All Blog Posts from Public Eye

What do Thanksgiving and grocery stores and winter reading and hi-tech gadgets have in common?

This guy.

“The Kojo Nnamdi Show” -- heard from noon to two daily on Washington, DC's NPR affiliate -- has invited me to sit in as guest-host for the next few days, so I’ll be digging into those topics and more on Tuesday and Wednesday.

Pieces will be posted in this space as MediaLand dictates. Regular posts will begin after I awake from a tryptophan-induced slumber next week.

I talk about print media from the position of writing everyday. I write about cable news from the vantage point of a regular participant in some of the programming. And yes, in my never-ending commitment to educate my opinions and commentary with real-life experience, I do National Public Radio from time to time as well.

That said, I’ll be hosting Tuesday’s “Kojo Nnamdi Show” on Washington, DC’s NPR affiliate WAMU. For the first hour, I’ll be tackling the question “If every country’s perception of freedom of speech is different, how does the Internet deal with that?” The second hour will be focused on the deal of gentrification.

Regular posts will return on Wednesday, but for now get the “face for radio” jokes ready.

The political magazine National Journal has a daily newsletter they send via e-mail called “The Hotline” – a rundown of the day’s major political news.

Each Friday, they interview a DC media/political type. And today, your trusty Public Eye Editor’s number came up.

So, since we’ve never had a formal introduction, I thought this exchange would contribute to your awareness and build a sense of … Ah, it just answers the question you’ve probably had: “Who is this guy?”

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Matthew Felling is the editor of CBSNews.com's media blog "Public Eye." Before joining the site in May, Felling served for 8 years as the media dir. at the Center for Media and Public Affairs. He just wrapped up a couple of weeks as guest co-host on MSNBC's "Morning Joe" program and is also a frequent guest host of WAMU's "Kojo Nnamdi Show." But today he's our Friday Feature:

Where's your hometown? What was it like growing up there?

The mean streets of Annandale, VA -- and I was lucky to get out alive. Seriously, though, the town's diversity taught me a lot. On my grade school basketball team, we had a Cambodian, a Phillipino, a Korean, a Palestinian. And we didn't lose a game for more than three years.

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As you may have story
read in this space earlier this week or happened upon while flipping the story
channels the past few mornings, I’ve been guest co-hosting MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” program, broadcast from 6-9am (EDT).

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It's Thursday, and that means it's time for the Public Eye Chat. This week's subjects are CBS News producer Phil Hirschkorn and CBS News chief investigative correspondent Armen Keteyian.

Matthew Felling: You’ve covered terror plots in the past: 9/11, the London transit bombings. What knowledge did you acquire through those that you were able to use with the JFK bomb announcement?

Phil Hirschkorn: Past terrorism trials teach us the difference between a real Al Qaeda plot and something else. And most of the post-9/11 cases are usually something else. With the JFK plot, you’re trying to determine whether this is the real deal against the real enemy, Al Qaeda, or something else. The first question I can ask is “Who are these guys and are they tied to Al Qaeda?” Once the answer is no, and it usually is no, your blood pressure goes down a notch because it’s not that it makes the story less serious, but it makes it slightly less spectacular or less imminent.

Matthew Felling: How much do you balance how you report on terrorism against the fact that terrorists, some think, are aiming at a wider audience more than the actual victims? Does that concern ever enter your reporting?

Armen Keteyian: Absolutely yes. That’s the first question I’ve learned to ask are “How does this fit into the bigger picture?” and “Beyond the drama of the moment and the breaking news on the cables, what does this mean?” and “Who are these people?” There’s a lot of agendas working here. There is certainly the news of the day and the reality of the moment. Then there’s the agenda of law enformecent and anti-terror efforts and political funding for those efforts to how much does that play into public news conferences and public displays of terror suspects. Then there’s the other side, the public’s right to know and to calm fears. And then there’s another side, the political motivations of the terror groups themselves. All of that is being judged, often in real time under pressure to put something on the air that evening. So words and language and choosing sound are all factored into the equation, as far as the tone and temperament of the piece.

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Some good news to report today: Matthew Felling, former media director at the Center for Media and Public Affairs, is joining Public Eye. If you're in Washington D.C., you might know Matt's voice from his regular gig as a guest host on NPR affiliate WAMU; he's also been a regular on MSNBC's "Scarborough Country" and just this past Sunday appeared on CNN's "Reliable Sources." Oh, and he's been quoted just about everywhere.

As longtime readers know, when we started this site back in Sept. 2005, there were three of us on the team. I've been on my own for the past couple months, and I'm thrilled to have someone else on board – especially since that person is Matt, one of the sharpest media commentators around.

"Between this announcement and me finding out I wasn't one of the pundits on the Madam's affidavit, I'd say this has been a banner week for Matthew Tate Felling," Felling told me. For more on our new man, who starts in a week, check out the press release after the jump.

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A while back we asked Matthew Felling, Media Director for the Center for Media and Public Affairs, to be one of our "Outside Voices," where he chose to weigh in on the search for the next anchor of CBS News. Having had a little time to reflect on his opinion, Felling asked to return for more on the same subject. While we often feel a little anchored-out here at PE, we felt he had some interesting thoughts and accepted the offer. As with all our "Outside Voices," the opinions expressed and facts presented are those of the author, not Public Eye. With that, here's Matthew:

With the “CBS Evening News” train steaming towards the Katie Couric station, and despite the “No, no! Not Couric!” screeds being written weekly, the CW (‘conventional wisdom,’ mind you, not the new TV experiment by Warner Brothers/UPN), an ominous gestalt is forming in MediaLand, along the lines of “Katie is coming. Resistance is futile.”

Futile? Maybe. But must moving past Bob Schieffer simply be a continuation of the static status quo? (Particularly since we have had of late a parade of love letters in the papers.)

See, with media writers, bloggers and blabbers aligning against her, the har-har editorial cartoonists making hay with their If-Couric-Why-Not-Oprah material (come to think of it: why not, really?), my own personal point breaking point got smacked head-on recently when the antipodal forces of Entertainment Weekly and Walter Cronkite took the same side in this battle. (And yes, I’m quite sure Uncle Walter was eagerly poring over the “V for Vendetta” issue for source material.) It was amid this anti-Couric cacophony that a not-all-that-mind-blowing question occurred to me:

Why are network newscasts in New York City anyway?

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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 Matthew Felling, Media Director for the Center for Media and Public Affairs – a nonprofit, nonpartisan research group in Washington, DC that studies the news and entertainment.

(CBS)

Felling can often be found commenting on the media in various television and print outlets and over the past week, he’s been thinking an awful lot about morning television and network anchors. As always, the opinions expressed in “Outside Voices” are those of the author, not ours, and we seek a wide variety of voices. Now, here's Matthew:





Preamble: The day after Public Eye reached out to me, gauging my interest and /or availability in authoring an “Outside Voices,” I was scheduled for a hospital visit to address an arrhythmia problem. Since hospitals share a particular trait with their curious-smelling sibling, the DMV, that of long periods spent waiting around, this visit naturally led to a lot of time in front of a TV. And it is with extensive exposure to morning television inspiring me – along with a full viewing of the past month’s “Today” show transcripts – that leads me to write the following open letter to CBS News.



Dear CBS News,



We’re friends, right? Well, as your friend, I’m asking you to seriously reconsider this public flirtation you have with “Today” show host Katie Couric, courting her to potentially anchor the “CBS Evening News.” I know that nothing has been announced, mind you. It’s just been a steady stream of comments in MediaLand that you haven’t lifted a finger to silence.



I write this as not just a media observer, but also a living, breathing, iPod-toting, XM-listening, “Daily Show” watching full-fledged 32-year old. In other words, the demographic you’re dying to attract.



Snarkier and crueler assessments of Katie Couric are cranked out on a regular basis – and sure, it would be easy to come up with a hatchet blade like “The Gabbin’ Gidget” or “She’s Like Carson Daly’s Cool Mom” – but this is Walter Cronkite’s seat we’re talking about, a destination too important for cheap shots. And with Couric’s contract ending in May, you may be preparing for the big pitch right about now … if you’re really serious about all this.



As your friend and loyal viewer ever since the days of “Mash” and “Simon & Simon”, I feel obliged to perform an intervention regarding this Couric fascination of yours.



Please stop.

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Once upon a time, the nightly news broadcasts, in conjunction with the daily paper, were our prime sources of news. They appeared just once a day, which meant that breaking news that took place at noon didn't get to most of us until we saw it on television in the evening. Nowadays, however, cable news channels broadcast around the clock. The Internet has put the news, literally, at our fingertips. The news cycle is shorter than it's ever been. If news happens at noon, savvy news consumers often know about it by 12:01. By 6:30, they've already absorbed news analysis, talking head debates, and endless reports about the event.



This leaves the nightly newscasts with a challenge: Should producers assume their viewers haven't seen the headlines, and orient their coverage accordingly? Or should they assume they have, and try to do something new?

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