He’s “studly.”

Ick.

Download and watch the clip (.wmv file).

Hat tip: Allah Pundit and Newsbusters

Yowch.

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Keep a close eye on Mike Wallace
The bias of Mike Wallace

Vaughn Ververs has a follow-up on Mike Wallace’s appearance at an anti-gun Brady Center event late last month. Ververs responded to an inquiry from NRAnews.com blogger/radio host Cam Edwards, who blew the whistle. Ververs was initially quick to back up Wallace and CBS, but now he is less satisfied:

We were asked what CBS News standards are on appearances such as these. Linda Mason, senior vice president for standards and special projects at CBS News at the time informed us that if a CBS correspondent becomes identifiable with one side of a controversial issue, that correspondent would no longer be allowed to cover that issue. When we asked if Wallace’s appearance in this case made him “identifiable” on this issue, Mason said CBS was looking into the matter to determine that.

I spoke with Mason late yesterday and she told me how CBS News will deal with this issue in the future. Mason said that if Wallace “suggests a story that we feel is a potential conflict, we’ll look at it and if we see a conflict, we’ll turn it down.” I take that to mean we won’t be seeing Mr. Wallace doing any more stories involving Second Amendment issues.

When I first addressed this issue, it was with mixed feelings. I sympathized with Wallace and the explanation he provided me for his appearance. He emphasized what he saw as his humorous approach to his comments and his focus on his very good friend’s 80th birthday party. But I also found the fact he had brought a video addressing the gun issue to be troubling.

I have since seen some of Wallace’s remarks and am far less conflicted. In introducing the video, Wallace calls Heston the “self-righteous enemy of the Sarah and Jim Brady bunch.” Coming out of the video, he mocks Heston’s widely-seen comments that the government would take away his gun only from his “cold, dead hands.” And he referenced, we assume, the relatively unknown position on gun control of Chief Justice John Roberts, calling him part of “the legions of the already convinced.”

Wallace told me his appearance was “meant to be and was received as a joke.” If so, it was one that was out of my range of humor.

So the answer is to just trust CBS? Ha.

Cam Edwards responds here.

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The bias of Mike Wallace

NRAnews.com blogger/radio host Cam Edwards wondered why CBS News allowed 60 Minutes host Mike Wallace to appear at an anti-gun Brady Center event late last month. Edwards describes the appearance:

That’s Mike Wallace two weeks ago at a Brady Center fundraiser in Washington, D.C. At the event, held at the French Embassy, Wallace played a clip of his “60 Minutes” interview with then-NRA president Charlton Heston, whom he described as the “self-righteous enemy of the Jim and Sarah Brady Bunch”. Afterwards, he mocked Heston by holding his hands above his head (as if holding a rifle), and said “in my dead hands… remember when he used to hold up…” while the crowd tittered. He told [event honoree Art] Buchwald he’d made his $250 contribution to the Brady Center.

Edwards sent a letter to the CBS News blog asking about the network’s ethics and disclosure policies governing such appearances.

CBS News Public Eye blogger Vaughn Ververs, mirabile dictu, has responded.
Here’s an excerpt:

Since this is just the kind of question PE is here to help answer, I spoke with Linda Mason, the senior vice president for standards and special projects at CBS News and asked her what the policy is regarding these types of appearances. Here’s what she told me:

“We allow CBS correspondents to speak at various functions and occasionally show video. We have strict regulations that if a CBS correspondent becomes identifiable with one side of a controversial issue, they will not be allowed to cover that issue in the future.”

I asked Mason whether this appearance by Wallace raised him to the level of being “identifiable” with the cause of gun control and she told me, “we’re looking into it to determine” that.

Edwards is not satisfied. Neither am I.

Ververs gets kudos for being responsive, but he’s kidding himself if he or anyone else at CBS News thinks there’s any doubt that Wallace has made himself “identifiable” with a cause.

“Looking into it?”

Look. At. The. Picture.

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E-mail The Public Eye with your thoughts: publiceye@cbs.com.

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Jeff Soyer at Alphecca:

Look, public people, even TV reporters, can certainly mail off a check if they want to their favorite causes (organizations) but should they really be showing up in person at such events and then try to claim they are still impartial in the stories they report concerning issues backed or attacked by such organizations?

Let’s just use an analogy: If Katie Couric of NBC’s Today Show appeared and supported a fundraiser by a pro-abortion group, shouldn’t that disqualify her — or at least require her to preface her reporting — of stories about pro-abortion or pro-life issues?

Read Cam’s whole piece and I hope the blogosphere gives this more notice.

Ditto.

David Hardy at Of Arms and the Law: “We all know there’s a certain media bias at work, but you’d think they’d be less obvious about it…”

Background: Tim Graham at Newsbusters has more details on other media attendees/organizers.

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Related: One of my favorite bloggers, The Anchoress, was invited to write for the CBS News blog. She shares her impression of the CBS Evening News here.

What is it with people who can’t wait in line?

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Battle of the Beltway Buttinskis

Yes, believe your eyes! It’s the latest publication from the trustworthy narrators of history at CBS News–who are cravenly attempting to cash in on President Reagan’s death in time for the holiday book-buying season. I just about spit my decaf Cara Mocha all over the book when I saw it. From the Amazon.com description:

Three of CBS News’s most respected journalists — Dan Rather, Lesley Stahl, and Mike Wallace — offer original essays drawing on their personal experience of Reagan in action. Many of the speeches of the president known as The Great Communicator are collected on the special full-length DVD — including the address to the nation after the Challenger disaster in 1986 and the 1987 speech at the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin — along with classic interviews with Reagan and his family…

What head-in-his-derriere editor at Simon & Schuster came up with this idea?! Here is a simple exercise: Draw a Venn diagram of two sets. Set A is the book-buying population that considers Rather, Stahl, and Wallace “respected journalists.” Set B is the book-buying population eager to spend money on a positive remembrance of Ronald Reagan and ever-mindful of the MSM’s deeply-held hatred for Reagan and his legacy. The result is what even a mathematically-challenged person like me remembers from from grade school…a disjoint set:

Translation: This one’s going straight to the remaindered bargain books section. (Current Amazon.com rating: #165,548.)