All Blog Posts from Public Eye

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?”

------------

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.

Read full post…

Hillary Clinton’s political baggage being recycled in two upcoming books. Mitt Romney’s romantic past with his wife investigated. Not only have the debates and the rituals of presidential campaigning bloomed early this year -- does the political calendar have global warming, too? – but so has the information warfare that makes political enemies smirk and political allies shift uncomfortably in their seats.

In this week’s edition of National Journal, political writer Carl Cannon is the most recent observer to wonder publicly where the line is between Relevant and Prurient. He writes:

[The 2008 race] is a wide-open field with some 20 announced and unannounced candidates, a group replete with enough messy divorces, troubled marriages, second (and third) marriages, estranged children, cancer survivors, head cases, and binge dieters to satisfy any soap opera …The gaggle of 2008 candidates will be acting out their various pathologies in a technological environment more suited for entertainment than for serious policy discussion. YouTube, the blogs, and an unfettered cable culture did not exist in 1988 and 1992, the years that the privacy barriers came tumbling down. They do now.

The upshot is a combustible mix that is prompting political observers to wonder whether the process will dissuade good people from even bothering with politics -- or whether that has already happened.

True, there used to be a line between “reportable” and “keep this out of the papers,” but in recent years it’s gotten rubbed out. Making things even more nebulous is the fact that each one creates a political Rorschach test. If you’re a fan of Mitt Romney, than you think that Mike Wallace was unprofessional when he asked if there had been any premarital sex before Mitt and his wife tied the knot – but if you’re an Obama fan, you may not have found it inappropriate. Likewise, Bill Richardson’s supporters aren’t fans of the Albequerque reporter who asked him if he had “a bimbo problem.”

Read full post…

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 William Powers, a columnist for National Journal and a former reporter for The Washington Post. Below, Powers offers some suggestions about what he thinks the "Evening News" with Katie Couric should look like, come September. 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 Bill:

Katie Couric's move to the anchor slot at the CBS "Evening News" has already generated a lot of noise. There will be much more as her September debut approaches.

Yet, for all the hoo-haa, I don't think it's become apparent why this is such a big moment for television news.

Couric is a rare bird, and I'm not talking about her gender. She's the first evening news anchor to arrive as a fully formed public figure with a true mass following. It's taken other anchors years to earn the respect and affection of their audiences, to reach the point where they were on a first-name basis with the culture: Dan, Tom and Peter. Katie is there already and she hasn't even begun. In the past, the anchor job has magnified those who held it. Couric will magnify the job, which has been shrinking in significance and influence for many years.

There is now a whole generation of media consumers who, when they think about network news at all, know it mainly as the butt of jokes, in particular a very funny joke called "The Daily Show." Connie Chung's recent torch-song travesty was a sensation partly because it crystallized what is now the popular view of TV news people: absurd, clueless, tone-deaf boobs.

Things are at such a low ebb, it's tempting say network news has nowhere to go but up. Alas, this is not true. Collectively the three evening network newscasts still pull in tens of millions of viewers, numbers that are the envy of cable news. The problem is the demographics of this audience, which run the gamut from old to ancient, as the ads make clear with their leitmotifs of incontinence and constipation. These core viewers are headed inexorably for the exits, and as they go, there's a real possibility nobody will be there to replace them. If the network news fails to recover the magnetism and influence it once had, it will die with the last Baby Boomer, if not before.

This is why Couric, with her unusual combination of Hollywood charisma and journalistic smarts, represents such a fantastic opportunity, not just for CBS but for TV news in general. If anyone can pull the nets out of the hole they're in, she can. My only hope is that CBS doesn't blow the chance.

Read full post…

It's an issue that's become another challenge in covering a war that is increasingly dangerous for reporters -- accuracy in photography. In today’s National Journal, Neil Munro takes a look at why mishaps like this one, can happen:

On January 14, for example, shortly after unmanned U.S. aircraft fired missiles at several suspected leaders of Al Qaeda who were thought to be staying in the village of Damadola, Pakistan, Agence France-Presse distributed a picture said to be from the scene. AFP is based in Paris, and the picture was sent by one of its locally hired photographers, a stringer. The photo showed a piece of military equipment placed on a damaged stone wall, flanked by a solemn old man and a young boy. Another firm, Getty Images, also distributed the photo to picture editors at newspapers and magazines around the world. The New York Times published it in the paper's January 14 Web edition, and Time magazine ran the picture in its January 23 print edition, along with the caption "Detritus from the latest U.S. raid in Pakistan."

But the caption was wrong, the pose was staged, and the picture was, in essence, untrue.

Read full post…