Posted on 08/30/2005 3:07:56 PM PDT by aynrandfreak
After a controversial run-in with bloggers last year that helped sink "60 Minutes Wednesday," CBS has hired a "nonbudsman" to write a blog that will go behind the scenes at the news division.
Former "Hotline" editor Vaughn Ververs will report his findings on "Public Eye," which debuts next month on http://www.cbsnews.com.
Ververs will be a kind of media reporter, mostly focused on CBS News, reporting and writing about how the news is gathered, produced and placed. In addition to providing Journalism 101, "Public Eye" also could offer extended versions of segments that appeared on CBS, interviews with correspondents and producers and maybe even the daily story meeting for the "CBS Evening News."
"This is a way to open up the process ," Ververs said.
Although he's a CBS employee, Ververs doesn't answer to CBS News president Andrew Heyward. His boss is CBS Digital Media head Larry Kramer, who has a long career in journalism. Ververs has no power to change policy or the direction of stories.
"I'm not here to set the rules," Ververs said. "I'm not even here to voice my opinion. That's not my job."
(Excerpt) Read more at tv.yahoo.com ...
There's already a blog on the goings on at CBS News: RatherBiased.com
Vaughn Ververs is so left wing that I expect him to spin out of control and crash to earth any day.
He spun propaganda for the Marxist rag "Hotline."
Window dressing. All window dressing...
Like I'm sure this clown is going to reveal anything the corporation doesn't want him to.
Exactly like the "independent investigation" they set up to conclude that it is impossible to tell if the fraudulent memos are fraudulent, and that 60 Minutes had no political motive in working 5 years on a hit piece on Bush which parrotted the Kerry "what matters is not political experience in the past 30 years, but what Bush and I did 30 years ago as a Lieutenants" line.Cindy Sheehan, Rush Limbaugh, and CBS
August 22, 2005 | conservatism_IS_compassion
"Exactly like the "independent investigation" they set up to conclude that it is impossible to tell if the fraudulent memos are fraudulent"
[Serious News Anchor Voice] We conducted an exhaustive investigation of ourselves and came up with no evidence of bias or wrongdoing. Vaughn Ververs, nonbudsman for CBS, stated that this should close the books on these unsubstianted allegations now and forevermore. In other news, more Americans died pointless deaths in Iraq..."
"Although he's a CBS employee, Ververs doesn't answer to CBS News president Andrew Heyward. His boss is CBS Digital Media head Larry Kramer.."
As though it matters which tochis he kisses...
If they simply presented unbiased, objective and factual reporting, they wouldn't be in the mess they are in, and wouldn't need a "nonbudsman." They just need a fact checker and honest reporters, not liberal hacks like Rather and Mapes.
It will be a long time before I stop reflexively changing the channel when I see Schieffer's face or the CBS logo.....
I don't think you understand the situation. The fundamental problem is story selection - what is the lead, what makes the cut, and what isn't reported at all. Consideringwould the "memos" have logically been important even if they were absolutely genuine? Would it have been "objective" to call them a smoking gun, when all they putatively "prove" is that Bush wasn't the second coming of Audie Murphy - something which Bush himself never claimed?
- Kerry's book, Winter Soldier, and the rest of his quisling act back in the Vietnam era,
- Kerry's negative military expenditure votes in the Senate, and
- Kerry's dismissal of the "what did you do in the war?" issue when the Democrats were electing a draft dodger in 1992,
I'm not arguing that they wouldn't have likely suppressed the Bush vote enough to turn the election if the blogosphere and talk radio hadn't put the kibosh on them - I think they probably would. But that begs the question - why would an objective person think it was their job to promote the Kerry political line?
Just turn it around. Suppose that there was information about Kerry that was exactly as derrogatory as those "memos," but it was about John Kerry. Would CBS have aired it, and would it have affected the election? That's not a hypothetical question, of course - the answer is the book Unfit for Command by O'Neil and the other members of the "Swift Boat Veterans for Truth." If 60 Minutes had breathlessly touted it they way they did the "memos," there would have been no doubt at all as to the outcome of the election. Instead CBS and the rest of the "objective" journalists pretended to give SBVT a hearing, then announced that they had been "discredited." And even so, SBVT is credited with the defeat of Kerry in Ohio.
The idea of "objectivity" is absurd when story selection determines the political slant of your reporting. Which is why the First Amendment is so elegant - and why the government was wrong to create the "titles of nobility" known as broadcast licenses.
Cindy Sheehan, Rush Limbaugh, and CBS
August 22, 2005 | conservatism_IS_compassion
Media bias bump.
Again CBS doesn't get it. The last thing they need is a liberal reviewing their liberal pieces. If they truely wanted to improve their show they would have hire a conservative to ask tough questions to make sure their stories were not leftwing moonbat stories like the Bush hit piece.
CBS: We decide. We report. You listen.
To bolster your comments, there was an active rumor that Kerry was dishonorably dicharged from the Navy for his political actions while still in the Navy Reserves. He promised to sign the papers to release all his military records but never did. The MSM gave him a pass with hardly a whisper.
Quite simply there's no difference between the tendency displayed by the "objective journalism" establishment and the party line of the Democratic Party. And that means that any news source that doesn't get mercilessly condemned by "objective journalism" as "right wing" is simply too leftist to be worth my respect. Which is why I'd listen to Rush in preference to watching any broadcast network's TV news."OSullivans First Law" states that
"All organizations that are not actually right-wing will over time become left-wing."Which is just another way of stating the fact that people with the courage and principle to resist the bullying of "objective" journalism will be labeled "right-wing."
This is the equivalent of the fox watching the hen house.
FGS
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