All Blog Posts from Public Eye

“Afternoon Delight” is a catchy tune and all. But afternoon debates? That baffles me.

Why are more and more presidential debates taking place in the afternoon? When the audience is a fraction of their prime-time lineups?

To refresh your memory ...

There was a CNBC debate back in October at 4pm.

There was that NPR debate last week at 2 in the afternoon.

And now, the next two days, we’re going to have two debates broadcast on CNN, MSNBC and Fox News Channel -- at 2pm.

What’s up with that?

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You probably don’t know this, but there was yet another presidential debate the other day.

You didn’t see it. But don’t feel bad – not that you would – but nobody saw it. It was on National Public Radio.

And the reviews have been positive, save for the little “it put me to sleep” factor. But all the plaudits got this writer thinking how you could repackage the debate, draw a crowd and inform a potentially large size of the electorate.

First off, the reviews. Columbia Journalism Review observed:

Yesterday’s debate was no exception: when the radio stars kill the video, it seems, good things happen. The talk’s moderators—Steve Inskeep, Michele Norris, and Robert Siegel—selected three general topics for discussion: Iran and the Lessons of Iraq, Relations with China, and Immigration. The goal wasn’t breadth, but depth: “By covering a little less, we hope to go deeper,” Siegel noted. “We will try to have some real discussion here today.”

For the most part, it worked.

And Salon’s Walter Shapiro wrote:

In politics, radio can be the great leveler. According to legend, the 5 o'clock-shadowed Richard Nixon won the first 1960 presidential debate against matinee idol John Kennedy among voters who only listened on radio.

And for two hours on Tuesday afternoon on National Public Radio, those veteran foreign-policy experts Joe Biden and Chris Dodd dominated the penultimate Democratic debate before the Jan. 3 Iowa caucuses.

Even Rolling Stone’s Tim Dickinson had to give the debate format some some props:

The NPR debate was a good one this afternoon. Not that it was a great debate, per se, but it was a lively intelligent discussion. And the NPR moderators could all teach Wolf Blitzer a lesson or two on how to rein in blabbering candidates and steer a discussion.

The debate dealt with just three topics — Iran, China and Immigration — a long-form format that served the Iran topic best.

The unfortunate truth about this debate? As great and stimulating and (yawn) engrossing as the NPR debate may have been, we all know that if you tried it on prime-time TV it would inevitably revert back to the sound bite contest we have come to know and love. Okay, maybe just the ‘know’ part.

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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 producer Max McClellan. Oops. Make that Emmy-Winning producer Max McClellan.

Matthew Felling: You won your first Emmy. I feel like I should ask you if you’re going to Disney World. How's it feel?

Max McClellan: It's feels terrific - and lucky. In my case, I was lucky to be working with Lara Logan and Jeff Newton, who shot some extraordinary material in Ramadi and then let me join them to help put it together.

Matthew Felling: As a producer for Lara Logan, what does your job entail?

Max McClellan: I work with Lara to develop stories around the world for the CBS Evening News. She spends a lot of her time in Baghdad, of course, but when she's not there, she still keeps extremely busy. Aside from Iraq, we've done stories in India, Darfur, South Africa, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Israel and Syria in the last year. People often ask me if she's indefatigable. Yep.

Matthew Felling: Tell me about the story that won the award.

Max McClellan: This was a two-part series that aired on the Evening News in May 2006. Lara and her Associate Producer from 60 Minutes, Jeff Newton, spent several weeks living and working alongside US Marines in Ramadi, Iraq. At the time, Ramadi was the operational center of Al Qaeda in Iraq and one of the bloodiest frontlines in the war on terror. These Marines were involved in heavy, daily, street by street battles with the insurgents. Lara and Jeff were with them every step of the way and captured an up-close view of the war that had rarely been seen. For me, the material they shot and the interviews they did were extraordinary, not only because it gave our audience a glimpse of the intense fighting going on, but also because it showed the bravery and humanity with which these soldiers conducted themselves every day.

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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 Capitol Hill producer Allison Davis O’Keefe.

Matthew Felling: What do you do on Capitol Hill for CBS News?

Allison Davis O’Keefe: You could call me an off-air reporter. I run back and forth to various events on Capitol Hill, chasing people down and talking to people in the hallways and conducting interviews at the drop of a hat.

There’s always set things I know about, things that are scheduled -- like press conferences or hearings. Then there are things that just come up. Like yesterday, I spoke with Senator Lamar Alexander (R-TN) for a piece that’s airing tonight. I get a call, saying ‘Can you do this? Here are the topics and some questions…’ and I work it into my schedule.

Matthew Felling: What has the climate been in the Larry Craig story?

Allison Davis O’Keefe: It’s been tense. Really tense. It’s been one of those stories that everyone is talking about, but you don’t want people to hear you talking about it in the hallways – since the details are very unseemly. There’s a palpable tension among Republicans that they desperately want this story to go away.

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People are like cell phones or iPods. Or – wait – is it the other way around? Either way, we here at Public Eye are going to take a break to recharge our collective batteries. Then, once there’s nobody on the road and nobody on the beach – we’ll be back after the boys of summer have gone.

So yes, we’ll be back on September 4th, ready to catch up and charge ahead. In the meantime, we encourage you to take advantage of this downtime to peruse our material and catch up on some things you may have missed. If you’re new to the site, check out the Editor’s Picks on the right-hand side of the page to get a feel for our mission and style. In the interim, feel free to e-mail us with your observations, questions or suggestions – or even if you just see a Deadhead sticker on a Cadillac.

We're not gonna be clearing brush or attacking photographers, but with August being a slow news month, we here at Public Eye will be posting a bit less frequently than usual this week. We'll post when news warrants, but for the most part, content will be on the light side.

In the meantime, feel free to browse the archives, Editor's Picks and leftovers (if they're half as good cold … ) for some of our recent work. As always, we welcome your input, so feel free to e-mail us your thoughts about CBS News, the media at large and any comments, complaints or suggestions for Public Eye.

It's Thursday, and that means it's time for the Public Eye Chat. This week's subject is CBS News’ “The Early Show” Weather Anchor and Feature Reporter Dave Price.

Matthew Felling: Key West, Aspen, Outer Banks, Savannah … what’s the summer been like, aside from adjusting your watch every two days?

Dave Price: That’s the fun of doing what we get to do. We get to tour around the country and visit great places. We get to meet the people who watch the show or meet people who haven’t. It’s like being an ambassador for “The Early Show.”

Matthew Felling:When it comes to TV news, the morning shows have a different relationship with their viewers, more intimate. Do you see that?

Dave Price: It’s absolutely more intimate. When you’re doing morning TV, you’re with your audience as they’re getting ready to start their day. You’re having breakfast with the people. You have the opportunity to develop more of a relationship with them because they’re often watching for a longer period of time. We’re not doing a half-hour broadcast. We’re not only doing hard news. And we have the ability to build a long-term relationship. Every day we start our days together.

Matthew Felling: Were you a night owl in a prior life?

Dave Price: It’s funny. I grew up a night owl. Always woke up late. Never got to class on time in college. But since I’ve been doing morning news for 11 or 12 years, I’ve grown to love the morning. The earlier, the better. And to be honest with you, I’d much rather do a program that operates with a little more flexibility than a traditional evening broadcast.

Matthew Felling: You and I probably have different definitions of the word ‘morning.’ How early do you have to get up?

Dave Price: There’s no normal time, because when I’m in New York it’s one time, when I’m in Central or Mountain or Pacific it’s something else. It varies because of where we broadcast from, and it also varies due to circumstance. Am I in a blizzard somewhere on the side of a road? Am I in Cancun in the middle of a hurricane?

This week, we were in Cancun. The broadcast morning started at three in the morning. We were out in the streets, making sure our broadcast was set technically and passing along up-to-the-minute information; broadcasting through the day for CBS News television; providing news updates for local affiliates; providing radio reports for CBS network radio; doing specialized reports for CBS stations across the country in New York, Chicago, Los Angeles. Then at nightfall, I was on the radio all night with Sky News in Great Britain and CBS Up To The Minute up through the night and then the CBS Morning News until we went on the air again with “The Early Show.”

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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 White House Correspondent Bill Plante, who caused a stir at Karl Rove’s farewell press conference when he asked President Bush “If he’s so smart, why did you lose Congress?”

Matthew Felling: Interesting week. Anything surprise you?

Bill Plante: Nothing much, actually. Anytime you challenge or appear to challenge the president – and I don’t care if the president is a Republican or a Democrat – there are people who will take issue with it and tell you it’s inappropriate. And you kind of expect that. I knew that what I did on Monday was smart-assed, but I think that that’s beside the point.

Our asking questions should not be dependent on what the White House thinks the mood or the tone of an event should be. And the fact that they say ‘no questions’ or don’t allow time for questions really has nothing to do with it. They don’t have to answer, but I think we need to preserve and aggressively push our right to ask.

Matthew Felling: This week, you asked a question, it got uploaded on the web, it got broadcast everywhere. Did you see any increased polarization or partisanship in the responses you received?

Bill Plante: Yes, the response was instant because of the Internet. In this case, my question got put up on DCFishbowl and then on Drudge, so then it spread like wildfire. That’s no surprise, since there are people that monitor those sites and others everyday.

When I did this 20 years ago in the Rose Garden, I yelled a question at Ronald Reagan at the ‘Teacher of the Year’ event as he was leaving and going inside. Several of the teachers complained and said I disrupted things and that it was inappropriate. In that case, I got a few phone calls but then had to wait for the angry letters to come in. Then after that, I wrote a Washington Post Outlook piece about questioning the president. It took more than a week to play out.

But in this case, it was instantaneous, of course. But I know that’s how things happen these days.

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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 Coordinating Producer Brian Kennedy. You can read excerpts, and listen to the full interview, below.

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Click here to listen to the interview.

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Brian Montopoli: You coordinated the coverage of the bridge tragedy last week in the Twin Cities. What does that entail? What does a coordinating producer do, especially on a big story like that?

Brian Kennedy: Well, in order to take a studio into the field, there's just a lot of moving parts. Everything from power issues to communications. Telephone. Internet. Also satellite feeds. And everything needs to be backed up. And everything has to be done in a matter of hours. So from the time that the decision was made that Katie would be going to the story until we were on the air, it's pretty much a nonstop set of events that need to be coordinated.

Brian Montopoli: Can you give me an example of something you dealt with last week that was a difficult issue?

Brian Kennedy: Well, first of all, the easy thing was that before I arrived, the producers who arrived late on that evening had secured a spot. They were up all night, literally knocking on doors, finding location. That's usually the toughest part. Once you find a location, the tougher part was getting the right equipment in. Obviously, getting on a commercial plane, you can only put so much on. And a charter plane can't hold very much equipment. So we didn't travel with our normal amount of gear, which includes teleprompters, and various communications gears – headset, cameras, lights, that sort of thing.

So we were lucky enough to find a local rental house where we secured a generator which powered almost everything we did. This is a big generator, sort of rides on the back of a semi- truck. Not very portable. And finding a place to park that kind of thing, and making sure you're parked in a place where the satellite is not blocked by a building, and making sure you can see the location in the background where Katie was standing – which is actually the bridge – and making sure the sun is not glaring into the lens at the time we are on the air, which is 5:30. All those little things sort of come up throughout the day, and we just kind of pick them off one at a time and hope by the end of the day we've taken care of everything.

Brian Montopoli: I know this was taken care of before you got there, but tell me about the location. Basically, it was just some guy's apartment, right?

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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 Business Correspondent Anthony Mason. You can read excerpts, and listen to the full interview, below.

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Click here to listen to the interview.

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Brian Montopoli: You were on the floor last week during the tense period for stocks. What was the atmosphere like there?

Anthony Mason: Well, I think the real question as it started was is it just a one-day thing, or is it going to be something more serious. And obviously, it became apparent pretty quickly. The last couple of corrections the market's had were…drastic one-day downdrafts, and all of a sudden it seemed like everything was all right. And the real question this time was, is this just one bad day, or is it the beginning of quite a few bad days.

There was really worry on the floor. There was real worry that there was a significant drop, that first day, and that it didn't recover by the close. There was real trepidation. And as we now know, with good reason.

Brian Montopoli: When you're trying to characterize that for people, especially early on, do you just go by what you're feeling from the traders? Presumably, you have to look at it with a little bit of a grain of salt, because I assume panic is not uncommon on the trading floor.

Anthony Mason: I tend to go to the guys who have been there the longest, who have seen the most of these. Because they're the ones who don't use words like "panic" very easily. Because it's very easy to look at a 250 point drop or a 300 point drop and go, "oh, wow." Although these days, percentage-wise, that's not nearly as big as it was even five years ago.

But I tend to go to them first and say, "How bad is it?" It looks bad, but what's it based on? And when somebody like Art Cashin at UBS, whose been on the floor for like 40 years, tell me he thinks this was a mild heart-attack, I pay attention. That's when I go, "OK, if Art Cashin thinks it’s a mild heart attack, there's something here."

Brian Montopoli: Do you worry when you're covering it about contributing to further problems by talking about it in the media and casting it as a significant thing? Do you worry about the repercussions of your coverage?

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