All Blog Posts from Public Eye

Yesterday in this space we discussed a new article that raised the economic problems of covering Iraq … and how it’s a difficult business proposition.

But enough from the bean counters, what about the journalism? In the piece, TV news analyst Andrew Tyndall was quoted:

"We’re in a period of prolonged news doldrums," says Andrew Tyndall, who analyzes newscasts in the online "Tyndall Report." "Iraq is no longer a headline news story. There are no new things happening there; it’s just more of the same. That would be a true thing to say even if the security conditions were better. It’s stuck, militarily and diplomatically."

Later on in the piece, CBS Foreign Correspondent Lara Logan took issue with his characterization, saying:

"You don’t abandon the American soldiers who are on the streets of this country because people are tired of hearing about it," says Logan. "You don’t abandon the Iraqi people. You don’t abandon people like that because back home people are tired of hearing about the war. Our job is to find a way through that."

I was interested to hear what Logan meant by “find a way,” so I contacted her in Iraq yesterday and asked her to expand on that idea.

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Andrew Tyndall argues that there "is a subtle, but significant shift, in the networks' news agenda as they make the transition from pure television broadcasters to multi-platform providers of video news."

Networks, he notes, often don't put news packages about sports and show business online. The reason? Potential copyrights issues. Since the rights to show, say, an a baseball game on television don't automatically transfer to the Internet, sports stories are often withheld from network Web sites for legal reasons.

Tyndall suggests that this means there will be fewer sports and showbiz stories as the news continues to shift online. I'm skeptical of that argument: It seems more likely that news outlets (and their lawyers) will simply learn how to better negotiate the still-murky waters of Internet copyright. Sports and showbiz are just too popular for news networks to abandon simply because they haven't bothered to craft agreements that allow usage across different platforms.

Lost Remote's Steve Safran argues that networks may, at the moment, be being overly cautious, and suggests that "fair use" rules could apply when it comes to putting this sort of content on the Web. But Safran acknowledges that the networks' reticence to do so is understandable, since sports organizations are notoriously strict when it comes to their copyrights. (Remember the evil college baseball blogger?)

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Andrew Tyndall raises an interesting question: Is it right to call the men who allegedly plotted to attack the Fort Dix army base "terrorists?" Tyndall says no, because the term terrorism "refers to violence against civilian targets for political aims."

On the "Evening News" last night, Correspondent Bob Orr referred to a "homegrown terror cell," and over at ABC Charlie Gibson spoke of a "terrorist plot." Today CBSNews.com is calling the attack "terror" in its headline. Writes Tyndall: "It is hard to escape the conclusion that 'terrorist' is used as a sloppy synonym for 'Moslem gunmen.'"

I asked Orr for his take.

"I think you're talking about guys that surveiled targets, trained with weapons, and stated more than once that they wanted to kill Americans," he said. "So at a minimum they were terrorist wannabees. Now, there are difference kinds of people who sponsor terror. We're not saying they're Al Qaeda."

Orr noted that federal officials have been calling the men "terrorists."

"I think it's an academic debate on what you think qualifies," said Orr. "I would suggest one person with an automatic weapon in a crowded area could terrorize people."

Orr added that there was not much of a debate when putting the piece together about whether the group should be called a terror cell. "These were guys who aspired to terror, no doubt about it," he said.

You can find definitions of the word "terrorism" here.

Andrew Tyndall raises an interesting question: Is it right to call the men who allegedly plotted to attack the Fort Dix army base "terrorists?" Tyndall says no, because the term terrorism "refers to violence against civilian targets for political aims."

On the "Evening News" last night, Correspondent Bob Orr referred to a "homegrown terror cell," and over at ABC Charlie Gibson spoke of a "terrorist plot." Today, CBSNews.com is calling the attack "terror" in its headline. Writes Tyndall: "It is hard to escape the conclusion that 'terrorist' is used as a sloppy synonym for 'Moslem gunmen.'"

I asked Orr for his take.

"I think you're talking about guys that surveiled targets, trained with weapons, and stated more than once that they wanted to kill Americans," he said. "So at a minimum they were terrorist wannabees. Now, there are difference kinds of people who sponsor terror. We're not saying they're Al Qaeda."

Orr noted that federal officials have been calling the men "terrorists."

"I think it's an academic debate on what you think qualifies," said Orr. "I would suggest one person with an automatic weapon in a crowded area could terrorize people."

Orr added that there was not much of a debate when putting the piece together about whether the group should be called a terror cell. "These were guys who aspired to terror, no doubt about it," he said.

You can find definitions of the word "terrorism" here.

For almost 20 years, Andrew Tyndall has been writing a weekly report about what the network newscasts are covering. Now Tyndall has debuted a daily blog, and it's a nice resource for anyone who wants to keep up with the nightly newscasts.

Tyndall pays close attention to the shows, and he is thus able to pick up on some of what those less-obsessed might miss. For example, here's what he noticed about this year's Mardi Gras coverage:

"Last year on Mardi Gras, six months after Hurricane Katrina, all three network newscasts anchored from New Orleans," writes Tyndall. "CBS' Bob Schieffer signed off with beads around his neck. A year later, everyone stayed in New York (CBS was anchored by substitute Russ Mitchell). No network even sent a reporter--although CBS had Tracy Smith file from New Orleans yesterday--so they offered no more than videotape clips of the parades."

Tyndall also has a rundown of each day's stories, with video links when available.

Yesterday we discussed Andrew Tyndall's 1998 Media Studies Journal piece comparing the modern "Evening News" to that of the Cronkite era. The piece is (sadly) not online, but that doesn't mean we can't excerpt a bit of it for you. Here's Tyndall's discussion of what he calls the "unhurried authority" of the 1968 "Evening News":

Why shouldn't they seem unhurried? They had more time! Back in 1968, CBS sold only six minutes of commercials during the half-hour newscast, leaving Cronkite just under 23 minutes of editorial content and just over 60 seconds to go in and out of commercial and to open the program and sign off: "That's the way it is." Not only did Cronkite's viewers have no remote controls at their fingertips with which to wander elsewhere, he was barely off screen long enough for them to hanker for other news content: None of the advertising interruptions lasted longer than a minute.

Compare that with Rather's contemporary task. [ED NOTE: Remember, this piece was written in '98.] CBS sells more than eight minutes of advertising to Madison Avenue and reserves another 40 seconds to promote its own programming. The longest commercial island lasts 130 seconds. Fully two minutes of the newscast is devoted to persuading viewers to stay loyal, with headlines detailing the day's top stories at the start of the half hour and teases for upcoming items before each commercial. That leaves only 19 minutes for editorial content.

Last week, prompted by a comment by a CBS News correspondent, we posted an episode of the "Evening News" from Nov. 18, 1964. The correspondent had told me that he believes that the show has gotten better over the years. Since the conventional wisdom tends to go the other way – the Cronkite era is often cited as the golden age of CBS News – we wanted to let people watch the show and decide for themselves.

The posting brought an email from TV news monitor Andrew Tyndall, who alerted me to a piece he wrote for the Media Studies Journal in 1998. Tyndall's piece contrasted the "Evening News" of 1998 to the "Evening News" as it looked in 1968. The piece is not online – and the Media Studies Journal is no more – but I managed to dig it up, and I wanted to share a few excerpts.

Tyndall argues that "[i]n their attempt to showcase the type of journalism that their immature medium could do uniquely well, the television journalists of 1968 actually distorted the definition of what was newsworthy. The mere act of an official stating a position on the record before the camera constituted news. Words became facts. Speaking became action."

He uses as an example a November 1968 story on the prospects for the Paris peace talks. "Five days before Election Day, Marvin Kalb's lead story was a series of sound bites from Secretary of State Dean Rusk's press briefing," writes Tyndall. "Kalb repeated, without comment, Rusk's verbose denials that Johnson's decision to halt the bombing of North Vietnam was influenced by the pending vote. It is unimaginable that David Martin, the contemporary CBS News national correspondent, would file a report in which an official's sound bites would so stand alone: They would be edited for length, put in a political context, integrated with conflicting comments by partisan experts, juxtaposed with archive clips showing previous contradictory comments and illuminated by Martin's own editorial gloss."

There are reasons to be skeptical of this more modern treatment, of course – are comments from agenda-driven "partisan experts" really so illuminating? But Tyndall's point is important, and it suggests that Cronkite's famed authority in the anchor chair may have come from more than just his personal gravitas. The limited technology available to reporters in 1968 meant that context and opposing viewpoints were less integrated into the broadcast, and thus sound bites were more likely to stand as facts. That gave the "Evening News" an air of straightforwardness that may well have been misleading.

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Each week we invite someone from outside PE to weigh in with their thoughts about CBS News and the media at large. This week's guest, media analyst Andrew Tyndall, writes the Tyndall Report, which monitors the big three networks' weekday nightly newscasts. Here, he wonders why the network morning shows shunt the five W's of journalism and focus on eliciting emotion from viewers. As always, the opinions expressed and factual assertions made in “Outside Voices” are those of the author, not ours, and we seek a wide variety of voices. Now, here's Andrew:

At the Tyndall Report we spend most of our time studying the serious news. I claim to be the only person in the world to have watched every single one of the weekday half-hour nightly newscasts by the three broadcast networks since the summer of 1987. Other people take vacations. I just leave my VCRs on timer and catch up when I return.

Not all television news is as solemn as the nightly newscasts, however. So on a lighter note, I would like to turn my attention to the networks' morning programs: NBC’s “Today,” ABC’s “Good Morning America” and CBS’ “Early Show.”

It is wrong to complain when things conform to their nature. It is wrong to complain that Shakespeare's tragedies are too gory ... or that the giant panda cub at the National Zoo is too cute ... or that baseball players spit too much. So, it is wrong to complain about the essential nature of these morning programs: that they choose many stories according to the demands of demographic targeting rather than intrinsic journalistic interest; that they value the tabloid traditions of celebrity gossip and true crime melodramas; that they focus to the point of obsession on weight loss, self help and affairs of the heart; that their anchor teams share way too much personal information with us viewers.

So let's just stipulate that the form of journalism practiced in these programs -- especially after their first half hour has finished -- has more in common with Marie Claire, “Entertainment Tonight” and “America's Most Wanted” than with NBC’s “Nightly News,” ABC’s “World News Tonight” and CBS’ “Evening News.”

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