All Blog Posts from Public Eye

Welcome to the snowglobe that is Washington, DC this morning.

(Yes, those of you playing “Holiday News Bingo,” feel free to block off the center top square.)

And one of the minor little media flurries we’re mucking through? A dubious Washington Post front page story last week entitled “Foes Use Obama's Muslim Ties to Fuel Rumors About Him.”

According to to The Politico the piece has become a huge point of contention:

The Washington Post is accustomed to criticism of its coverage from the right and left blogospheres, but a Nov. 29 front page story about Barack Obama’s rumored Muslim ties came with a twist: Many voices within its own newsroom joined in the firestorm…

Since Thursday, there have been angry e-mails, Hamilton said, and allegations that the Post is swift-boating the Illinois senator by discussing rumors at length, without mentioning whether they’ve been thoroughly discredited by other media.

The Columbia Journalism Review folks jumped in as well:

In the front-page piece, [author Perry] Bacon muses over how the chances of Barack Obama getting elected president might be affected by the fact that he’s not Muslim. Seriously. To build his case, Bacon stumbles artlessly through all manner of rumor, innuendo, and xenophobic smear—never bothering to refute any of it, even though there is plenty of well-documented evidence to knock down much of this stuff.

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We had a nice run, but it’s time to pass along the tiera. Our era as Time Magazine’s “Person of the Year” is coming to an end.

Today the magazine is holding a panel to discuss who’s going to be the big newsmaker this year, and it’s going to be a tough call. After all, who stood out in 2007?

There’s a little more to the equation than you’d think, remember. It’s not an award. It’s not even a compliment. The magazine says the distinction goes to “the person or persons who most affected the news and our lives, for good or ill.” Heck, Person of the Year doesn’t even have to be a person – Earth won once, and so did The Computer.

Time is holding an online poll right now, listing off ten possibilities. (Look! There go all the Ron Paul readers!) Some of the ones they’re tossing out? Al Gore, Barack Obama, Condoleeza Rice, J. K Rowling, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, General David Petraeus.

All notable public figures, to be sure. But none of them has a chance. The Time magazine is a complicated calculus of risk and PR, with a dash of quirk tossed in. It’s definitely a good annual publicity ploy by the magazine, but it always has a financial angle as well. Over the past 25 years, the magazine's decision has devolved into choosing a safe, newsworthy and palatable cover person or people.

So who might get it? It’s easier to say who won’t. And why.

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By this point, I guess you can tell I'm ever-so-fixated on how journalists can improve the accuracy of their work and clean up political discourse.

Whether it's the Associated Press editor pushing for "accountability journalism" or that NPR segment from last week where they discussed how debunking misinformation merely solidifies the incorrect perception most of the time, the newsmedia implicitly has admitted they need to get more careful.

Today's well-intentioned journalistic initiative to make the campaign trail less cluttered?

The Washington Post's "Fact Checker" story
section, with the following goal:

The purpose of this website, and an accompanying column in the Post, is to "truth squad" the national political debate in the period leading up to the 2008 presidential election. Our goal is to shed as much light as possible on controversial claims and counter-claims involving important national issues, such as the war in Iraq, immigration, health care, social issues, the economy, and the records of the various presidential candidates. When we come across a statement or claim that is at variance with the facts, as best we can establish them, we will point that out.

While it's clear they're taking their job very seriously, they still keep it readable with features like "The Pinocchio Test" where they score misstatements or exaggerations on a scale of one to four Pinocchios. (And reward fully truthful statements with the mark of "Geppetto.")

And, unsurprisingly, I'm a fan. Sort of. So far, it looks as if they're getting the hang of things by picking on some political low-hanging fruit.

Read full post…

By this point, you can probably infer I'm ever-so-fixated on how journalists can improve the accuracy of their work and clean up political discourse.

Whether it's that Associated Press editor pushing for "accountability journalism" or that NPR segment from last week where they discussed how debunking misinformation merely solidifies the incorrect perception most of the time, the newsmedia is acknowledging they need to get more careful.


Today's well-intentioned journalistic initiative to make the campaign trail less cluttered?

The Washington Post's "Fact Checker" story
section, with the following goal:

The purpose of this website, and an accompanying column in the Post, is to "truth squad" the national political debate in the period leading up to the 2008 presidential election. Our goal is to shed as much light as possible on controversial claims and counter-claims involving important national issues, such as the war in Iraq, immigration, health care, social issues, the economy, and the records of the various presidential candidates. When we come across a statement or claim that is at variance with the facts, as best we can establish them, we will point that out.

While it's clear they're taking their job very seriously, they still keep it readable with features like "The Pinocchio Test" where they score misstatements or exaggerations on a scale of one to four Pinocchios. (And reward fully truthful statements with the mark of "Geppetto.")

And, unsurprisingly, I'm a fan. Sort of. So far, it looks as if they're getting the hang of things by picking on some political low-hanging fruit.

Read full post…

Just as the number of debates proliferates – the reviews for last night's technically challenged Spanish-language Democratic debate have been withering – another major, very major, media outlet has been removed from the equation: Oprah.

You've probably seen that Oprah and her couch have taken sides in Campaign 2008. The talk-show host has decided to back Barack Obama, going so far as to host a fundraiser this past weekend. Was it profitable? You betcha, to the tune of $3 million. Was it star-studded? According to the Los Angeles Times, oh yeah:

The overwhelmingly African American crowd included distinguished senior figures, including basketball superstar Bill Russell and Academy Award-winning actor Sydney Poitier, and younger stars, including Holly Robinson Peete and cutting-edge comedian Chris Rock. Motown's Stevie Wonder provided the entertainment, singing his hits from the '70s and '80s.

And not only has Oprah made her allegiance clear to the world, she has also decided that she won't invite any other candidates on her program. Denying the other candidates this key forum? That's huge.

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Interview, Interrupted: So this is what a collision at the intersection of celebrity and Important Journalism looks like. At an appearance promoting "A Mighty Heart" -- the movie about the death of Daniel Pearl -- the folks managing Angelina Jolie, who plays Pearl's widow, asked journalists to agree "not ask Ms. Jolie any questions regarding her personal relationships. In the event Interviewer does ask Ms. Jolie any questions regarding her personal relationships, Ms. Jolie will have the right to immediately terminate the interview and leave." Given the fact that the movie is devoted to press freedoms, Fox News' Roger Friedman and some other journalists are up in arms about the whole thing. And they're right, in principle. But these potatoes are awful small.

Barack On: A savvy self-promoter called Leah Kauffman has made a video about what a hottie that Barack Obama is, and it's getting plenty of play on the series of tubes. In related news, Matthew Felling's new single "Biden Got Back" should be ready in time for the holiday season.

Rather, Rinse, Repeat: Today In "tarting it up" news: American Women in Radio & Television are hammering Dapper Dan Rather for his comments about the "Evening News," expressing "deep disappointment" for the "sexist nature of his remarks." But! A former CBSer points out to TVNewser that Rather used the expression in a 2001 interview with Terry Smith, where he was referring to no one in particular, so maybe he wasn't being sexist after all. The pointless debate rages on!

Today CBSNews.com informed its staff via email that they should no longer enable comments on stories about presidential candidate Barack Obama. The reason for the new policy, according to the email, is that stories about Obama have been attracting too many racist comments.

"It's very simple," Mike Sims, director of News and Operations for CBSNews.com, told me. "We have our Rules of Engagement. They prohibit personal attacks, especially racist attacks. Stories about Obama have been problematic, and we won't tolerate it."

CBSNews.com does sometimes delete comments on an individual basis, but Sims said that was not sufficient in the case of Obama stories due to "the volume and the persistence" of the objectionable comments.

There has been a fierce debate about how news outlets should handle reader comments. Washingtonpost.com's Jim Brady, whose site, like CBSNews.com, does not have the resources to filter comments in advance, told Howard Kurtz that he'd "rather figure out a way to do it better than not to do it at all."

But Post reporter Darryl Fears told Kurtz that comments should be eliminated if they can't be pre-screened for offensiveness.

"If you're an African American and you read about someone being called a porch monkey, that overrides any positive thing that you would read in the comments," he said.

CBSNews.com has no plans to disable comments on stories about the other presidential candidates, according to Sims. As for comments on Obama stories, he said the site is open to eventually bringing them back.

"We'd like to be able to return to them, and I'm not ruling that out," said Sims. "But at this point it's not possible."

Last Thursday, I noted the rather, um, thorough rules that non-NBC media outlets had to follow if they wanted to use footage from the MSNBC-sponsored Democratic presidential debate.

Jeff Jarvis called the rules, which stipulated, among other things, that “internet use is not permitted,” "ridiculous." Yesterday, Broadcasting & Cable brought word that he has a kindred spirit in presidential hopeful Barack Obama.

Calling on the Democratic National Committee and NBC to make video of the debate free and unrestricted, Obama noted "there is no reason that this particular class of content needs the protection."

No dice, says MSNBC's Jeremy Gaines, who points out that the footage will continue to be available online, just not in an unrestricted form. He notes that "this is our production and our footage."

After the jump, the usage rules for last night's MSNBC/Politco.com-sponsored Republican debate. Fun with legalese!

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"The fact that Hillary Clinton took something of a pounding last week wasn’t big news. But an examination of the talk outlets revealed an interesting twist to that pattern. Whatever the motivation, some of those conservative hosts are not only using their microphones to blast away at Clinton. They are also embracing, or at least saying nice things about, Barack Obama, a liberal Democrat whose primary virtue in their eyes may be that he can defeat Clinton for the nomination."

--PEJ Talk Show Index, March 4-9, 2007

Entertainment mogul David Geffen, who supports Sen. Barack Obama for president, recently made some critical remarks about Hillary Clinton and her husband. The comments were reported in a Maureen Dowd column. The Clinton campaign came out swinging in the wake of the comments, and Obama's team shot right back. And then the media jumped on what is ultimately a pretty insignificant story.

The press wants to have it both ways with this one – media outlets are giving the kerfuffle a ton of play (it made the front pages of three major national newspapers today), but they are also wondering if "people [will] be able to take 18 1/2 months of this," as Eat The Press put it. The New York Post put the story on its cover, under the headline "The Big Chill," while the New York Daily News asked: "Two Years Of This?"

You mean two years of media outlets overplaying minor stories that drive narratives but have little real substantive value? Yeah, I'm dreading that too.