NEWS LEGEND - Morley Shafer Interview With Katharine Hepburn

My favorite Morley Shafer interview

NEWS LEGEND - Morley Shafer in Memoriam

My favorite journalist and news legend was Morley Shafer of CBS 60 Minutes.

He died on 5/19/2016 at 84, 8 days after retirement on 5/11/2016.

• A look at Morley Safer's legendary "60 Minutes" career

• Remembering CBS News legend Morley Safer

• Stephen Remembers Morley Safer

MEDIA - Star Trek Into Darkness

Yes, I'm a Trekkie.

"New 'Star Trek Into Darkness' trailer debuts" by Ken Lombardi, CBS News 3/11/2012

Captain Kirk may not be up for a promotion anytime soon.

The Enterprise commander faces a reprimand from Starfleet brass in the latest trailer for J.J. Abrams' upcoming "Star Trek Into Darkness."

"Do you have any idea what a pain you are?"  Admiral Christopher Pike (Bruce Greenwood) asks Chris Pine's Kirk in the new spot.  "You think the rules don't apply to you because you disagree with them?"

The film is a sequel to Abrams' 2009 blockbuster "Star Trek" reboot, with Greenwood, Pine and much of the cast from the first film back on board for this latest installment.

While some of the same footage is reused from the first official "Darkness" trailer, a few new scenes have been thrown in with more clues to the identity of the sequel's mysterious villain, played by "Sherlock" star Benedict Cumberbatch.

There has been much speculation over Cumbebatch's role as John Harrison and his as-yet-unknown character history.  Some think that Harrison has some sort of a connection to Khan, the villain played by Ricardo Montalban in "Star Trek II" and the 60s TV series.

Another scene from the trailer features the Enterprise totally submerged underwater while encountering a giant sea alien.  Watch the video below to see for yourself.

"Star Trek Into Darkness" officially opens in theaters on May 17.

CALIFORNIA - Dorner Manhunt Update

"Christopher Dorner manhunt appears to be over as authorities work to ID body" CBS This Morning 2/13/2013

Excerpt

The sweeping manhunt for a fugitive ex-cop wanted in a deadly rampage appears to be over.

Overnight, sheriff's deputies said charred remains were found inside a burned-out cabin near Big Bear Lake, Calif., east of Los Angeles.  It's not yet confirmed if the remains are those of Christopher Dorner.

The cabin went up in flames after an intense shootout.  Only CBS News captured the gunfight while it was happening.  CBS News correspondent Carter Evans was in the middle of it all.

Early Tuesday, two cleaning ladies at a condominium in Big Bear discovered a man they say looked like Dorner.  He took them hostage, tied them up and tried to escape, stealing a pair of vehicles along the way.  Now law enforcement officials are confident they got the right man.

Acting on reports of a carjacking, law enforcement officials quickly tracked the man accused of targeting police officers and their families.

"The suspect that stole the vehicle matched the description.  He crashed the car and then took off into the forest," San Bernardino County Sheriff John McMahon said.

As he barricaded himself in an empty cabin, the man believed to be Dorner fired a .50-caliber sniper rifle, shooting two deputies, killing one of them.

Following tactical teams, CBS News' crew was caught in the middle of a second firefight.

Asked how Evans was able to get so close to the firefight, he said he and his crew received a tip on where to find some police teams searching for Dorner and then heard the carjacking reports.

"At that point we started following those search teams, and they jumped out of their cars with their rifles drawn and started firing, and only then did we really realize what we rolled up on," Evans said.

At one point, the man believed to be Dorner tried to escape by throwing a smoke grenade at officers.  Police also deployed smoke grenades, setting up a screen so the wounded could be evacuated.

The resort town of Big Bear had been the focus of the manhunt since last Thursday, when a burned-out truck belonging to Dorner was found in the area, along with weapons, survival gear and a gas mask.  As the media descended on the town and SWAT teams searched door to door, police now believe Dorner was hiding in plain sight in an unoccupied condo just across the road from their command post.

On "CBS This Morning" Wednesday, CBS News senior correspondent John Miller, who once headed the Los Angeles Police Department's Major Crimes Division, reported that the cabin had apparently been empty for some time and it remained unclear whether Dorner had been hiding in it for hours or days.

POLITICS - Media's Total Failure to Protect America

I could not believe the comments in the following article. Our media no longer thinks it has an obligation to act as watchdogs on the body politic. Our media has become totally an entertainment industry because the media corporations are concerned only with profit.

"Midterms and the Media" from FAIR (Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting)

Appearing on CNN's Reliable Sources (11/5/06), CBS reporter Jim Axelrod explained that reporting valuable information about candidates is not the media's top priority—and voters can get all that stuff someplace else anyway:

• "In this Internet age, there's no shortage of places to go if you want to read position papers or hear what candidate are holding forth about the economy, education, the environment, anything like that. But our job, especially in the last four or five days, is to take everything that's coming in and crystallize it through a filter of what is popping, what seems to be the most--I guess, what you'd call man biting dog, what's out of the ordinary."

Fox News Channel anchor and managing editor Brit Hume explained (Broadcasting & Cable, 11/6/06) why journalists shouldn't evaluate political advertising for accuracy:

• "I don't like the reporters that try to police them, tell you what's true and what's not. Most political ads are arguably true and arguably false. It you start trying to get into issues of truth and falsity, you end up doing what the candidates do, which is arguing. My view is, let 'em play. The truth is, negative ads work."

ABC political director Mark Halperin, on the other hand, seems to think that fact-checking the candidates and tracking stealth campaign techniques is simply too difficult (Slate, 10/30/06):

• "The networks don't spend anything like they used to on covering elections, but we still have as many resources as anyone else devoted to trying to hold the candidates and campaigns accountable to the public interest. But it isn't easy. Even with all the modern technology out there, tracking new television ads is merely really, really hard, while tracking radio ads, church fliers, and those robo-calls that come at the very end is nearly impossible. And once you get a hold of the content, figuring out how to truth-squad the item, and then report it in context, is among the toughest tasks in daily journalism."

Judging media coverage of elections is often reduced to asking whether the press was fair to this candidate or that. The better question, though, is whether the press was fair to the American voters.

The old media is dead, killed by profit motivated corporate owners of our media outlets. Gone are the days of Woods & Bernstein and media as the "5th estate," there to be a watchdog for the American people. If we had today's media back then, Nixon would never had to resign.

Sad, very sad.