All Blog Posts from Public Eye

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 asked Jon Marshall, who writes the News Gems blog for the Society of Professional Journalists and teaches journalism at Northwestern University’s Medill School. Below, Marshall wonders why with such great reporters at CBS News, why don’t they do more enterprising stories from more locations throughout the world? 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 Jon:

Katie Couric boasts in her recent promos that “great reporters make a great broadcast, and we’ve got ‘em at CBS News.”

She’s right, “CBS Evening News” does have great reporters. It just doesn’t have enough of them, and they don’t go to enough places.

The CBS reporting crew does a consistently good job of summarizing stories within the daily time crunch of a half-hour broadcast. I wish I could write as crisply and clearly as they do. But watching the broadcasts closely over the past few weeks, I’ve noticed a paucity of enterprise reporting that goes beyond the headlines.

There are exceptions, of course. For instance, I’ve enjoyed Jerry Bowen’s reports from Alaska, particularly his story this Tuesday on the impact of global warming on a coastal town. And Anthony Mason’s story last Thursday about people investing in water was intriguing.

But these enterprise stories arrive at best once per broadcast. This lack of emphasis on, and resources for, enterprise reporting is especially true for stories beyond U.S. borders. The network newscasts have been giving us the impression lately that the world has only two-and-a-half continents. They tell us plenty about North America, of course, and a bit about Europe, and a lot lately about the Middle East.

But Africa? I wouldn’t have known it existed after watching the “Evening News” the last two weeks. South America? Nada. (We do get to hear occasionally about the Caribbean, however, courtesy of Fidel Castro.) And Asia, besides the Middle East, only got mentioned in connection with the terrorist plane bombing plot in Britain. I didn’t see anything about Afghanistan despite the fact that U.S. troops are stuck there fighting a growing insurgency, and nothing about China or India even though they are the world’s most populous countries and preparing to eat our economic lunch.

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