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TYNDALL HEADLINE: HIGHLIGHTS FROM SEPTEMBER 07, 2007
A 26-minute speech from hiding by fugitive al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden was the Story of the Day. All three networks led with clips from the feed from the SITE Intelligence Group of bin Laden's first videotape message in three years. His title was The Solution, referring to the War in Iraq, and it addressed the people of the United States. CBS and ABC continued to anchor their newscasts from the road: CBS' Katie Couric from Damascus, ABC's Charles Gibson from the WWI Museum in Kansas City. Not one of the networks has considered President George Bush's attendance at the APEC Summit in Sydney to be worthy of a single story all week.
TYNDALL PICKS FOR SEPTEMBER 07, 2007: CLICK ON GRID ELEMENTS TO SEARCH FOR MATCHING ITEMS
BIN LADEN IS A VIDEO STAR A 26-minute speech from hiding by fugitive al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden was the Story of the Day. All three networks led with clips from the feed from the SITE Intelligence Group of bin Laden's first videotape message in three years. His title was The Solution, referring to the War in Iraq, and it addressed the people of the United States. CBS and ABC continued to anchor their newscasts from the road: CBS' Katie Couric from Damascus, ABC's Charles Gibson from the WWI Museum in Kansas City. Not one of the networks has considered President George Bush's attendance at the APEC Summit in Sydney to be worthy of a single story all week.
For all the attention the videotape message received--CBS News analyst Michael Scheuer exaggerated when he claimed bin Laden "dominates the international media to the exclusion of almost everything else"--there was not much to it. NBC's Pete Williams heard "no new threats" and CBS' Bob Orr found "no specific threats." NBC's Williams sniffed at its production values: "technically flawed," he called it, "in well over half of it, the picture of him talking is frozen."
Instead of threats bin Laden bloviated. NBC's Williams was polite: "Apparently he considers himself a world political commentator. It is Osama bin Laden the Pundit." CBS' Orr was ruder, dismissing the speech as "new rants…a wideranging broadside against capitalism and democracy." ABC's Brian Ross noted that after he called for an end to the war "he closes by urging Americans to embrace and join Islam, pointing out that there are no taxes under Islamic law."
Interestingly, one of the Americans bin Laden mentioned by name was Scheuer, the former CIA spy, now CBS in-house analyst. Scheuer's anchor Katie Couric (no link) asked him which of his own insights had been endorsed by bin Laden. "This war has nothing to do with our freedoms or our democracies," Scheuer responded, referring not to Iraq but to the motives behind al-Qaeda's attacks on the United States. "It has everything to do with the impact of our foreign policy." CBS' Pentagon correspondent David Martin checked with his spook sources and concluded that bin Laden is now in Chitral, part of the tribal zone of northern Pakistan.
Having exhausted the so-called substance of the videotape, what else is there to say? That beard of course--"several shades darker than the last time he appeared," noted CBS' Orr. ABC's Ross observed that his "jet black hair, eyebrows and beard" look "phony" to some. NBC's Williams interviewed Arsalan Iftikhar, editor of Islamica magazine, who smelled a rat: "Arab and Moslem males would probably be less likely to dye their beard than any other men…White hairs represent dignity, honor, wisdom. It is a sense of gravitas in that community."
POWER TO THE PEOPLE CBS' Katie Couric concluded her weeklong Road Ahead tour of Iraq and Syria with a controversial endorsement of the linkage between Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein: "The 9/11 attacks started the War on Terror, which then started the War in Iraq." Yet in her commentary summing up the lessons she learned from her trip she was much more equivocal: "Iraq is a country where conclusions and solutions are as elusive as 24-hour electricity…No one can really predict how this history lesson will end."
Couric was, however, certain of two things. She singled out Shiite militias in their "quest for power and influence." They "continue to terrorize the population while their biggest sponsor, Iran, waits in the wings." And she denigrated the Shiite-dominated rule of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, finding "the absence of a strong Iraqi government." She concluded that the "last-ditch effort" for the United States military occupation must be "a bottom-up strategy…win the confidence and the loyalty of the people one neighborhood at a time." Then she pointed out the flaw in a neighborhood-based approach: "How can you give power to the people when there is no power…when the business of just living leaves them exhausted and hopeless?"
In an Exclusive follow-up to her July report blaming government corruption for the lack of basic services in Iraq, NBC's Lisa Myers introduced us to Judge Radhi al-Radhi, the leader of the commission that blamed Prime Minister al-Maliki for shielding corrupt ministers and allies. Judge al-Radhi claimed that bureaucrats have ripped off hospitals, diverted food supplies and used stolen oil revenues to purchase weapons for militias. In its defense, the Iraqi government has fingered the judge himself as corrupt. When militias attacked al-Radhi's neighborhood, he resigned and fled the country. He is now expected to apply to the United States for political asylum.
The major news next week, of course, will be the Congressional testimony of US military and diplomatic leaders, Gen David Petraeus and Amb Ryan Crocker. ABC's Martha Raddatz previewed Petraeus' presentation from Baghdad on Tuesday and, in effect, the entire regional tour by CBS' Couric has fulfilled the same function. So now NBC's David Gregory files his scenesetter from inside-the-Beltway. Gregory pointed out that Petraeus publicly admits that political reconciliation "has not worked out as we hoped" but nevertheless predicted that the general will call for current troop levels in Iraq to be maintained until spring 2008. "For months he has talked less about tactics than timing."
HUDDLED MASSES Before CBS' Katie Couric left Syria, she filed a final report from Little Baghdad, the teeming Damascus neighborhood for war refugees. Couric claimed that the dislocation is still enormous "every day thousands of war weary, frightened and desperate Iraqis stream across the border into Syria"--an estimate that seems high, since even if her daily "thousands" were as low as 2,000, that would total 730,000 annually, and the entire refugee population in Syria is just 1.5m after more than four years of war. Yesterday, Couric's (text link) statistic that "hundreds" of Arab suicide bombers have entered Iraq through Damascus seemed similarly high.
Whether or nor her statistics are accurate, Couric chose to illustrate the refugees' plight by focusing on a single Iraqi family of 13, living in a three room apartment, supported by a daily income of $2. Syria denies adult refugees work permits so that pittance comes from the family's eleven-year-old son's street peddling. "In a sad twist, with their welcome worn out here and increasingly desperate, many Iraqis are now boarding buses to go back to the chaos and violence of their homeland."
FROM DAMASCUS TO JOHANNESBURG NBC's Lester Holt covered a second, even greater exodus: "Zimbabweans, often risking their lives crossing dangerous waters, are fleeing their country by the millions." Holt recapped the collapse of Zimbabwe's economy over the past seven years, culminating in 80% unemployment and 7000% annual inflation. "The humanitarian crisis has divided South Africans over whether the arriving Zimbabweans are political refugees or simply economic migrants." By the way, the "danger" in those waters was crocodiles.
R IS FOR RECESSION Economists in this country were worried when August data showed a shrinkage in the labor force. ABC's Betsy Stark cited the reputation of the jobs report as "the single most important barometer" of economic health. "Right now that barometer is issuing a high alert." She called the data "shockingly bleak." CBS' Anthony Mason (no link) heard "a lot of economists uttering the R-word…the housing slump and the mortgage crisis could take the entire economy down with them." Countrywide Financial, the nation's largest mortgage lender, called defaults in the real estate market "the most severe in modern American history," noted Erin Burnett of CNBC, NBC's sibling financial news channel. Countrywide laid off 12,000 workers, 20% of its entire workforce. On Wall Street, the Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 249 points to 13113.
GLACIAL SPEED ABC's Bill Blakemore brought us dynamic timelapse videotape for his global warming report from the Jakobshavn Glacier in Greenland. It was produced by University of Alaska glaciologist Jason Amundson, showing 20 minutes of flowing ice condensed into seven seconds. "The big question" posed by climatologists is whether the acceleration of the glacial flow "is the beginning of what they call the collapse of the entire Greenland ice sheet." Such melting of ice two miles deep, 2,000 miles long and 1,000 miles wide would raise sea levels by meters: "Anyone on the planet living near a coastline could be flooded out for good by mid-century." The news hook for Blakemore's report was a silent multifaith ceremony held on the so-called "galloping glacier" to pray for its survival.
TABLOID TALES Anyone who can fool both Pope Benedict XVI and David Beckham is worthy of news coverage. Finally all three American network newscasts decided to mention the case of Madeleine McCann, the English toddler who has preoccupied London's tabloid press for months. NBC's Keith Miller called it "a story that has not only gripped Britain but made headlines round the world." If police suspicions are correct, that hoaxer is Madeleine's mother. When a vacationing Madeleine disappeared in May, her mother Kate insisted that she had been abducted and "stayed in Portugal vowing to keep Maddie's name in the public eye," CBS' Mark Phillips recounted. Sure enough, her successful publicity efforts involved both Benedict and Beckham: she "generated huge sympathy during an extraordinary global media campaign," stated ABC's Nick Watt (subscription required)--until now. Kate McCann, officially a suspect, "was jeered when she arrived at a Portuguese police station for questioning."
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: First Lady Laura Bush has nerve damage in her neck and is scheduled for out-patient surgery…Norman Hsu, the fundraiser for Hillary Rodham Clinton's Presidential campaign, is under arrest, after skipping bail on fraud charges…North Korea has agreed to an international inspection of its nuclear weapons facilities…the Roman Catholic Diocese of San Diego agreed to pay nearly $200m in settlement of almost 150 lawsuits for sexual abuse of children by priests.
For all the attention the videotape message received--CBS News analyst Michael Scheuer exaggerated when he claimed bin Laden "dominates the international media to the exclusion of almost everything else"--there was not much to it. NBC's Pete Williams heard "no new threats" and CBS' Bob Orr found "no specific threats." NBC's Williams sniffed at its production values: "technically flawed," he called it, "in well over half of it, the picture of him talking is frozen."
Instead of threats bin Laden bloviated. NBC's Williams was polite: "Apparently he considers himself a world political commentator. It is Osama bin Laden the Pundit." CBS' Orr was ruder, dismissing the speech as "new rants…a wideranging broadside against capitalism and democracy." ABC's Brian Ross noted that after he called for an end to the war "he closes by urging Americans to embrace and join Islam, pointing out that there are no taxes under Islamic law."
Interestingly, one of the Americans bin Laden mentioned by name was Scheuer, the former CIA spy, now CBS in-house analyst. Scheuer's anchor Katie Couric (no link) asked him which of his own insights had been endorsed by bin Laden. "This war has nothing to do with our freedoms or our democracies," Scheuer responded, referring not to Iraq but to the motives behind al-Qaeda's attacks on the United States. "It has everything to do with the impact of our foreign policy." CBS' Pentagon correspondent David Martin checked with his spook sources and concluded that bin Laden is now in Chitral, part of the tribal zone of northern Pakistan.
Having exhausted the so-called substance of the videotape, what else is there to say? That beard of course--"several shades darker than the last time he appeared," noted CBS' Orr. ABC's Ross observed that his "jet black hair, eyebrows and beard" look "phony" to some. NBC's Williams interviewed Arsalan Iftikhar, editor of Islamica magazine, who smelled a rat: "Arab and Moslem males would probably be less likely to dye their beard than any other men…White hairs represent dignity, honor, wisdom. It is a sense of gravitas in that community."
POWER TO THE PEOPLE CBS' Katie Couric concluded her weeklong Road Ahead tour of Iraq and Syria with a controversial endorsement of the linkage between Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein: "The 9/11 attacks started the War on Terror, which then started the War in Iraq." Yet in her commentary summing up the lessons she learned from her trip she was much more equivocal: "Iraq is a country where conclusions and solutions are as elusive as 24-hour electricity…No one can really predict how this history lesson will end."
Couric was, however, certain of two things. She singled out Shiite militias in their "quest for power and influence." They "continue to terrorize the population while their biggest sponsor, Iran, waits in the wings." And she denigrated the Shiite-dominated rule of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, finding "the absence of a strong Iraqi government." She concluded that the "last-ditch effort" for the United States military occupation must be "a bottom-up strategy…win the confidence and the loyalty of the people one neighborhood at a time." Then she pointed out the flaw in a neighborhood-based approach: "How can you give power to the people when there is no power…when the business of just living leaves them exhausted and hopeless?"
In an Exclusive follow-up to her July report blaming government corruption for the lack of basic services in Iraq, NBC's Lisa Myers introduced us to Judge Radhi al-Radhi, the leader of the commission that blamed Prime Minister al-Maliki for shielding corrupt ministers and allies. Judge al-Radhi claimed that bureaucrats have ripped off hospitals, diverted food supplies and used stolen oil revenues to purchase weapons for militias. In its defense, the Iraqi government has fingered the judge himself as corrupt. When militias attacked al-Radhi's neighborhood, he resigned and fled the country. He is now expected to apply to the United States for political asylum.
The major news next week, of course, will be the Congressional testimony of US military and diplomatic leaders, Gen David Petraeus and Amb Ryan Crocker. ABC's Martha Raddatz previewed Petraeus' presentation from Baghdad on Tuesday and, in effect, the entire regional tour by CBS' Couric has fulfilled the same function. So now NBC's David Gregory files his scenesetter from inside-the-Beltway. Gregory pointed out that Petraeus publicly admits that political reconciliation "has not worked out as we hoped" but nevertheless predicted that the general will call for current troop levels in Iraq to be maintained until spring 2008. "For months he has talked less about tactics than timing."
HUDDLED MASSES Before CBS' Katie Couric left Syria, she filed a final report from Little Baghdad, the teeming Damascus neighborhood for war refugees. Couric claimed that the dislocation is still enormous "every day thousands of war weary, frightened and desperate Iraqis stream across the border into Syria"--an estimate that seems high, since even if her daily "thousands" were as low as 2,000, that would total 730,000 annually, and the entire refugee population in Syria is just 1.5m after more than four years of war. Yesterday, Couric's (text link) statistic that "hundreds" of Arab suicide bombers have entered Iraq through Damascus seemed similarly high.
Whether or nor her statistics are accurate, Couric chose to illustrate the refugees' plight by focusing on a single Iraqi family of 13, living in a three room apartment, supported by a daily income of $2. Syria denies adult refugees work permits so that pittance comes from the family's eleven-year-old son's street peddling. "In a sad twist, with their welcome worn out here and increasingly desperate, many Iraqis are now boarding buses to go back to the chaos and violence of their homeland."
FROM DAMASCUS TO JOHANNESBURG NBC's Lester Holt covered a second, even greater exodus: "Zimbabweans, often risking their lives crossing dangerous waters, are fleeing their country by the millions." Holt recapped the collapse of Zimbabwe's economy over the past seven years, culminating in 80% unemployment and 7000% annual inflation. "The humanitarian crisis has divided South Africans over whether the arriving Zimbabweans are political refugees or simply economic migrants." By the way, the "danger" in those waters was crocodiles.
R IS FOR RECESSION Economists in this country were worried when August data showed a shrinkage in the labor force. ABC's Betsy Stark cited the reputation of the jobs report as "the single most important barometer" of economic health. "Right now that barometer is issuing a high alert." She called the data "shockingly bleak." CBS' Anthony Mason (no link) heard "a lot of economists uttering the R-word…the housing slump and the mortgage crisis could take the entire economy down with them." Countrywide Financial, the nation's largest mortgage lender, called defaults in the real estate market "the most severe in modern American history," noted Erin Burnett of CNBC, NBC's sibling financial news channel. Countrywide laid off 12,000 workers, 20% of its entire workforce. On Wall Street, the Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 249 points to 13113.
GLACIAL SPEED ABC's Bill Blakemore brought us dynamic timelapse videotape for his global warming report from the Jakobshavn Glacier in Greenland. It was produced by University of Alaska glaciologist Jason Amundson, showing 20 minutes of flowing ice condensed into seven seconds. "The big question" posed by climatologists is whether the acceleration of the glacial flow "is the beginning of what they call the collapse of the entire Greenland ice sheet." Such melting of ice two miles deep, 2,000 miles long and 1,000 miles wide would raise sea levels by meters: "Anyone on the planet living near a coastline could be flooded out for good by mid-century." The news hook for Blakemore's report was a silent multifaith ceremony held on the so-called "galloping glacier" to pray for its survival.
TABLOID TALES Anyone who can fool both Pope Benedict XVI and David Beckham is worthy of news coverage. Finally all three American network newscasts decided to mention the case of Madeleine McCann, the English toddler who has preoccupied London's tabloid press for months. NBC's Keith Miller called it "a story that has not only gripped Britain but made headlines round the world." If police suspicions are correct, that hoaxer is Madeleine's mother. When a vacationing Madeleine disappeared in May, her mother Kate insisted that she had been abducted and "stayed in Portugal vowing to keep Maddie's name in the public eye," CBS' Mark Phillips recounted. Sure enough, her successful publicity efforts involved both Benedict and Beckham: she "generated huge sympathy during an extraordinary global media campaign," stated ABC's Nick Watt (subscription required)--until now. Kate McCann, officially a suspect, "was jeered when she arrived at a Portuguese police station for questioning."
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: First Lady Laura Bush has nerve damage in her neck and is scheduled for out-patient surgery…Norman Hsu, the fundraiser for Hillary Rodham Clinton's Presidential campaign, is under arrest, after skipping bail on fraud charges…North Korea has agreed to an international inspection of its nuclear weapons facilities…the Roman Catholic Diocese of San Diego agreed to pay nearly $200m in settlement of almost 150 lawsuits for sexual abuse of children by priests.
