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TYNDALL HEADLINE: HIGHLIGHTS FROM JULY 27, 2007
The report by a panel studying stress in the astronaut corps mentioned only a couple of drunks. The boozers were not named. They were not said to have hit the bottle while in space. Apparently, they merely imbibed late enough and heavily enough the night before that alcohol was still in their system during liftoff. The suspect missions were not identified nor were the dates of the supposed infraction of the twelve-hour so-called bottle-to-throttle rule. All in all this was a thoroughly nebulous basis for the Story of the Day--yet such is the abiding appeal of NASA's space program that such unverified scraps of information qualified as the lead item on all three networks.
TYNDALL PICKS FOR JULY 27, 2007: CLICK ON GRID ELEMENTS TO SEARCH FOR MATCHING ITEMS
DRUNKEN HYPE The report by a panel studying stress in the astronaut corps mentioned only a couple of drunks. The boozers were not named. They were not said to have hit the bottle while in space. Apparently, they merely imbibed late enough and heavily enough the night before that alcohol was still in their system during liftoff. The suspect missions were not identified nor were the dates of the supposed infraction of the twelve-hour so-called bottle-to-throttle rule. All in all this was a thoroughly nebulous basis for the Story of the Day--yet such is the abiding appeal of NASA's space program that such unverified scraps of information qualified as the lead item on all three networks.
The information that came closest to granting gravitas to this story was the line in the 12-page report quoted by CBS' Byron Pitts: "Astronauts had been so intoxicated prior to flight that flight surgeons and their fellow astronauts raised concerns to local on-scene leadership regarding flight safety." Apart from that the story seemed hyped. Even though the report offered "no names, dates or hard evidence," as ABC's Mike von Fremd pointed out, he still claimed without explanation that the heavy drinking occurred "before crucial missions." NBC's Don Teague called the report's findings "troubling" and used a clip from the Hollywood movie The Right Stuff to back up his assertion that "even from the early years NASA's astronauts have been portrayed as hard-partying space cowboys."
CBS' in-house space consultant Bill Harwood (no link) told anchor Katie Couric that he has "never heard even a whisper" of "an inebriated astronaut actually getting on a Space Shuttle--a claim that was validated by NBC's Teague, who reported that the two liftoffs in question involved a Russian Soyuz spacecraft and a T-38 training jet.
WHEN BEARS ATTACK When the week's trading ended on Wall Street, CNBC's Erin Burnett reckoned that the broad financial markets had seen their worst selloff in five years. She listed a "perfect storm" of three negative factors for NBC anchor Brian Williams: home prices are falling more than expected; easy credit has dried up with all borrowers finding loans harder to come by; and crude oil prices are rising to "a penny shy of a record."
On CBS, Kelly Wallace mentioned one of those irritating misleading statistics to persuade us that the stock market is still fine for investors. "From 1985 to 2006," Wallace selectively quoted, the Dow Jones Industrial Average "grew an average of 8.6% per year. If you invested $1,000 back then you would have over $15,000 today." Well two can play at that game: consider the weekend's DJIA closing of 13265 and compare it to the 11722 it reached in January 2000 and you could come up with an equally fatuous counterquote: "Since the start of the millennium, the DJIA has grown at a rate of less than 2% per year. If you invested $1,000 back then, you would have gained only $132 in almost seven years."
As cheery as CBS' Wallace tried to be about the stock market, ABC's Betsy Stark (subscription required) was just gloomy about real estate. Housing is in "outright recession," she reported, "a major drag" on economic growth. "Businesses that depend on home building--from kitchen and bath retailers to furniture and carpet makers--are also getting squeezed." She predicted no turnaround for falling home prices until the end of the decade. The trend was illustrated by Sandra Hughes' profile of Los Angeles homeowner Judy Reidel for CBS' series Real Estate, Real Solutions. With prices falling, Reidel reckoned that she could recoup $70,000 by skipping a realtor and selling her 1920s Spanish-style home herself. Now after six weeks of open houses and an $80,000 reduction in her asking price of $1.4m she has still had no offers. Maybe Hughes' free publicity will help move the property. If so, what commission would Reidel owe CBS?
STRAIGHT AND NARROW NBC had David Gregory follow-up on the call for a special prosecutor to investigate possible perjury by Attorney General Alberto Gonzales. Gregory explained the contradiction between Gonzales and FBI Director Robert Mueller: the AG swore under oath that there was no argument within the administration over the National Security Agency's warrantless wiretapping of US citizens whereas "Mueller and other top Justice Department officials threatened to resign over the dispute." Unidentified "administration officials" explained the discrepancy to Gregory: "Gonzales has a narrower view of the wiretapping program than others."
WAS GRIDDER FRAGGED? The death of Pat Tillman, the former NFL player turned USArmy Ranger, continues to make news. Yesterday, CBS' Kimberly Dozier previewed the punishment of military brass for fabricating a story of heroics on the Afghan battlefield when Tillman was in fact killed by his own comrades in arms. Now comes a yet more incendiary theory, as reported by NBC's Jim Miklaszewski. Maybe Tillman's death was not accidental--but murder. Miklaszewski obtained army autopsy records on the grouping of bullet holes in Tillman's forehead that indicated a shooting at close quarters "not from 90 yards as the army investigation claims." Tillman's mother "has long suspected her son was deliberately killed by his fellow soldiers who were jealous of Tillman's notoriety."
COPS AND ROBBERS On the crime beat, both NBC and ABC came up with stories that contained less than meets the eye. ABC's David Wright (subscription required) latched onto the statistic that 120 gun stores nationwide accounted for 55,000 different firearms that were used in crimes or, in percentage terms, 1% of all stores sold 58% of all crime-related weapons. A case in point was a handgun sold by R&B Guns of Hampton Va that was used to kill Russell Timoshenko, an NYPD police officer. That seemed like a problem in need of urgent remedy--except that Wright's statistic has a date from a 2004 study, and R&B was closed by Virginia authorities "several years ago."
NBC's Mark Potter appeared to be warning us of a dangerous trend: "The FBI says bank robberies nationwide are on the rise." Then came the data--there were only 237 more robberies in 2006 than in 2005, an increase of just 4%. Their total annual loot is $70m nationwide from fewer than 7,000 robberies--which means that an average bank job nets a mere single grand. So why would such trivial events warrant network news coverage? Because all banks are equipped with security video allowing Potter's report to be peppered with dramatic pix of real life robbers.
INCREDIBLY ENDEARING ABC demonstrated it has a soft spot for The Simpsons--who does not?--earlier in the month when it assigned John Berman (subscription required) to cover the promotional contest between all the Springfields of the nation for the right to host the premiere of its movie version. Now that premiere is upon us, Charles Gibson followed up by naming Matt Groening, "his name rhymes with complaining," as ABC's Person of the Week. Groening explained that his own mother's name is Marge and she "did have a beehive hairdo when I was a little kid." He praised the character of Homer Simpson thus: "He is completely ruled by his impulses. He does not feel guilt--and I think that is incredibly endearing."
DRINK THIS Rounding off a light day of news--there was only one overseas story, a feature filed by ABC's Terry McCarthy (subscription required) on an Iraqi arts festival in Irbil--all three networks assigned a correspondent to cover water--balance, perhaps, for their booze-filled leads. Specifically the Pepsi-owned Aquafina brand of bottled drinking water has decided to change it label to acknowledge that its source is PWS. NBC's George Lewis reminded which brand Aquafina is--the one whose blue labels "conjure up images of crystal clean mountain springs." So ABC's Ned Potter translated: "Public Water Source--in other words it is a filtered, nicely-packaged version of tap water." Or in CBS' Richard Schlesinger's version: "From a pipe not a stream…water that has been forced through reverse osmosis, deionization and ozonation."
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: Vice President Dick Cheney will have his heart pacemaker replaced…Congress approved a series of counterterrorism precautions that were recommended by the 9/11 Commission report…UNICEF launched a drive to raise funds for the education of the children of Iraq War refugees…Michael Vick, the NFL star who denies charges of organizing pitbull fights, lost his Nike sponsorship…Joe Nacchio, the former boss of the Qwest telecoms firm, was sentenced to six years in prison for financial insider trading.
The information that came closest to granting gravitas to this story was the line in the 12-page report quoted by CBS' Byron Pitts: "Astronauts had been so intoxicated prior to flight that flight surgeons and their fellow astronauts raised concerns to local on-scene leadership regarding flight safety." Apart from that the story seemed hyped. Even though the report offered "no names, dates or hard evidence," as ABC's Mike von Fremd pointed out, he still claimed without explanation that the heavy drinking occurred "before crucial missions." NBC's Don Teague called the report's findings "troubling" and used a clip from the Hollywood movie The Right Stuff to back up his assertion that "even from the early years NASA's astronauts have been portrayed as hard-partying space cowboys."
CBS' in-house space consultant Bill Harwood (no link) told anchor Katie Couric that he has "never heard even a whisper" of "an inebriated astronaut actually getting on a Space Shuttle--a claim that was validated by NBC's Teague, who reported that the two liftoffs in question involved a Russian Soyuz spacecraft and a T-38 training jet.
WHEN BEARS ATTACK When the week's trading ended on Wall Street, CNBC's Erin Burnett reckoned that the broad financial markets had seen their worst selloff in five years. She listed a "perfect storm" of three negative factors for NBC anchor Brian Williams: home prices are falling more than expected; easy credit has dried up with all borrowers finding loans harder to come by; and crude oil prices are rising to "a penny shy of a record."
On CBS, Kelly Wallace mentioned one of those irritating misleading statistics to persuade us that the stock market is still fine for investors. "From 1985 to 2006," Wallace selectively quoted, the Dow Jones Industrial Average "grew an average of 8.6% per year. If you invested $1,000 back then you would have over $15,000 today." Well two can play at that game: consider the weekend's DJIA closing of 13265 and compare it to the 11722 it reached in January 2000 and you could come up with an equally fatuous counterquote: "Since the start of the millennium, the DJIA has grown at a rate of less than 2% per year. If you invested $1,000 back then, you would have gained only $132 in almost seven years."
As cheery as CBS' Wallace tried to be about the stock market, ABC's Betsy Stark (subscription required) was just gloomy about real estate. Housing is in "outright recession," she reported, "a major drag" on economic growth. "Businesses that depend on home building--from kitchen and bath retailers to furniture and carpet makers--are also getting squeezed." She predicted no turnaround for falling home prices until the end of the decade. The trend was illustrated by Sandra Hughes' profile of Los Angeles homeowner Judy Reidel for CBS' series Real Estate, Real Solutions. With prices falling, Reidel reckoned that she could recoup $70,000 by skipping a realtor and selling her 1920s Spanish-style home herself. Now after six weeks of open houses and an $80,000 reduction in her asking price of $1.4m she has still had no offers. Maybe Hughes' free publicity will help move the property. If so, what commission would Reidel owe CBS?
STRAIGHT AND NARROW NBC had David Gregory follow-up on the call for a special prosecutor to investigate possible perjury by Attorney General Alberto Gonzales. Gregory explained the contradiction between Gonzales and FBI Director Robert Mueller: the AG swore under oath that there was no argument within the administration over the National Security Agency's warrantless wiretapping of US citizens whereas "Mueller and other top Justice Department officials threatened to resign over the dispute." Unidentified "administration officials" explained the discrepancy to Gregory: "Gonzales has a narrower view of the wiretapping program than others."
WAS GRIDDER FRAGGED? The death of Pat Tillman, the former NFL player turned USArmy Ranger, continues to make news. Yesterday, CBS' Kimberly Dozier previewed the punishment of military brass for fabricating a story of heroics on the Afghan battlefield when Tillman was in fact killed by his own comrades in arms. Now comes a yet more incendiary theory, as reported by NBC's Jim Miklaszewski. Maybe Tillman's death was not accidental--but murder. Miklaszewski obtained army autopsy records on the grouping of bullet holes in Tillman's forehead that indicated a shooting at close quarters "not from 90 yards as the army investigation claims." Tillman's mother "has long suspected her son was deliberately killed by his fellow soldiers who were jealous of Tillman's notoriety."
COPS AND ROBBERS On the crime beat, both NBC and ABC came up with stories that contained less than meets the eye. ABC's David Wright (subscription required) latched onto the statistic that 120 gun stores nationwide accounted for 55,000 different firearms that were used in crimes or, in percentage terms, 1% of all stores sold 58% of all crime-related weapons. A case in point was a handgun sold by R&B Guns of Hampton Va that was used to kill Russell Timoshenko, an NYPD police officer. That seemed like a problem in need of urgent remedy--except that Wright's statistic has a date from a 2004 study, and R&B was closed by Virginia authorities "several years ago."
NBC's Mark Potter appeared to be warning us of a dangerous trend: "The FBI says bank robberies nationwide are on the rise." Then came the data--there were only 237 more robberies in 2006 than in 2005, an increase of just 4%. Their total annual loot is $70m nationwide from fewer than 7,000 robberies--which means that an average bank job nets a mere single grand. So why would such trivial events warrant network news coverage? Because all banks are equipped with security video allowing Potter's report to be peppered with dramatic pix of real life robbers.
INCREDIBLY ENDEARING ABC demonstrated it has a soft spot for The Simpsons--who does not?--earlier in the month when it assigned John Berman (subscription required) to cover the promotional contest between all the Springfields of the nation for the right to host the premiere of its movie version. Now that premiere is upon us, Charles Gibson followed up by naming Matt Groening, "his name rhymes with complaining," as ABC's Person of the Week. Groening explained that his own mother's name is Marge and she "did have a beehive hairdo when I was a little kid." He praised the character of Homer Simpson thus: "He is completely ruled by his impulses. He does not feel guilt--and I think that is incredibly endearing."
DRINK THIS Rounding off a light day of news--there was only one overseas story, a feature filed by ABC's Terry McCarthy (subscription required) on an Iraqi arts festival in Irbil--all three networks assigned a correspondent to cover water--balance, perhaps, for their booze-filled leads. Specifically the Pepsi-owned Aquafina brand of bottled drinking water has decided to change it label to acknowledge that its source is PWS. NBC's George Lewis reminded which brand Aquafina is--the one whose blue labels "conjure up images of crystal clean mountain springs." So ABC's Ned Potter translated: "Public Water Source--in other words it is a filtered, nicely-packaged version of tap water." Or in CBS' Richard Schlesinger's version: "From a pipe not a stream…water that has been forced through reverse osmosis, deionization and ozonation."
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: Vice President Dick Cheney will have his heart pacemaker replaced…Congress approved a series of counterterrorism precautions that were recommended by the 9/11 Commission report…UNICEF launched a drive to raise funds for the education of the children of Iraq War refugees…Michael Vick, the NFL star who denies charges of organizing pitbull fights, lost his Nike sponsorship…Joe Nacchio, the former boss of the Qwest telecoms firm, was sentenced to six years in prison for financial insider trading.
