All Blog Posts from Public Eye

We've been following the debate over the strict rules that NBC imposed on non-NBC media outlets that wanted to use footage from the two MSNBC-sponsored presidential debates.

The rules prompted Jeff Jarvis to ask: "What makes NBC think it has the right to own the democratic discussion in this country?"

Now CNN has decided to make its debate coverage "available without restriction for other news outlets to excerpt, stream or otherwise use on-air and online." As Broadcasting & Cable notes, the move had been called for by political activist groups as well as Barack Obama and John Edwards

Said the network in a release: "Due to the historical nature of presidential debates and the significance of these forums to the American public, CNN believes strongly that the debates should be accessible to the public."

Writes Jarvis: "The wall has cracked."

I neglected this during last week's craziness, but Science and Technology Correspondent Daniel Sieberg's interview with BuzzMachine founder Jeff Jarvis is well worth checking out.

The two talk about whether anything should be done about the more vitriolic rhetoric and comments one can find on the Web. Jarvis says that guidelines over what people can say online would be a mistake. "You can't sanitize the whole world," he says. "You can't clean up everything. There are going to be miscreants and bad people around. And we all know to step around them." Click on the video box to watch.

You may have heard about the scandal involving gossip writer Jared Paul Stern, who has been accused of trying to extort more than $200,000 from billionaire businessman Ron Burkle in exchange for positive coverage in the New York Post's "Page Six" gossip column. The New York papers have been all over the story – particularly rival tabloid the Daily News. The New York Times has also offered a number of stories on the scandal, including today's "Behind Gossip, There's Often a Relationship." Here's a bit:

In two decades of running the page, [Page Six editor Richard] Johnson has built personal and quasi-business relationships with those he has written about; some of them have become sources of gossip for the column. In recordings made by the billionaire, Ronald W. Burkle, Mr. Stern uses some of Mr. Johnson's relationships as examples of what he called "the right approach, because it's a pretty complicated business."

There is nothing illegal — or even particularly rare — about the relationships that Mr. Stern brings up; the muddying of the line between gossip and public relations, subject and comrade, is a longtime tradition in various corners of the industry. It is a well-known element of the glossy magazine business and was even a kind of expectation for a society columnist in the days of "Sweet Smell of Success."

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Sometimes the collection of stories on a front page says just as much as the stories themselves. BuzzMachine's Jeff Jarvis makes this observation today:

The front of the Washington Post reports that Scooter Libby says Bush told him to leak Valerie Plame’s identity and on the same page it reports that a new translation of ancient text says that Jesus told Judas to betray him.

Life is spin.

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I think I'm on the scent of one of the differences of worldview that makes it seem, sometimes, as if bloggers are from Mars and old-fashioned, legacy MSM-type reporters are from Venus.



Except that too often, as we'll see, the traditional journalists are from Mars too.



I can make my point only by quoting Jeff Jarvis, proprietor of the blog, Buzzmachine, new friend, occasional consigliere to Public Eye. In a posting today, Jarvis says:

"Anybody can get facts. Facts are the commodity."

This made my blood boil. Read the whole post to get the context for yourself. I doubt that Jarvis wanted these two sentences to get the deconstruction they are about to get; I think he was trying to make a narrow and legit point that sometimes nit-picking the details of story are a means of avoiding the deeper meaning and moral dimension of the story. But…



Facts are not a commodity.



Anybody cannot get the facts.



True facts are very hard to come by.



And anyone who doubts that truly has no respect for journalism and reporting.



However legitimate all the calls for greater honesty, transparency, openness, bias-self-revelation and humility are, they are essentially insincere unless they acknowledge and empathize with some basic realities about journalism -- its limits, challenges and basic standards.

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It appears we need to talk about housekeeping again.



Yes, we’re sorry, but Public Eye’s RSS feed still isn’t up yet. I know we’re a giant multi-national, evil-MSM behemoth. But we’re also a pretty small group. People at CBSNews.com have been a little bit crazy with real news like Katrina and Judge Roberts. But we promise to have it fixed early in the work week.



We’ll also extend the word limit on comments soon. Vaughn explained our thinking in an earlier post and it appears to have been misguided. We also know that it can be hard to edit and write in our comment box. We trying, we’re listening, I swear.



Jeff Jarvis, early adviser to and tough critic of Public Eye, has remarked on the quantity and quality of the comments on Public Eye. I’d be lying if I didn’t admit we expected and probably hoped for more, but we were also warned that it takes time, lots of it. We’ve received plenty of brainy and contrarian comments, for sure. Some nice ones, too. And we’ve been swamped by useful criticism and tips, though a lot of it has come via e-mail not comments.



Still, we’d like a better conversation, more substantive, less knee-jerk MSM-bashing. Suggestions?

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