All Blog Posts from Public Eye

The air in Washington, DC has finally gotten crisp. The baseball playoffs are in full swing. Fall is here and life is good.

Listen closely and you can hear the crack of the bat, the pop of the catcher’s glove, and the … pitter-patter of David “Big Papi” Ortiz’s beefy fingers on a laptop?

Yes, according to today’s New York Times sports article:

David Ortiz of the Red Sox does not look like a computer nerd, but he is. Ortiz is a slave to the laptop, hunkering over it several times a day, especially during games, to analyze at-bats. He wants to see how pitchers approached him, how he reacted and whether they had a counter-response.

Because Ortiz is a designated hitter with one, and only one, responsibility, he has the luxury of studying videos on the computer after every at-bat…
“I think the best thing that ever happened to the baseball game is the video, the quick highlight or whatever is happening out there,” Ortiz said.

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"60 Minutes" aired a two-part profile of golfer Tiger Woods on March 26. The profile covered topics ranging from Woods' childhood stuttering to his relationship with his parents to his new children's learning center. Some observers have criticized the story, charging that it amounted to "softball journalism," in the words of The New York Times' Richard Sandomir. Here's the lede of Sandomir's Friday piece:

In the midst of Ed Bradley's worshipful two-part profile of Tiger Woods on "60 Minutes" last Sunday, I wondered if it was an infomercial or if Woods had paid a fee for these adoring 25 minutes. With nothing new to report — and not a single tough question in his arsenal — Bradley chose to join Camp Tiger.

In the Orlando Sentinel, David Whitley was equally tough. "If Tiger Woods blows a five-shot lead to lose the Masters a week from today, he'll have some explaining to do," he writes. "He only can hope 60 Minutes does the questioning." Whitley goes on to write that "60 Minutes" "has joined the world of cross-promoting, butt-kissing journalism that is re-shaping how we look at sports figures."

I asked "60 Minutes" executive producer Jeff Fager to respond to the critics.

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