All Blog Posts from Public Eye

As David Muir reports, ABC News elected to air some graphic footage from Iraq on “World News With Charles Gibson,” including an instance in which “troops are seen watching a Bradley armored vehicle blown up by an improvised explosive device as six American soldiers died inside.”

Muir notes that hundreds of viewers e-mailed in about the footage, among them one who said it prompted nightmares and another who is the mother of the vehicle’s driver. And he writes: “Many of you criticized ABC News and said we were focusing only on the negative, and called it ‘irresponsible and cowardly reporting.’”

We here at Public Eye try to be open to different points of view, but it’s pretty hard to fathom how anyone could claim, from an objective point of view, that it is “irresponsible” to show the reality of war to the public. One might make an argument that children should not be exposed to graphic real-world violence, and that the footage was therefore inappropriate for a 6:30 show. But in a culture awash in violence marketed as entertainment, where action movies and youth-oriented music glorify violence and trivialize its consequences, that line of reasoning strikes me as pretty thin. If anything, the footage run by ABC News acts as a corrective – a reminder that violence, real violence, is something other than a series of cool explosions and Bruce Willis one-liners.

It’s counterintuitive. It’s dogs and cats living together. It’s good news for news.

In MediaLand, there’s no shortage of dismal news about sagging circulation or sagging ratings or rising apathy or rising tabloid news, but … wait, could there be a good news story this week?

In a world where ratings success isn’t about gaining viewers as much as how slowly you lose the viewers you already have, this week’s Media Life magazine reports that the venerated ABC nightly newsmagazine “Nightline” has seen its audience increase over the past year. According to the magazine:

“Nightline” was the only Big Three show at 11:35 p.m. to show improvement over last year. The news program had its best May sweep in total viewers since 2004, averaging 3.63 million, up 14 percent over last year.

Its timeslot competitors, “Late Show with David Letterman” on CBS and “Tonight Show with Jay Leno” on NBC, both declined, though they still had better totals than “Nightline” at 4.09 million and 5.55 million, respectively.

When Ted Koppel and his hair left “Nightline” back in 2005, much was made about the fate of the newscast. How could a program focused on, you know, news and stuff, survive in the 21st century with Jon Stewart and David Letterman and Jay Leno and … isn’t “Sex and the City” on somewhere? But the program, reinvigorated by a new format and new correspondents, has found and grown an audience in late night.

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Remember when Time magazine made ”Us” the Newsmakers of 2006. In the interest of accuracy, the word Time used was “You” along with a mirror on the cover, but I held the magazine one time, so my sophisticated magazine cover algebra leads me to the following equation: Me + You = Us. After awarding us this accolade, Time Magazine told Us “you control the information age.”

Thank you, Time. Now “We” have spun that into our own TV news show. And might I just say: After all Our hard work, We really do deserve it.

According to Variety:

ABC is hoping to reinvent the newsmagazine for the YouTube generation with a show produced by ABC News but based on user-generated video.

Hourlong skein "i-Caught" will get a six-week run on the network starting Aug. 6 at 10pm on Mondays with an eye toward a midseason return if it performs as well as the network hopes.

This concept makes sense when one considers how many stories have been covered in part by citizen journalists of late, such as the tsunami of a few years ago, the Virginia Tech shooting and the London Terror attack. (And, in a less high-minded example: the immolation of Michael Richards.)

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Last night, the lead story on ABC's "World News" was an exclusive report on how the "CIA has received secret presidential approval to mount a covert 'black' operation to destabilize the Iranian government." You can read about it here, and watch it here. Then again, maybe you shouldn’t. According to many of the commenters at ABC News' "The Blotter" – around 1,500 at last count – running the report was "traitorous" because it revealed a secret U.S. government action.

Bloggers are all over the story as well: As Lynn Davidson at Newsbusters sarcastically put it, "[w]hy should a country go to the effort of spying on Americans when all they have to do is follow the US media?" She compares this story to one in the New York Times exposing the SWIFT banking transaction database and another in USA Today about an NSA phone call database, both of which came under criticism from those who felt that the programs should not have been made public.

Here's a typical comment attached to the ABC News story: "I can't believe you would report something like this! You should be ashamed of yourselves. Whatever happened to country first? Someone should be thrown in jail. It is irresponsible for news agencies in the time of war to put people's lives in danger!" And that's one of the nicer ones.

Presidential candidates are also getting in on the anti-ABC action. As "The Blotter" itself notes, Tom Tancredo and Mitt Romney criticized the report, with Romney saying he was "shocked to see the ABC News report regarding covert action in Iran."

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On Friday, we mentioned that two Iraqi ABC News journalists had been murdered in Baghdad. Along with the news, we posted a picture of the two men that had been released by ABC News.

Late Friday evening, a producer informed us via email that the picture had been pulled both from our post and from the story about the murders on CBSNews.com. According to the email, the families of the dead men had informed ABC News that they were receiving death threats, presumably because it was now known that the men had worked for an American media outlet. ABC News asked CBSNews.com to take the photos down, and producers here agreed.

The "Evening News" discussed the murders on the Friday broadcast, but anchor Katie Couric did not use the names or photos of the men on the air. CNN also declined to use their names and pictures; Howard Kurtz cited the fact that "the families of those killed have been receiving threats, and CNN is seen internationally" as the reason. ABC News, in its extensive coverage of the killings on "World News" on Friday, did use their names and photos.

"After approving the release of the photos of Alaa and Saif on Friday morning, the families later in the day grew concerned for their own safety," ABC News spokeswoman Cathie Levine told Public Eye. "From that point on, we limited our use of the pictures, recognizing that we live in a digital age and the photos had been distributed electronically."

According to Levine, "World News" normally airs in the Middle East, but Friday's edition was not put on the air there.

As for the decision to remove of the pictures, it ultimately might not have made much difference, as the proverbial genie was already out of the bottle. (And, of course, the men's names remain all over the Internet.) But ABC News (and, ultimately, CBSNews.com) did the right thing by honoring the family's request, if only for the outside chance that doing so might have made them safer.

The situation with the photos drives home how perilous it can be for Iraqi journalists to work for American media outlets: Not only can they be killed for doing so, but their families can be at risk if they are found out - even after they are murdered. Without the work of these journalists, the quality of the coverage out of Iraq – and our understanding of the war – would be greatly diminished.

"They are really our eyes and ears in Iraq," ABC's Terry McCarthy said after the attack. "Many places in Baghdad are just too dangerous for foreigners to go now, so we have Iraqi camera crews who very bravely go out … without them we are blind, we cannot see what's going on."

Pfffffffffffft. That, roughly, is the sound a much-hyped, supposedly-scandalous news story makes when fizzling. And we heard it on Friday, when ABC News aired its report on the DC Madam.

As I noted last week, ABC's Brian Ross had said that the madam's list included people at the "Pentagon, lobbyists, others at the White House, prominent lawyers." Some of us – you know who you are – began salivating at the prospect of high-profile names emerging as her clients.

ABC did not provide them, however, having deemed most of the clients "not well enough known to be 'newsworthy,'" according to the Independent. They were, in fact, mostly "dull." (The biggest name emerged early: Deputy Secretary of State Randall Tobias.) On Brian Ross' blog, Ross, Justin Rood and Lisa Schwartz explained that "many of the identities proved difficult to match." They continued:

For example, calls to hotels frustrated the effort. Many men arranged "appointments" with [Madam Deborah Jeane] Palfrey from a hotel room telephone, which made those clients nearly impossible to identify from the phone records.

Complicating matters further, Palfrey sometimes used the phone for personal calls -- to talk with friends and family as well as to make personal travel arrangements and for other purposes.

And then there were the false leads: The man who claimed to work at the White House but didn't, the "head of a recognized educational institution" whose phone number was the same as one of the escorts except for the area code.

It now appears that ABC News initially thought it had more than it did. While the network ultimately seems to have acted responsibly by showing restraint, some viewers were less than pleased with the end product. The first commenter on the post excerpted above pretty much sums up the tenor of the reaction.

"SO WHERE ARE THE NAMES, BRIAN ROSS???," writes Glenda Scott. "THAT'S WHAT YOU'VE BEEN PROMISING. WHERE'S THE BEEF, MISTER????????????"

Mark your calendars: On May 4th – Friday – ABC's "20/20" will air a report on Deborah Jeane Palfrey and her clients. Palfrey is better known as the "D.C. Madam," and she has apparently run an escort service in the D.C. area for more than a decade. She has also reportedly handed her client list over to ABC News – a list that includes "people…at the Pentagon, lobbyists, others at the White House, prominent lawyers — a long, long list," according to Brian Ross.

And then there's "the women who work for the service [who] include university professors, legal secretaries, scientists, military officers." Deputy Secretary of State Randall L. Tobias has already resigned after being identified as a customer of the service.

It's important to note that Palfrey, who is under indictment and has vowed to call her clients at trial if necessary, insists that the service was legal. "She says it wasn’t prostitution, it was fantasy sex, legal sex," according to Ross. Which raises the question: If that's the case – admittedly a big if – is it our business?

Howard Kurtz put the question to Ross on Sunday's "Reliable Sources." "If a government official pays for this kind of service personally and has nothing to do with his job," he asked, "is there at least an argument that it's not news worthy and shouldn't be reported?"

Said Ross: "Well, I think there -- I think it is news worthy that there is this indictment. It's part of a Bush administration effort under the Department of Justice to crack down on prostitution and this is part of it. Tobias in particular, given his role as spearheading the Bush administration effort overseas to crack down on prostitution, seemed to us to be news worthy."

The last part of that argument has to do with hypocrisy – a concept that also pops up in the response to all this from liberal blogger Duncan Black.

"Let me say now that to the extent that this is consensual, legal, and doesn't involve gross hypocrisy of public figures and the agenda they advocate it's none of our business," he writes. "To the extent that such qualifications are met I hope it doesn't become our business."

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Blogs might not be making traditional news outlets obsolete, but the unfolding scandal surrounding Rep. Mark Foley has demonstrated that they are playing a pretty significant role in advancing stories. In this case especially, it was a mainstream outlet’s blog post that set in motion what is becoming one of the most explosive political sagas of the midterm election season.

While the initial "overly friendly" e-mails between Foley and a former congressional page first appeared on an anonymous blog, stopsexpredators.blogspot.com, ABC News’ Brian Ross later reported them not on television, but on his blog at ABCNews.com, The Blotter.

And it was the initial blog post that ended up significantly advancing the story—once it was posted, other former pages contacted Ross and shared several overtly sexual instant messages from Foley that led to his resignation. (More messages continue to surface and be posted on Ross’ blog.)

Howard Kurtz reported yesterday that Ross "says the Internet made the story possible, because on Thursday he posted a story on his ABC Web page, the Blotter, after obtaining one milder e-mail that Foley had sent a 16-year-old page, asking for a picture. Within two hours, former pages had e-mailed Ross and provided the salacious messages. The only question then, says Ross, was 'whether this could be authenticated.'"

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Around 6 PM on Friday, ABC News sent out an email alert with these words:

FBI WARNS OF POSSIBLE TERROR ATTACK ON STADIUMS DURING NCAA BASKETBALL TOURNAMENT

Big, scary news, right? Well, not really: The FBI did alert law enforcement officials that there was an Internet posting discussing attacking the stadiums, but maintained that there was no specific, credible threat. "We have absolutely no credible intelligence or threats pertaining to this issue," FBI spokesman Richard Kolko said.

This wasn't quite much ado about nothing – according to the Associated Press, the posting "described a potential attack in some detail, calling it an efficient way to kill thousands of people using suicide bombers armed with explosives hidden beneath their winter clothing" – but the email alert, built on nothing more than a warning about an internet posting, seemed out of proportion with the significance and credibility of the threat.

It can be difficult to report on potential terrorist attacks. If you ignore the threats and something happens, you're assailed for not taking the issue seriously. But if you report everything that comes across your desk, you can find yourself accused of hype. The AP's lede reflected these concerns:

The FBI said yesterday there is no specific, credible threat of a terror attack aimed at college basketball arenas or other sports stadiums, but acknowledged alerting law enforcement to a recent Internet posting discussing such attacks.

The AP seemed to be saying, "look, this probably isn't a big deal, but the FBI thought it was at least worth mentioning, so we do to." That's the right way to approach a story like this, and it’s a far cry from the breathless email alert. Of course, in fairness to ABC News, an email alert doesn't leave a lot of room for nuance. But one has to wonder, in light of the lack of a credible or imminent threat, why they sent it in the first place.

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