A Trick of the Eye

By James Poniewozik

And that's the way it is," Walter Cronkite used to sign off the CBS Evening News. On New Year's Eve in Times Square, his heir Dan Rather might have closed, "And that's the way it appears to be, thanks to the magic of computer imaging." But he didn't. Nor did CBS say it had digitally inserted a virtual logo in the neon adscape behind him, obliterating an existing sign for NBC. In fact, it turns out CBS has used digital image-insertion technology ever since launching the Early Show in November, to plaster that program's logo all over its Manhattan neighborhood--at the entrance to Central Park, on the back of horse-drawn carriages, even on the side of the building that is its host. Last week media critics and competitors gave CBS a poke in the Eye.

The company that contracted with CBS, Princeton Video Image, already uses its technology to plant "signs" at ballgames. But shouldn't news shows (even ones with Martha Stewart segments) stick to, um, reality? Other networks turned down the technology. "People should know what they're looking at," says Tom Goldstein, dean of Columbia University's journalism school. "I think some sort of disclosure or disclaimer would be appropriate." Even Rather regrets the New Year's Eve sleight of hand. "There was no ethical consideration at the time," he says. "I now know this was a mistake." But CBS News president Andrew Heyward stands behind the technology. While the Times Square incident was a "much closer call," he says, "the use on the Early program is completely appropriate--a whimsical, creative, inspired use."

It doesn't take a mouse to smell the cheese in CBS's promos, but are they unethical? They are certainly images contrary to fact--visual lies. But you could say the same of a newscast that slaps a backdrop of a "newsroom" behind a reporter in an empty studio, or a TV newsmagazine that asks an interviewee to sit down and type for 30 seconds for the camera in order to have video of the subject "working." And there are far more egregious, low-tech and common promos on news programs. When a morning show or news broadcast shills its corporate parent's sitcoms or movies, it's crowding out news. CBS's phantom ad crowded out, well, more advertising.

Postmodernism and microchips have brought us to this: grown people arguing over the reality of digital billboards vs. paper-and-paste ones. But such tricks, like digital retouching in print magazines, do feed public suspicion. What, viewers may rightly wonder, is to keep newscasts from digitally jazzing up video, to make explosions or protests, say, more dramatic? "When you have new technology like this," says Rather, "it's going to raise new issues." And that is the way it is.

--By James Poniewozik. Reported by William Tynan/New York

With reporting by William Tynan/New York