All Blog Posts from Public Eye

On yesterday’s “Reliable Sources” – after Howard Kurtz put himself on the not-so-hot seat and fielded questions from Gail Shister, David Folkenflik and Frank Sesno about his book – a discussion was held regarding a certain conservative blonde author that made news last week. (Again)

She was the topic of conversation due to her comment on CNBC’s “The Big Idea With Donnie Deutsch” that Jews need to be perfected, territory well traveled by Eric Deggans down at the St. Petersburg Times last week.

(Much like I did with a story about a certain intolerant religious sect in August, I’m not going to add a news clip to this author's stack by naming her.)

But back to the “Reliable Sources” conversation. The panel discussed the concept of whether or not to give this particular author airtime, with Sesno adding:

I think we have a responsibility to challenge her when she says these things, to force her into a corner and at some point to say, "You know what? This is not credible anymore. You don't deserve this real estate, because all you're trying to do is outrage."

The kneejerk response to this, of course, is “Preach on, Frank!” But then if you break down the metaphor of airtime as real estate, his argument loses a bit of “oomph” – particularly if you look at TV news programming like the board

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All-around great guy and fellow “New Edition” aficionado Eric Deggans from the St. Petersburg Times has an amusing piece this morning, titled “Live at 11: Today's Top News, and the Anchors' Pores.” In it he discusses how local station WFTS upgraded its news programming to high-definition.

It was an unspoken horse race among local TV stations: Who would be the first to go high definition in the country's 12th-largest TV market? And WFTS indulged its bragging rights immediately, splashing news of its high definition debut across promotional advertisements and stories within its newscasts…

Viewable only on HD-capable TV sets, high definition broadcasts offer sharper visual detail and audio, transmitted on a different frequency than old-school, analog broadcasts.

I’m a big HD fan. Things have actually gotten to the point where I have forgotten that other channels on my cable box exist, since I’m perpetually in the “200 level” where all the HD channels live. I watch more stuff on the Mojo channel – where apparently all they do is drink, watch sports and go to concerts – than I do on CNN. (But hey, I get my news fix at work … right?)

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Rolling Thunder: Having concluded that forcing viewers to come to CBS.com isn't working, "the company plans to pursue a drastically revised strategy that involves syndicating its entertainment, news and sports video to as much of the Web as possible," reports the Wall Street Journal. ABC, NBC and Fox are all going in the other direction, trying to build up their own go-to portholes, but CBS is instead partnering with Web companies like Joost and Veoh to distribute content. "We can't expect consumers to come to us," Quincy Smith, the president of CBS Interactive, told the WSJ. "It's arrogant for any media company to assume that."

Choosing Sides: Reports Eric Deggans: "An investigative reporter with more than 10 years covering a controversial case leaves journalism to work for one of the guys at the center of the story." The reporter in question Michael Fechter, who long covered terrorism accusations against Muslims for the Tampa Tribune before joining the staff of antiterrorism crusader Steve Emerson. Emerson College professor Jeffrey Seglin says the move raises red flags. "The real problem is the perception whether or not all along you were jockeying for the position," he tells Deggans. But Fechter makes no apologies. "I understand the concern and I understand the perception ... (but) in the end, we're going to be selfish and look out for ourselves," he says.

Blogging The War: The military might not like soldiers' blogs, but the folks at the Lulu Blooker Prize sure do. Colby Buzzell's "My War: Killing Time In Iraq" blog, which was shut down by the military after eight weeks, took the Prize today. "His uncompromising style, peppered with profanities and misspellings and inspired by authors such as Hunter S. Thompson and Kurt Vonnegut, gives readers glimpses of military life that rarely emerge from official sources," notes AFP. Here's a short sample from a post about a street battle: "I kind of lost it and was yelling and screaming all sorts of things, mostly cuss words. I fired and fired and fired and fired at everything."

Not long after Russ Mitchell was named co-anchor of “The Early Show,” he got a call from Eric Deggans, a media critic at the St. Petersburg Times. Deggans was working on a piece about diversity at CBS News, a story spurred by a spate of recent news involving African-American CBS News correspondents. First came the death of longtime “60 Minutes” correspondent Ed Bradley, who passed away on Nov. 9. Less than a month later, CBS announced that René Syler would be leaving “The Early Show,” where she has been co-anchor since October 2002. A few days after that came word that Mitchell would become the hard news anchor of “The Early Show,” starting in January.

Deggans, who is black, asked Mitchell if he felt his race had something to do with him being offered the anchor job. Mitchell, who says he has never been asked such a question,* later characterized it as “insulting.”

“You'd like to think once you hit a certain level that your credentials stand on their own,” says Mitchell. “Nobody's denying who they are. I’m proud of being a black journalist. What I have a problem with, and I think anybody would have a problem with, is someone making an assumption that the only reason you got something was because of the color of your skin.”

Deggans' piece, "When it comes to color, CBS News pales," discussed what he called "the network's ongoing struggle to develop new talent" when it comes to journalists of color. (The other news networks, he claimed, have the same problem.) After noting that Bradley and other journalists were hired in the 1970s to "answer criticisms over the lack of race and gender diversity in network news," Deggans lamented the fact that "[t]hree decades later, CBS has not found the next Ed Bradley."

“It is very difficult because as I explained to several people that I talked to for this column, I'm not trying to denigrate anybody's achievements,” says Deggans. “These are questions that I feel have to be asked.” Deggans argues that African-American journalists cannot "totally remove themselves from the notion they're a symbol."

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There’s an argument that always arises when some unsavory character drums up a whole lot of media attention for his or her latest unsavory project. The media, so the argument goes, in allowing said character to suck up a decent portion of the news cycle, is inevitably complicit in the eventual profit that the unsavory character makes. Such is the case with O.J. Simpson’s new book, in which he "hypothetically" explains how he would have murdered his wife, Nicole Brown, and her friend Ron Goldman, if he had done it. Fox Television is also broadcasting an interview with Simpson regarding the book with his publisher Judith Regan.

Predictably, the whole spectacle has generated a storm of media attention -- most of it reflecting utter disgust. It's a lot of the same disgust that arose during the trial of O.J. Simpson for the murders, an event that essentially coined the phrase “media circus.” Many a reporter’s career was invigorated by the coverage.

Intentionally or otherwise, the media is inherently complicit in Simpson’s eventual profit from sales of the book. St. Petersburg Times media critic Eric Deggans discussed it on “Reliable Sources”yesterday:

“Obviously, they knew that there would be a huge, critical reaction to this, that people would criticize it, that we all would talk about it. And unfortunately, in passing along the information that sort of lets people know how awful this is, we also wind up creating the publicity that fuels the machine that sells the book and gets people to watch the TV show.”

UPDATE: It looks like the outrage had an impact -- you won't have the option of buying Simpson's book or seeing the interview. NewsCorp, which owns book publisher HarperCollins and the Fox Network, has cancelled publication of the book and production of the interview. News Corp. Chairman Rupert Murdoch called it an "ill-considered project" and apologized to the Brown and Goldman families.

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Youtube – which, incidentally, was just hit with its first copyright lawsuit – has emerged as an interesting place to find alternative reports on the Middle East crisis, as well as raw footage of bombings, notes Eric Deggans.

He directs us to four videos:


This one shows Israeli, American and Arab news reports, and in the process reveals the different slants of the coverage.

This one has Noam Chomsky offering "Lebanon Israel Facts the Media Isn't Telling You."

This one is raw footage of a bombing in Lebanon, complete with jarring audio.

And this one is a pretty bizarre hip hop song – about terrorism.

There are also a number of reports from mainstream media outlets posted on the site, though they well might raise copyright issues. In any event, Youtube, along with other, similar sites, has an interesting, if messy, compendium of videos relevant to the conflict. So if you want to poke around for something you're not going to see on the "Evening News," start searching.

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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 we turned to Eric Deggans, media critic for the St. Petersburg Times and author of the blog Media In The Mirror. In today's post, Deggans discusses "Assignement America," a new segment on the CBS "Evening News" that asks viewers to choose from three story topics what correspondent Steve Hartman should report on for the following week. 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. Here's Eric:

Guessing the inner emotions of a TV anchor during a newscast is a dangerous game.

Still, CBS “Evening News” anchor Bob Schieffer seemed a little uncomfortable a few weeks ago while reading the intro to the newscast's latest innovation: allowing the audience to pick the story features that correspondent Steve Hartman would tackle next.

If my perception is accurate, that's too bad. Because this seemingly lighthearted project illuminates the biggest challenge facing news providers in the digital age … connecting to consumers while maintaining your journalistic authority.

Dubbed “Assignment America,” the project features Hartman … a clever reporter who once picked his story subjects by throwing pins at a dart board and picking a name from that town's phone book … offering three story ideas every Friday and allowing viewers to vote until 2 p.m. the following Monday on which notion he would turn into a piece for the “Evening News.”

To old-school journalists, it probably sounds a step above offering viewers a chance to win a refrigerator by watching the newscast. After all, isn't it our job to tell people what the news is?

The options on tap as I write this: a look at the drought in Bryson, Texas, so severe, kids are washing hands with towelettes; a story on people who have vowed to buy nothing new in 2006 (except stuff like food, medicine and underwear); and the inventor of the western shirt, a 104-year-old CEO who still goes to work each day.

Exercising an astute amount of news judgment, the audience picked the CEO. The stories picked in previous weeks involved a soybean-powered car and the country's first all-natural, do-it-yourself cemetery.

Once you consider the themes embedded in these stories, these choices make a lot of sense. Mortality. Economics. Gasoline alternatives. Aging. Business. All factors any news professional would consider in judging potential stories.

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