All Blog Posts from Public Eye

We're not gonna be clearing brush or attacking photographers, but with August being a slow news month, we here at Public Eye will be posting a bit less frequently than usual this week. We'll post when news warrants, but for the most part, content will be on the light side.

In the meantime, feel free to browse the archives, Editor's Picks and leftovers (if they're half as good cold … ) for some of our recent work. As always, we welcome your input, so feel free to e-mail us your thoughts about CBS News, the media at large and any comments, complaints or suggestions for Public Eye.

How do you solve a problem like trying to prove a negative? While it used to be that rumors, innuendo and speculative detective work on news events would sort of roll around the backyard fence or water cooler, grow and morph until it all resembled a kind of conspiracy theory or urban legend – tales largely considered untrue yet still containing some shred of believability. A couple of the lasting examples are the assassination of President Kennedy and the fabled UFO landing in Roswell, New Mexico. Who among us hasn’t from time to time wondered about the real truth behind those stories?

In 2006, of course, these stories can pop up in a matter of hours and spread from one end of the Internet to the other almost instantaneously. Speculation surrounding the shooting of a fellow hunter by Vice President Cheney has illustrated this point rather dramatically. The assertion has been raised about whether or not Cheney had been under the influence of alcohol at the time of the shooting, whether that is why it took so long for the story to be told to the media or why Cheney did not meet with local authorities until the next morning.

Well, mystery solved – sort of. Appearing on the Fox News Channel this afternoon, anchor Brit Hume talked about his just-taped interview with Cheney, the first he’s given since the shooting. Here’s how Hume characterized that issue:

He said he’d had a beer at lunch and that had been many hours earlier. It was dusk, around 5:00 p.m., when this incident happened, and he said that they had lunch out in the field, a barbecue, he had a beer. But he said you don't hunt with people who were drinking, he said no one was drinking. He said they went back to the ranch afterward, took a break after that and went back out about 3:00 and so you're four or five hours distanced from the last alcohol that he consumed and he said nobody was drinking, not he, not anybody else.

Well, that clears that up. Or does it? Do you really believe everyone will just say, one beer? Okay, nothing to see here, move along. That is certainly unlikely to happen, especially given the fact that many outlets have printed statement from Katharine Armstrong, owner of the ranch where the shooting occurred, denying any alcohol use at all.

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