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TYNDALL HEADLINE: HIGHLIGHTS FROM JUNE 18, 2007
The implications of divided power in Palestine following Hamas' takeover of the Gaza Strip were the Story of the Day, attracting most time on all three networks combined. But none of the three newscasts treated Gaza as newsworthy enough for its lead item. On a day when all three networks trumpeted Exclusives--ABC from the Afghanistan-Pakistan border, NBC from the British royal family, CBS from Baghdad--CBS led with its scoop, exposing the sordid abuse of orphan boys. ABC and NBC both led with flash floods in Texas.
TYNDALL PICKS FOR JUNE 18, 2007: CLICK ON GRID ELEMENTS TO SEARCH FOR MATCHING ITEMS
SCOOP CITY The implications of divided power in Palestine following Hamas' takeover of the Gaza Strip were the Story of the Day, attracting most time on all three networks combined. But none of the three newscasts treated Gaza as newsworthy enough for its lead item. On a day when all three networks trumpeted Exclusives--ABC from the Afghanistan-Pakistan border, NBC from the British royal family, CBS from Baghdad--CBS led with its scoop, exposing the sordid abuse of orphan boys. ABC and NBC both led with flash floods in Texas.
The State Department announced that it would restore financial aid to the Fatah government on the West Bank and extend humanitarian aid to the Gaza Strip. "The trick will be to keep Hamas from claiming credit" for its delivery, mused ABC's Dean Reynolds (subscription required). Reynolds contrasted Hamas--"elected fair and square" in parliamentary elections--with the new Palestinian regime recognized by the United States, "headed by a prime minister whose party won all of 3% in that election." He generalized about Palestine, Lebanon and Iraq: "A lack of popular support for leaders allied with the US often undermines the best American intentions."
CBS sent Richard Roth to the border of Gaza where Israeli troops deterred refugees from crossing with "tear gas and warning shots." Israel controls Gaza's airspace, its coastline and 32 miles of its land border, Roth observed: "If Gaza was already the world's biggest prison, the rules now amount to a lockdown." NBC's Martin Fletcher told anchor Brian Williams that he wants to report from Gaza but cannot: "It is heartbreaking. It is just too dangerous." His unidentified Gazan sources told him that he would be kidnapped, just as the BBC's Alan Johnston has been. Fletcher reported that Johnston is being held in the center of the Strip by the powerful Dagmoush Clan, which is gearing up for a feud with Hamas militiamen. "If I were a kidnapped journalist in Gaza the last thing I would want to know is that the Hamas government was coming to free me. That could be a death sentence."
VERY SICK INDEED CBS' lead by Lara Logan was an Exclusive that "shocked battle-hardened soldiers." A patrol from the USArmy's 82nd Airborne stumbled across an orphanage where two dozen so-called "special needs" boys were found naked, in temperatures of 120F, shackled to their beds, starving, covered in their own filth. The government had stocked the orphanage with food and clothing: "Instead of giving it to the boys, the soldiers believe it was being sold to local markets." Sgt Mitchell Gibson recalled finding one boy: "The only thing basically that was moving were his eyeballs--flies in the mouth, in the eyes, in the nose, ears, eating all the open wounds."
Concluded Logan: "How a nation cares for its most vulnerable is one of the most important benchmarks for the health of any society."
UPDATE: Matthew Felling (text link) at the CBS blog Public Eye argues that because this story provides "an opportunity to show an accomplishment of the US military presence in Baghdad" it somehow counts as an antidote to the "sea of bad news about Iraq and the surge and rising body counts in the streets." Felling is wrong. There is no moral calculus that can turn the discovery of this orphanage into "good news." Of course it is welcome that the abuses were exposed--but their discovery in no way discounts their existence in the first place.
CHILDREN KILLED & CHILD KILLERS A commando raid by US special forces in Paktika Province in eastern Afghanistan killed seven children. NBC's Jim Miklaszewski was told by his anonymous sources at the Pentagon that the commandos had seen no sign of the children during twelve hours of surveillance at a suspected al-Qaeda compound before launching the rocket attack that killed them, as well as "several" enemy fighters. "The growing number of innocent civilians killed in US military attacks has taken a political toll."
ABC's Exclusive was filed by Brian Ross. He narrated videotape filed by an unnamed Pakistani journalist of a Taliban ceremony in which 300 recruits, "including some very young boys," were divided into four teams and assigned as suicide bombers to infiltrate the United States, Canada, Britain and Germany, the four nations with leading representation in the NATO forces in Afghanistan. Ross consulted his anonymous source in "US intelligence" who dismissed the event as a "sophisticated propaganda campaign" featuring "jihadist bravado."
MORNINGS ACROSS THE POND NBC's Exclusive by Today anchor Matt Lauer substituted the glamorous for the gruesome--it was a sit-down with William and Harry, the pair of royal sons of Princess Diana of Wales, who was killed in a car crash almost a decade ago. Diana "lived and died dodging the camera's persistent lens, a lens that, in their mother's absence, the princes find increasingly focused on them," Lauer argued implausibly. Clearly, far from shying away from it, the princes' mother courted publicity and, according to the soundbite Lauer obtained from Prince William, her son, too, seems perfectly at ease in the media spotlight: "At the end of the day you cannot stop it and, you know, there is no point in fighting it."
NBC closed its newscast with a second promotion for Today from across the pond. On Thursday, NBC's morning show promises a concert by Paul Potts. He is the Pavarotti wannabe cell phone salesman whose operatic tenor won the Britain's Got Talent TV competition. "Audiences and judges were stunned--even the tough ones seen on American TV," Mark Potter told us, referring to American Idol's resident English curmudgeon.
STAYS MAINLY ON THE PLAIN The weather on the northern plains of Texas was the lead on ABC and NBC. ABC's Mike von Fremd found the plains transformed into "whitewater rapids." Rainfall as torrential as four inches an hour triggered flash floods that washed away cars and mobile homes and forced residents to await rescue on the roofs of their homes. "Some people simply could not outrun the deluge," stated CBS' Mark Strassmann, as at least four were killed. NBC's Don Teague saw "boats, hovercraft, even construction equipment" pluck hundreds to safety.
ABUSE ON DEMAND A creepy Internet story was filed by Elizabeth Palmer for CBS as the online chatroom Kids the Light of our Lives was exposed. Its British-based ringleader, Timothy Cox, had been arrested last September, Palmer reported, and since then he had been impersonated by police officers in order to round up the child sex abuse ring that Cox was operating, involving 700 members in 35 different countries. The chatroom "offered thousands of images of babies and children being abused--some of it on demand." Police announced that they were able to track down 31 children and rescue them from ongoing abuse. Cox was sentenced to prison "until he is no longer considered a threat to children--considering the service he ran, that may be never."
SELF-SURVEILLANCE The quirkier side of the Internet was described by CBS' Sharyn Alfonsi. She retold how the War on Terrorism has inspired an art project. It started when Hasan Elahi, a Bangladeshi-American art professor, was detained and interrogated over a six-month period by the FBI on suspicion of hiding explosives in a storage locker. To prevent any subsequent false suspicion, Elahi decided to give himself "a picture-perfect alibi" by taking a digital snapshot every time he moves and posting it on his Website. His diary is monitored by 160,000 online hits each day: "Visitors view every airport he passes through, every meal he eats, every cup of coffee he drinks and the pit stops that follow." That is elahi.rutgers.edu.
MENTIONED IN PASSING The network newscasts do not assign correspondents to all of the news of the day. If Tyndall Report readers come across videostreamed reports online of stories that were mentioned only in passing, post the link in comments for us to check out.
Today's examples: Russian engineers have repaired the computers on the International Space Station…Yahoo!, the Internet search engine, has fired Terry Semel, its chief executive…the trio of lacrosse players suspended as students by Duke University after being falsely accused of rape settled lawsuits against the college.
The State Department announced that it would restore financial aid to the Fatah government on the West Bank and extend humanitarian aid to the Gaza Strip. "The trick will be to keep Hamas from claiming credit" for its delivery, mused ABC's Dean Reynolds (subscription required). Reynolds contrasted Hamas--"elected fair and square" in parliamentary elections--with the new Palestinian regime recognized by the United States, "headed by a prime minister whose party won all of 3% in that election." He generalized about Palestine, Lebanon and Iraq: "A lack of popular support for leaders allied with the US often undermines the best American intentions."
CBS sent Richard Roth to the border of Gaza where Israeli troops deterred refugees from crossing with "tear gas and warning shots." Israel controls Gaza's airspace, its coastline and 32 miles of its land border, Roth observed: "If Gaza was already the world's biggest prison, the rules now amount to a lockdown." NBC's Martin Fletcher told anchor Brian Williams that he wants to report from Gaza but cannot: "It is heartbreaking. It is just too dangerous." His unidentified Gazan sources told him that he would be kidnapped, just as the BBC's Alan Johnston has been. Fletcher reported that Johnston is being held in the center of the Strip by the powerful Dagmoush Clan, which is gearing up for a feud with Hamas militiamen. "If I were a kidnapped journalist in Gaza the last thing I would want to know is that the Hamas government was coming to free me. That could be a death sentence."
VERY SICK INDEED CBS' lead by Lara Logan was an Exclusive that "shocked battle-hardened soldiers." A patrol from the USArmy's 82nd Airborne stumbled across an orphanage where two dozen so-called "special needs" boys were found naked, in temperatures of 120F, shackled to their beds, starving, covered in their own filth. The government had stocked the orphanage with food and clothing: "Instead of giving it to the boys, the soldiers believe it was being sold to local markets." Sgt Mitchell Gibson recalled finding one boy: "The only thing basically that was moving were his eyeballs--flies in the mouth, in the eyes, in the nose, ears, eating all the open wounds."
Concluded Logan: "How a nation cares for its most vulnerable is one of the most important benchmarks for the health of any society."
UPDATE: Matthew Felling (text link) at the CBS blog Public Eye argues that because this story provides "an opportunity to show an accomplishment of the US military presence in Baghdad" it somehow counts as an antidote to the "sea of bad news about Iraq and the surge and rising body counts in the streets." Felling is wrong. There is no moral calculus that can turn the discovery of this orphanage into "good news." Of course it is welcome that the abuses were exposed--but their discovery in no way discounts their existence in the first place.
CHILDREN KILLED & CHILD KILLERS A commando raid by US special forces in Paktika Province in eastern Afghanistan killed seven children. NBC's Jim Miklaszewski was told by his anonymous sources at the Pentagon that the commandos had seen no sign of the children during twelve hours of surveillance at a suspected al-Qaeda compound before launching the rocket attack that killed them, as well as "several" enemy fighters. "The growing number of innocent civilians killed in US military attacks has taken a political toll."
ABC's Exclusive was filed by Brian Ross. He narrated videotape filed by an unnamed Pakistani journalist of a Taliban ceremony in which 300 recruits, "including some very young boys," were divided into four teams and assigned as suicide bombers to infiltrate the United States, Canada, Britain and Germany, the four nations with leading representation in the NATO forces in Afghanistan. Ross consulted his anonymous source in "US intelligence" who dismissed the event as a "sophisticated propaganda campaign" featuring "jihadist bravado."
MORNINGS ACROSS THE POND NBC's Exclusive by Today anchor Matt Lauer substituted the glamorous for the gruesome--it was a sit-down with William and Harry, the pair of royal sons of Princess Diana of Wales, who was killed in a car crash almost a decade ago. Diana "lived and died dodging the camera's persistent lens, a lens that, in their mother's absence, the princes find increasingly focused on them," Lauer argued implausibly. Clearly, far from shying away from it, the princes' mother courted publicity and, according to the soundbite Lauer obtained from Prince William, her son, too, seems perfectly at ease in the media spotlight: "At the end of the day you cannot stop it and, you know, there is no point in fighting it."
NBC closed its newscast with a second promotion for Today from across the pond. On Thursday, NBC's morning show promises a concert by Paul Potts. He is the Pavarotti wannabe cell phone salesman whose operatic tenor won the Britain's Got Talent TV competition. "Audiences and judges were stunned--even the tough ones seen on American TV," Mark Potter told us, referring to American Idol's resident English curmudgeon.
STAYS MAINLY ON THE PLAIN The weather on the northern plains of Texas was the lead on ABC and NBC. ABC's Mike von Fremd found the plains transformed into "whitewater rapids." Rainfall as torrential as four inches an hour triggered flash floods that washed away cars and mobile homes and forced residents to await rescue on the roofs of their homes. "Some people simply could not outrun the deluge," stated CBS' Mark Strassmann, as at least four were killed. NBC's Don Teague saw "boats, hovercraft, even construction equipment" pluck hundreds to safety.
ABUSE ON DEMAND A creepy Internet story was filed by Elizabeth Palmer for CBS as the online chatroom Kids the Light of our Lives was exposed. Its British-based ringleader, Timothy Cox, had been arrested last September, Palmer reported, and since then he had been impersonated by police officers in order to round up the child sex abuse ring that Cox was operating, involving 700 members in 35 different countries. The chatroom "offered thousands of images of babies and children being abused--some of it on demand." Police announced that they were able to track down 31 children and rescue them from ongoing abuse. Cox was sentenced to prison "until he is no longer considered a threat to children--considering the service he ran, that may be never."
SELF-SURVEILLANCE The quirkier side of the Internet was described by CBS' Sharyn Alfonsi. She retold how the War on Terrorism has inspired an art project. It started when Hasan Elahi, a Bangladeshi-American art professor, was detained and interrogated over a six-month period by the FBI on suspicion of hiding explosives in a storage locker. To prevent any subsequent false suspicion, Elahi decided to give himself "a picture-perfect alibi" by taking a digital snapshot every time he moves and posting it on his Website. His diary is monitored by 160,000 online hits each day: "Visitors view every airport he passes through, every meal he eats, every cup of coffee he drinks and the pit stops that follow." That is elahi.rutgers.edu.
MENTIONED IN PASSING The network newscasts do not assign correspondents to all of the news of the day. If Tyndall Report readers come across videostreamed reports online of stories that were mentioned only in passing, post the link in comments for us to check out.
Today's examples: Russian engineers have repaired the computers on the International Space Station…Yahoo!, the Internet search engine, has fired Terry Semel, its chief executive…the trio of lacrosse players suspended as students by Duke University after being falsely accused of rape settled lawsuits against the college.
