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If you're a regular Public Eye reader, you've followed this week's dustup over Jeff Greenfield's "Evening News" piece on Michael Moore's new film "Sicko."

A quick recap: Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting (FAIR) posted an "Action Alert" complaining that the piece was flawed. Because the "Action Alert" told readers to write in to CBS and request a correction they felt warranted, we received more than 500 emails criticizing the piece.

Not long after the first such email arrived, we contacted Greenfield and asked him to respond to FAIR's critique. He did so. FAIR did not acknowledge his response until late yesterday, however, and the vast majority of the emails that have come in have simply followed FAIR's script and not engaged the response in any meaningful way.

Now the latest: Today, an "Evening News" employee has been contacting many of those who wrote to us to make sure they were aware of Greenfield's response. (He decided against replying to those who simply copy/pasted the FAIR piece or loaded their email with expletives -- and, to be honest, I'm sure a few more worthwhile messages have fallen through the cracks.)

So to review: Public Eye immediately acknowledged the complaints and got the correspondent to respond to them. An "Evening News" employee then took the trouble to make sure that many of those who had not seen the response were able to see it. That's pretty decent engagement with the viewer, isn't it? News organizations have not, historically, gone to such lengths to address issues like this; CBS News' competitors still, for the most part, do not.

But this has apparently not been enough. I just received an email from someone who heard from the "Evening News" employee but felt that CBS News' efforts to engage her were insincere. She offered a list of questions that she expected CBS to address on an individual basis and harshly criticized CBS News for not doing so.

The relentless beat of media criticism over the past few decades, combined with the rise of niche media outlets, many of them ideological, has conditioned news consumers to expect that they get exactly the news as they believe it should be. Or else. Some, like the e-mailer above, actually seem to believe that news organizations should spend their time and money offering detailed responses to every single person who writes in as part of an astroturfing campaign.

In an era when news budgets are shrinking and overseas bureaus are being closed down, that doesn't strike me as the best use of resources.

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Here at Public Eye, we've gotten more than 400 emails complaining about Jeff Greenfield's Friday piece on the film "Sicko." Why so many? Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR), Common Dreams, and Reclaim The Media have all posted FAIR's "Action Alert" complaining about the piece.

The action alert ends by telling readers to "Tell CBS Evening News to correct Jeff Greenfield's assertions about public opinion and single-payer health coverage. You could also point out that Dennis Kucinich—a proponent of such a system—is in fact a presidential candidate." It includes our email address as well as that of the "Evening News."

Almost immediately after the FAIR alert was posted, I contacted Greenfield for his thoughts. He quickly responded to FAIR's critique. I posted the critique and Greenfield's response yesterday at 5:00 PM with hopes that it would start the kind of dialogue in our comments section that Public Eye was created to foster.

The results have been disappointing. The Greenfield post has elicted just seven comments thus far, a drop in the bucket when compared to the number of complaints we've gotten about this issue in our now bulging inbox. Most of the e-mailers have clearly not seen or considered Greenfield's comments, opting instead to simply parrot the line of the FAIR piece. Some just pasted the FAIR piece into the body of their email.

I'm not taking sides here. I am, however, pointing out that an awful lot of people seem more interested in registering their outrage when directed to do so than in engaging in a discussion of the issues at hand.

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Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting, or FAIR, today posted a critique of CBS News chief political correspondent Jeff Greenfield's "Evening News" piece on Michael Moore's film "Sicko." You can watch the piece by clicking on the video box.

In the piece, Greenfield asserts that "no one, Democrat or Republican, has come close to advocating the kind of government-run national health system Michael Moore proposes." Writes FAIR: "This is incorrect; Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D.-Ohio), a presidential contender, supports the very same approach, as do dozens of congressmembers who have co-sponsored H.R. 676, a bill that would provide single-payer coverage in the United States."

The piece also includes a quote from Paul Ginsburg of the Center for Studying Health System Change, who says "[w]e're much less willing to have government make decisions for people than is the case in Canada and Europe." FAIR argues that "[t]hat assessment is contradicted by recent polling." It cites two recent polls to back up its argument.

I asked Greenfield to respond to the FAIR piece, which has generated more than 70 emails to Public Eye in just the past hour. He did so over email. His response in full:

FAIR's critique is not. The organization is comparing apples and oranges; actually, apples and bowling balls is more like it.

Michael Moore is very clear about what he is proposing: it is not simply a "single payer" system. What Moore advocates is a government-run system in which the doctors work for the government, as they do in Britain, Canada, and elsewhere. He devotes part of "Sicko" to an interview with a British doctor, who lives in a fine home and drives a nice car, to make his point that state-employed doctors need not face privation. Later in the film, he answers the charge of "socialized medicine" by noting that we already have "socialized" police officer, firefighters, and teachers: all of whom are public employees.

Unless I am very much mistaken, this is very different from the "single payer" system that Rep. Kucinich advocates; nor is it supported by the members of congress who back a "single payer" system. (Medicare, for example, is a government-paid system; but recipients go to the same doctors the rest of us do).

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It's Thursday, and that means it's time for the Public Eye Chat. This week's subject is CBS News Senior Political Correspondent Jeff Greenfield.





Brian Montopoli: Is there any political candidate that you think the press is treating particularly well? Are there any that are getting a bum rap?

Jeff Greenfield: That's a really good question, but you need to re-ask it every three months. Because candidates often get one kind of treatment in one period, and a whole different kind of treatment in another period. What usually happens is, particularly with a new fresh face – Barack Obama is the obvious – there is a kind of "gee wiz, look at this, isn't this amazing." And then what sets in, particularly as that candidate rises in the public opinion polls, or in visibility, there is a "wait a minute, who is this guy."

Now, candidates who have been treated particularly unfairly – what does happen is if you are a long shot candidate, the first wave of questions is, "what the heck is he or she doing in this race? Why don't you just go away?" And my feeling is such a candidate has a fairly limited amount of time to say, "Wait, no, I'm going to show you why I'm here. I've got more support than you realize."

On the other hand, I think there are some candidates who come into the race, and just from my particular perspective, outside of an ego trip or to jack up lecture fees, I can't figure out what the hell they're doing there. So I guess I'm part of that.

Brian Montopoli: Do you want to name names?

Jeff Greenfield: It's very difficult for me to understand – well, I'll go into the past. Gary Bauer. Alan Keyes. Certainly Mike Gravel. I don't know how a guy who lost his Senate seat in Alaska in 1980 and suddenly decides he wants to be President is included in the presidential debate. And I do think you could take half the Republican field and say, "Look, you don't belong here."

The Democratic field is trickier, because some of the long shots have been 25 years in the United States Senate, and it's hard to say about them they shouldn't be there. By the way, this always happens. It happened to Orrin Hatch in 2000, it happened to Alan Cranston, Fritz Hollings, all these people who had been in the Senate for a long time and are consequential political figures, once they get in the presidential race it's like, "what are they doing here?"

Brian Montopoli: What's your take on the argument that the media are politically biased? If not politically, what biases are there?

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Check out this video of soon-to-be CBS News Senior Political Correspondent Jeff Greenfield, who went on the "Early Show" this morning to discuss Don Imus' radio show. Greenfield has been a frequent Imus guest, and he went on Imus' show again yesterday. Greenfield told Julie Chen that to "stay away from the show when he gets in serious and deserved trouble seems to me the ultimate act of hypocrisy and cowardice."

The word has been out since last week, but today CBS made it official: CNN's Jeff Greenfield is coming to CBS News as Senior Political Correspondent. Press release after the jump.

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Yesterday we noted that the Washington Post ran a front-page piece discussing Barack Obama's decision to wink in the direction of Hillary Clinton. Today, we came across a Josh Marshall post noting the analysis of Jeff Greenfield, who pointed out that Obama did not wear a tie in New Hampshire. What does it all mean? Here's Greenfield:

"…he may be walking around with a sartorial time bomb. Ask yourself, is there any other major public figure who dresses the way he does? Why, yes. It is Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who, unlike most of his predecessors, seems to have skipped through enough copies of 'GQ' to find the jacket-and-no-tie look agreeable…"

Greenfield goes on to note that since Obama's first name sounds like "Osama" and his middle name is "Hussein," wearing "an outfit that reminds people of a charter member of the axis of evil…could leave his presidential hopes hanging by a thread."

Let's put aside the lameness of that pun for a moment and simply focus on the fact that Jeff Greenfield just made a connection between Obama and Ahmadinejad based on the fact that neither wears a tie. As Bradford Plumer at the Plank jokingly suggests, "They might've also noted that Obama likes movies... just like Kim Jong Il!" Look, members of the media: I realize that there were a ton of reporters in New Hampshire, and it's awful tough to think of something to say that everyone else hasn't said already. But take some advice from my middle-school homeroom teacher: If you don't have anything worthwhile to say, don't say anything at all.

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