‘Eye’ sees plenty

AS the editorial director of CBSNews.com, I have received countless e-mails and letters just like this one, but in seven years in this job I have never sent one. But Scott Collins’ unprofessional and willfully inaccurate story [“Public Eye Partially Blind,” April 24] compels me. It is simply distorted and unfair. Collins ignored information CBS gave him and cites no sources to support his opinions.

Collins did note that Public Eye “addressed and even questioned some CBS coverage in the traditional manner of a media ombudsman,” but then dismissed it as “low-caliber internal policing.” Really? What would Collins suggest are examples of high-caliber policing? Perhaps some would be contained in the list of 38 examples from Public Eye that we sent him that he chose to ignore. And why would Collins intentionally leave out the simple fact that CBS is the one and only network -- broadcast or cable -- that does any public policing in the ombudsman tradition of any caliber, low, high or intermediary?

Collins is a lusty defender of NBC’s “Dateline” to such a degree that he grossly distorts Public Eye’s fleeting coverage of that show. He asserts that some Public Eye posts involving “Dateline” “serve to deflect attention from any internal issues of real substance.” It sounds like CBS and Public Eye are on a media jihad against a prime-time competitor. That is nonsense. As of April 11, Public Eye had published 725 items. Exactly two involved “Dateline.” Public Eye writes about other news organizations all the time; it’s a blog about journalism.

DICK MEYER

Washington, D.C.