All Blog Posts from Public Eye

It's Thursday, and that means it's time for the Public Eye Chat. This week's subject is CBS News correspondent Sharyn Alfonsi, who spent a week in Blacksburg covering the Virginia Tech tragedy. 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: How would you characterize the students' attitude towards the press corps? Did they want to talk to you?

Sharyn Alfonsi: At first, they definitely did. People wanted to tell their stories of what they saw, or what they heard, or how long it took before they were notified that there was a problem. I would definitely say that as time went on, they became more wary of the press.

We actually tried to step back as much as we could in the latter days. There's so many reporters there, so many camera crews there, that even if people were being respectful and cautious, just the sheer number – it was overwhelming to that student population.

Brian Montopoli: There is a lot of talk about objectivity in journalism, and after Katrina there was a lot of discussion about whether reporters should be showing emotion and being advocates. When you were talking to these students, did you feel you were there to be objective? Is it OK to show emotion? Is it OK to feel like you're an advocate?

Sharyn Alfonsi: I think you tried not to show emotion, but I think it's impossible not to. Especially in that situation. Who couldn't relate to that moment? Who couldn't relate to these kids and what they have gone through? Anybody who's been on a campus and felt safe in their little nest at college can understand what it must be like for them.

The other thing for me is I grew up in Northern Virginia. So, for me, Virginia Tech – we always referred to it as the 13th grade. That's where so many of my friends went to school. So when I was on that campus – you can't help but think of those things. And you can't help but think about these kids, they grew up in your hometown. Some of the victims went to school in my district. And you relate to them. You make those connections with them.

You obviously try to be objective. But I don't think it hurts reporting in this particular case to be sympathetic to them, and to be understanding to them. Because, you know, they did nothing. They were just there. They were just witnesses.

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Correspondent Sharyn Alfonsi just returned from covering the Middle East crisis and this week, she took some time to answer our standard 10 questions, plus one from a reader. Read on to find out what happened when Sharyn “skipped” customs at the Baghdad airport, what she’d like to see done differently on the “Evening News,” and why she’s not a huge fan of a certain former sitcom star.

What do you do at CBS News?

I’m a news correspondent. That means I’m a reporter who has to brush her hair.

What single issue should be covered more at CBS News?

I don’t think there’s a single issue, but I think we could do a better job at the way we approach stories. Not every story should be two minutes long with an expert interview in the middle. I think sometime we’re just too predictable.

Give us a great behind the scenes story.

Here’s one I can repeat: Last year, I was traveling to Iraq for the first time. I arrived at Baghdad airport and the electricity was out. The airport was pitch black, my luggage was gone and I was alone. I didn’t know what to do next.

A kind Iraqi man who had been on my flight took pity on me and ushered me through the dark airport and into the office that deals with lost luggage. I was standing in line to fill out my claim when a uniformed man grabbed me by the arm and started pulling me through the airport. I thought I was being kidnapped.

Turns out, I somehow “skipped” customs as I snaked through the dark airport. I spent 45 minutes in a nine-by-nine foot room being screamed at in Arabic by two large men. It felt like three hours. The only English they knew was “jail” and “long time.” One of the guards also sang the theme song of “Friends” to me at one point and I’m still not sure why.

I never got my luggage back. It didn’t seem to matter.

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Correspondent Sharyn Alfonsi just returned from covering the Middle East crisis and this week, she took some time to answer our standard 10 questions, plus one from a reader. Read on to find out what happened when Sharyn “skipped” customs at the Baghdad airport, what she’d like to see done differently on the “Evening News,” and why she’s not a huge fan of a certain former sitcom star.

What do you do at CBS News?

I’m a news correspondent. That means I’m a reporter who has to brush her hair.

What single issue should be covered more at CBS News?

I don’t think there’s a single issue, but I think we could do a better job at the way we approach stories. Not every story should be two minutes long with an expert interview in the middle. I think sometime we’re just too predictable.

Give us a great behind the scenes story.

Here’s one I can repeat: Last year, I was traveling to Iraq for the first time. I arrived at Baghdad airport and the electricity was out. The airport was pitch black, my luggage was gone and I was alone. I didn’t know what to do next.

A kind Iraqi man who had been on my flight took pity on me and ushered me through the dark airport and into the office that deals with lost luggage. I was standing in line to fill out my claim when a uniformed man grabbed me by the arm and started pulling me through the airport. I thought I was being kidnapped.

Turns out, I somehow “skipped” customs as I snaked through the dark airport. I spent 45 minutes in a nine-by-nine foot room being screamed at in Arabic by two large men. It felt like three hours. The only English they knew was “jail” and “long time.” One of the guards also sang the theme song of “Friends” to me at one point and I’m still not sure why.

I never got my luggage back. It didn’t seem to matter.

Read full post…

Correspondent Sharyn Alfonsi just returned from covering the Middle East crisis and this week, she took some time to answer our standard 10 questions, plus one from a reader. Read on to find out what happened when Sharyn “skipped” customs at the Baghdad airport, what she’d like to see done differently on the “Evening News,” and why she’s not a huge fan of a certain former sitcom star.

What do you do at CBS News?

I’m a news correspondent. That means I’m a reporter who has to brush her hair.

What single issue should be covered more at CBS News?

I don’t think there’s a single issue, but I think we could do a better job at the way we approach stories. Not every story should be two minutes long with an expert interview in the middle. I think sometime we’re just too predictable.

Give us a great behind the scenes story.

Here’s one I can repeat: Last year, I was traveling to Iraq for the first time. I arrived at Baghdad airport and the electricity was out. The airport was pitch black, my luggage was gone and I was alone. I didn’t know what to do next.

A kind Iraqi man who had been on my flight took pity on me and ushered me through the dark airport and into the office that deals with lost luggage. I was standing in line to fill out my claim when a uniformed man grabbed me by the arm and started pulling me through the airport. I thought I was being kidnapped.

Turns out, I somehow “skipped” customs as I snaked through the dark airport. I spent 45 minutes in a nine-by-nine foot room being screamed at in Arabic by two large men. It felt like three hours. The only English they knew was “jail” and “long time.” One of the guards also sang the theme song of “Friends” to me at one point and I’m still not sure why.

I never got my luggage back. It didn’t seem to matter.

Read full post…

Toward the beginning of the Israel-Hezbollah conflict, we heard about some of the challenges in covering the story from correspondent Sharyn Alfonsi, who was based in Tel Aviv. She recently returned from the Middle East and is on hand this week as our “10 Plus 1” subject. Check out her bio for more background and e-mail us a question for Sharyn.

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How much knowledge do journalists assume on the part of their audiences when putting together stories on the Middle East? We asked Sharyn Alfonsi and Richard Roth, two of the correspondents who have been covering the conflict for CBS News. They responded via email.

"This is a challenge in all we do almost everyday as broadcast journalists anywhere in the world; one difference in THIS region is that there's hardly a word or a phrase that one side or the other doesn't find 'loaded.' And one side's history is another side's propaganda," writes Roth.

He continues: "How much history do I assume our audience knows? Well, last week in Israel I found myself writing of a rocket attack on 'Tiberias, on the Sea of Galilee,' then changing that to 'The biblical city of Tiberias on the Sea of Galilee,' which added just a tiny bit of context that didn't take up much precious airtime - which tends to be the big factor that determines how much history gets into a news story. There's no hard and fast rule. And on a story like this, on-going and incremental, there's an opportunity to share a bit of history in small doses. A contextual or historical fact that might get cut from one script for lack of time gets saved in my notebook - and will go in a later story. No single report is comprehensive. Like the reporter, I think the viewer or listener learns as the story unfolds."

Alfonsi writes that she assumes everyone has a basic knowledge of the story. "That being said - I love it when you can tell a story that you don’t need to know any of the background to get it. It just stands alone, a moment in time," she writes.

"We found that the other day," she adds. "We went to a bomb shelter and met a young woman who was living underground for seven days. They didn’t have air conditioning or water but she and the other 50 people who were staying there were too afraid to go home for even a second. That day while we were there one man did leave, briefly, to get milk for his son. He was killed by a rocket. I don’t think you need a whole lot of history or knowledge of politics to understand a story like that."

We also asked the correspondents what resources are available to them as they tell the story of the conflict.

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The New York Times' David Cay Johnston sent me an email concerning Wednesday night's "Evening News" story about Route 66. Toward the end of the piece, correspondent Sharyn Alfonsi noted that "John and Lenore Weiss head a historical group that's trying to preserve Route 66." John Weiss said "We always say that fun begins at the off ramp," and then Alfonsi chimed in again, saying, "So we hired them to take us there." (You can click on the video box to watch the story for yourself.)

Johnston expressed concern about the fact that CBS News "hired" the couple for the story. We asked Alfonsi for a little background information, and she emailed the following:

"They are full time Route 66 tour guides, and drove us around about 100 miles in their car. We paid them to show us the road, like any other customer."

I asked Linda Mason, CBS News senior vice president, standards and special projects, whether paying for the tour was a violation of CBS News standards.

"No, of course not," said Mason. "Especially because we disclosed it. He knew Route 66 – he was a specialist – and by disclosing it we're being totally transparent with our viewers."

Mason said disclosure was the key issue. "We disclose when we've paid somebody," she said. "Sometimes we do it by saying that the person is a CBS News analyst. Or a CBS News consultant. That's code for we paid this expert. Otherwise we would just say they're an energy analyst."

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Last week, we took a look at how Sandra Hughes’ story on geo-caching made its way to the “Evening News.” Today we’ve got a look at the story behind a story from correspondent Sharyn Alfonsi, which aired on last week’s broadcast. You can read about it here or click on the video player below to watch Alfonsi’s story on 11-year-old fiddle prodigy Ruby Jane Smith.

So how did Alfonsi find Ruby Jane?

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Each week we invite someone from the outside to weigh in with their thoughts about CBS News and the media at large. This week, we invited The Anchoress, one of the blogosphere's most mysterious and interesting voices who this week turned on her TV once again to check in on the CBS "Evening News." As always, the opinions expressed in “Outside Voices” are those of the author, not ours and we seek a wide variety of voices. Now, The Anchoress:



It has occurred to me, lately, that I – who as a child sat on the living room floor before a black-and-white television eagerly awaiting the afternoon appearance of Nancy Dickerson and the nightly pronouncements of Walter Cronkite, Chet Huntley and David Brinkley – had not been watching any broadcast news programs for many years. I have been away from televised news – except for breaking stories - at least since Dan Rather touted his new joint-anchorage with Connie Chung by gulping to assure President and Mrs. Clinton that “if we are half as great as you two, we’ll take it and walk away winners.” Although I was, on the evening of that broadcast, a liberal Democrat, I recall an urge at that moment to reach down my own gullet and heave up both my lungs, and I never looked back.



To be fair to Rather (who was another early hero) his obsequious buffoonery was not the sole reason for my desertion from the nightly news. As a mother with young children, in a household which purposely did not keep a television near the kitchen, the show’s scheduling interfered with supper or baths or – later – various practices and rehearsals. And compared to the upstart 24-hour cable news offerings, the idea of “appointment” news-watching seemed stale and quaintly old-fashioned, like rocking chairs on the front porch – nice to have around, but somehow there was simply no time to use them.



By the time my kids were old enough that I could resume the voracious consumption of news and news-by-products, my politics had changed, my focus had changed. I flipped through network and cable news shows and was turned off by all of it – by Dan Rather’s uncertain grin, and the dusty-looking unknowns at CNN, and the bubble-lipped mud-wrestling babes at FOX. Televised news seemed either moribund or yappy or designed for the attention span-impaired, so I clicked off the television and clicked on the Internet. In short order, I there began not simply to consume news, but to roll around in it like a capitalist wallowing in a pile of hundred dollar bills, and I didn’t give televised news another thought.



So, when Public Eye invited me to contribute a guest post on their programming, I thought it might be wise to spend some time with the watery smile of Bob Schieffer and the CBS Evening News. A blog-snob, I expected it to be painful. I was wrong.

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