NEW YORK (AP) – CBS News will shortly turn its unblinking eye on itself.

The network is starting its own blog, Public Eye, that will wade into controversies over how CBS covers the news. Vaughn Ververs, editor of the well-known Washington political blog The Hotline, was hired to become the internal watchdog, and his reports will begin early next month.

While Ververs won’t be considered an ombudsman, Public Eye seeks to provide a level of transparency unusual for a large news organization – particularly one damaged last fall by its flat-footed response to criticism of its story about President Bush’s military service.

“In today’s environment, the audience expects to be more directly connected to news providers than it did historically, and I think that’s a good thing,” said CBS News President Andrew Heyward. “We all felt strongly that letting people know that we are willing to engage in a healthy dialogue about what we do we think will enhance our reputation and give us a competitive advantage.”

Ververs will be expected to monitor other blogs, e-mails and viewer calls to report on disputes over CBS News stories before they boil over.

Many news organizations have heard complaints about a failure to cover “positive” news out of Iraq. Public Eye might, for example, turn to a CBS News correspondent to write about the difficulties of getting around in that country to report.

Another issue that Public Eye could have addressed was the internal debate held at many networks over whether to set aside prime-time programming to cover a presidential news conference, said Larry Kramer, CBS Digital Media president.

“Most people would be surprised to find out these issue are debated as hard as they are and news organizations work as hard as they can to avoid bias,” Kramer said.

Many of the reports may simply be informational, like taking a camera into the network’s morning news meeting and posting video on the Web. With no model, the Web log has the freedom to try different things, Ververs said.

Jeff Jarvis, a leader in the Web log community and author of the Buzz Machine blog, praised the CBS initiative. (Jarvis isn’t involved in Public Eye, but said he met briefly with Heyward and Kramer to offer insights into the blogging community.)

“The point of this is to open up the walls of the news business,” he said. “If they could do that, that would be spectacular. That’s what the news business needs.”

CBS News seemed either oblivious or defiant when specific criticisms to last fall’s Bush story began surfacing on the Internet, a reaction that undoubtedly worsened the network’s problems.

Jarvis said he’s concerned that Ververs is being assigned strictly as an objective reporter, not as an opinionated observer. Disembodied voices don’t work well on the Internet, he said.

Heyward, who calls Ververs a “nonbudsman,” said he wanted a fresh and different approach. At 36, Ververs also doesn’t fit the traditional ombudsman profile of a journalist with many years of experience.

“I think he will be more likely to get cooperation within CBS News if he were a reporter and not another critic,” he said. “There are plenty of people out there who are criticizing us already.”

CBS News employees haven’t been ordered to cooperate, but Heyward said he has encouraged them. Ververs will report directly to Kramer, with Heyward having no authority over him.

CBS’ relationship with political conservatives, who long considered Dan Rather public enemy No. 1, remains damaged, said Tim Graham of the Media Research Center watchdog group. He welcomed Public Eye, although adding self-examination would have more impact if it was done on the air and not over the Internet.

“It’s better than “Go away, I don’t have to explain myself,”‘ Graham said.

Ververs had worked at CBS News and Fox News Channel before starting at The Hotline in 2002. He wrote a weekly column on the press and Washington. He said he maintained strict political neutrality at The Hotline, but he has a political job in his background, working as press secretary for Pat Buchanan’s 1992 campaign for the Republican presidential nomination.

The political job was just a coincidence, Heyward said.

“We didn’t go out looking for someone who had right-wing credentials,” he said. “I don’t see this as a very politicized position.”

Public Eye will be an important step in helping large news organizations mend damaged reputations, Ververs said.

“All of what is now considered the mainstream media, they’ve all been sort of on the hill looking down,” he said. “It’s not that they don’t want to be responsive, necessarily. It’s just that it’s very difficult to answer 5,000 letters and 10,000 e-mails a day. How do you go about that? What we’ll try to do is pick out the things that we think are important, that are legitimate, and shine a spotlight on them.”

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On the Net:

www.cbsnews.com

AP-ES-08-26-05 1405EDT