It was bloggers who forced CBS Evening News anchor Dan Rather into early retirement, and yet CBS – at least somebody there – is still being condescending towards the new media.
How CBS Blew Up My Puff Piece
This story began in pursuit of an ironic 300-word puff piece about somewhat of a catfight between MoveOn.org and CBS Evening News anchor Katie Couric.
Oh, and Katie Couric's publicist threatened to sue us, which also gets us involved in a much bigger way, and makes this story, much, much more newsworthy, but we'll get to that later.
The story begins this way:
MoveOn.org posted a scathing
At
This is all very interesting to me, only because of the irony. It wasn't too long ago that
When asked about the comments in the email, CBS Evening News Communications Manager Jennifer Farley (Couric's publicist) said, "It's very easy to make it look like it came from us," and would not confirm that the email came from CBS News, despite the email address.
I understood the comment, "It's very easy to make it look like it came from us," as well as other comments she made as a denial that CBS sent the email, and so, out of professional courtesy, not out of any type of journalistic requirement, I contacted Ms. Farley the next day (before I wrote the 300-word ironic puff-piece) to confirm CBS's position.
I did it politely, because I'm from the South, thanked her for her time and wished her a nice day. My understanding: CBS denies sending the email, cannot confirm that it came from there.
A few minutes later, Ms. Farley, by telephone, insists that everything that was said yesterday was off the record, that CBS didn't even have a "no comment" because there was nothing to comment on, and if I printed that I could expect to hear from CBS's legal department. Very suddenly, then, she has turned my puff piece into a major story about a major network trying to bully a Web-publication with the threat of a SLAPP suit. And I am stunned by how she has transformed something routine into something newsworthy.
I'm also aware (because she told me) that Ms. Farley graduated top of her class from Columbia Journalism School, and was quite willing to let me know how much I had to
But enough about me and Ms. Farley. Let's get back to the email.
MoveOn traced the IP address of the email addressed from Evening@cbsnews.com, the one that would be very easy to make look like came from CBS to 170.20.0.80, which resolves to a mail server at CBS Inc., 524 West 57th Street, New York, NY 10019.
Adam Green, Civics Communications Director for MoveOn.org, says, "It's a real problem when big media corporations like CBS refuse to ask tough questions challenging President Bush's lies about Iraq, yet feel fine threatening little-guy online news sites for daring to hold CBS accountable."
Yeah, well, we're not that little. We can hold our own. And though the New York Times mistakenly
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