, and C-SPAN is broadcasting it live. As the Wall Street Journal's Washington Wire notes, the station is not bleeping anything out, which means that C-SPAN viewers have been treated to Supreme Court specialist Carter Phillips uttering such bon mots as “motherf—–,” “eat s—” and “f— the USA” in their full, uncensored glory. The FCC is being a suprisingly good sport. Notes the Journal: "'The commission has emphasized it will use great restraint' and would not fine stations for airing the hearing as part of a news program, responded Eric Miller, a media attorney representing the FCC."

An Unwanted Record: 2006 is the deadliest year for the press ever recorded by the Committee to Protect Journalists in a single country, with 32 journalists killed in Iraq so far. At least 55 journalists were killed worldwide this year in connection with their work. “When this conflict began more than three and half years ago, most journalists died in combat-related incidents," said CPJ Executive Director Joel Simon. "Now, insurgents routinely target journalists for perceived affiliations—political, sectarian, or Western."

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Global warming has been a hot topic here at Public Eye, thanks to Scott Pelley's two "60 Minutes" reports on the subject. Now Time magazine has weighed in on the topic in a cover story, the thrust of which can be summed up in the tagline that graces the cover: "Be Worried. Be Very Worried."

Pelley, as regular PE readers know, told me "60 Minutes" has not given any time to global warming skeptics in his two stories because "[t]here is virtually no disagreement in the scientific community any longer about global warming." He also said that "It would be difficult to find a scientist worth his salt in this subject who would suggest this wasn't happening. It would probably be someone whose grant has been funded by someone who finds reducing fossil fuel emissions detrimental to their own interests." His comments sparked serious debate in our comments section, with many arguing that Pelley was off base. Wrote "Grypho1":

Can it be fairly deduced that anyone who contradicts what Pelley believes to be 'the prevailing opinion in the scientific community' is, by Pelley's definition, not worthy of respect, scientifically? Is dissent grounds for exclusion by virtue of loss of respect? If so, this intellectually dishonest circular logic assures Pelley and other crusaders of some hollow and meaningless propaganda victories by default.

Now Time's Jeffrey Kluger has taken much the same position as Pelley.

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This past Sunday, 60 Minutes aired its second report of the season on global warming. Both reports featured correspondent Scott Pelley. Pelley also did a report on New Orleans that dealt with climate change, and he is now exploring different angles for another possible global warming story next season.

I spoke with Pelley and producer Catherine Herrick, who produced Sunday's story with Bill Owens, about why they have become focused on global warming, as well as the nature of their coverage of the topic.

Both of the global warming stories, Herrick says, grew out of the release of the results of the Arctic Climate Impact Assessment, which were presented in November 2004. It is considered the most comprehensive assessment of climate change ever undertaken. The second story, which focused on government scientist James Hansen, grew out of the first, Pelley says, and the two were originally going to be part of the same story.

I told Pelley that his apparent focus on global warming could lead some to the conclusion that he was on a crusade. "It's not a crusade for me, but it's a topic I'm very interested in," he says. He adds that while two of the twelve stories he's doing this season are on global warming, they are those are the only two that he's aware of "60 Minutes" doing – and the show does more than 100 stories in a season. "So that ain't much," he says, noting that there are plenty of other topics that have been covered twice, such as prisoner abuse. I pointed out that one see those other topics all over the place, while global warming doesn't seem to get as much attention.

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