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TYNDALL HEADLINE: HIGHLIGHTS FROM JANUARY 01, 2007
The first news of the New Year is normally free of hard content. True to form, this year's newscasts included reviews of 2006 and previews of 2007: New Year's celebrations, college football bowl games and soon-to-be-broken resolutions. ABC decided to pre-empt its newscast altogether to bring us the Rose Bowl from Pasadena. CBS and NBC, however, both led with a bona fide news event: the flag-draped coffin of former President Gerald Ford standing in a pool of light under the Capitol Dome in the Rotunda in Washington DC.
TYNDALL PICKS FOR JANUARY 01, 2007: CLICK ON GRID ELEMENTS TO SEARCH FOR MATCHING ITEMS
HAPPY NEW YEAR The first news of the New Year is normally free of hard content. True to form, this year's newscasts included reviews of 2006 and previews of 2007: New Year's celebrations, college football bowl games and soon-to-be-broken resolutions. ABC decided to pre-empt its newscast altogether to bring us the Rose Bowl from Pasadena. CBS and NBC, however, both led with a bona fide news event: the flag-draped coffin of former President Gerald Ford standing in a pool of light under the Capitol Dome in the Rotunda in Washington DC.
The Capitol was a space where the 13-term Representative had "always felt comfortable," CBS' Capitol Hill correspondent Sharyl Attkisson told us. In 1961 he was designated "the Congressmen's Congressman" by his colleagues. NBC's Kelly O'Donnell focused on the contrast between Ford the public figure and Ford the family patriarch. Even as the President and former Presidents and Cabinet members viewed the casket--so did everyday citizens. "The Ford children made this national event seem neighborly as they stood to greet and thank those who came to honor their dad."
GALLOWS ILL-HUMOR In the Arab World, the fallout from the hanging of Saddam Hussein continued as cellphone images spread showing the lynchlike atmosphere at the gallows. CBS' Randall Pinkston noted the efforts by Amb Zalmay Khalilzad to distance the United States from an unseemly rush to hanging by asking the Baghdad government to be "careful with documentation" and to "provide the required paperwork."
NBC's Richard Engel concentrated on the illicit video itself: the taunting guards "apparently want Saddam to know that this is Shiite revenge." Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki "a Shiite, rushed it through, apparently to exert his authority." Engel added that Shiite militiamen had prohibited NBC from covering reaction to the video by the Baghdad vox pop.
KATRINA AFTERMATH NBC News video is being used in a New Orleans murder case. A quartet of police officers is accused of killing two unarmed civilians in a shootout on the Danziger Bridge over the city's industrial canal in the violent aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.
In his In Depth report, Martin Savidge showed us the actual police patrol responding to an emergency call, which erroneously reported police injuries in a shootout at the bridge. He interviewed an anonymous woman from a group of five that was shot 18 times: "My arm had been shot off because it was lying next to me on the ground." Then he talked to the husband of an eyewitness to a second shooting: "She saw a gentleman come around the corner with his hands above his head. They shot him from behind." The accused cops defend the killings as "justifiable," Savidge added.
RING OUT THE OLD CBS offered a couple of reviews of the year past. Jerry Bowen celebrated "lives lived well"--notable obituaries from 2006: James Brown, Don Knotts, Coretta Scott King, Dana Reeves, Byron Nelson, Red Auerbach, Buck O'Neill, Johnny Apple, Frank Stanton, Ed Bradley, Lloyd Bentsen, Ann Richards, Jeane Kirkpatrick…and Gerald Ford.
Bianca Solorzano surveyed "Goldilocks" economic conditions, "not too hot, not too cold." She touched on the contracting housing market, receding fears of inflation, the bullish stock market. And she could not resist an unacknowledged hat-tip to Time magazine in identifying resilient consumer spending as the key to underlying continued growth: "2006 was the year of, well, You…You, the consumer, drove the economy."
RING IN THE NEW NBC's Pete Williams offered a rundown of new laws coming into effect with the New Year. School bullies will be documented in South Carolina; cell phones will be recycled in New York City; half-drunk bottles of wine can be taken home from Illinois restaurants. And congratulations minimum-wage workers in 15 states: you get a raise.
The most common New Year's Resolution is to lose weight so CBS sent Jon LaPook to Cornell University's Food Laboratory to find out why we continue to eat when we are not hungry: "We eat with our eyes not with our stomachs." For example, if we serve meals on smaller plates, smaller portions look sufficient.
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: Ethiopian troops rout Islamist forces and occupy the Somali capital of Mogadishu…in Indonesia, an internal flight of Adam Air crashes, killing all 102 on board…Chief Justice John Roberts applies for a pay raise for his colleagues in the federal judiciary.
The Capitol was a space where the 13-term Representative had "always felt comfortable," CBS' Capitol Hill correspondent Sharyl Attkisson told us. In 1961 he was designated "the Congressmen's Congressman" by his colleagues. NBC's Kelly O'Donnell focused on the contrast between Ford the public figure and Ford the family patriarch. Even as the President and former Presidents and Cabinet members viewed the casket--so did everyday citizens. "The Ford children made this national event seem neighborly as they stood to greet and thank those who came to honor their dad."
GALLOWS ILL-HUMOR In the Arab World, the fallout from the hanging of Saddam Hussein continued as cellphone images spread showing the lynchlike atmosphere at the gallows. CBS' Randall Pinkston noted the efforts by Amb Zalmay Khalilzad to distance the United States from an unseemly rush to hanging by asking the Baghdad government to be "careful with documentation" and to "provide the required paperwork."
NBC's Richard Engel concentrated on the illicit video itself: the taunting guards "apparently want Saddam to know that this is Shiite revenge." Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki "a Shiite, rushed it through, apparently to exert his authority." Engel added that Shiite militiamen had prohibited NBC from covering reaction to the video by the Baghdad vox pop.
KATRINA AFTERMATH NBC News video is being used in a New Orleans murder case. A quartet of police officers is accused of killing two unarmed civilians in a shootout on the Danziger Bridge over the city's industrial canal in the violent aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.
In his In Depth report, Martin Savidge showed us the actual police patrol responding to an emergency call, which erroneously reported police injuries in a shootout at the bridge. He interviewed an anonymous woman from a group of five that was shot 18 times: "My arm had been shot off because it was lying next to me on the ground." Then he talked to the husband of an eyewitness to a second shooting: "She saw a gentleman come around the corner with his hands above his head. They shot him from behind." The accused cops defend the killings as "justifiable," Savidge added.
RING OUT THE OLD CBS offered a couple of reviews of the year past. Jerry Bowen celebrated "lives lived well"--notable obituaries from 2006: James Brown, Don Knotts, Coretta Scott King, Dana Reeves, Byron Nelson, Red Auerbach, Buck O'Neill, Johnny Apple, Frank Stanton, Ed Bradley, Lloyd Bentsen, Ann Richards, Jeane Kirkpatrick…and Gerald Ford.
Bianca Solorzano surveyed "Goldilocks" economic conditions, "not too hot, not too cold." She touched on the contracting housing market, receding fears of inflation, the bullish stock market. And she could not resist an unacknowledged hat-tip to Time magazine in identifying resilient consumer spending as the key to underlying continued growth: "2006 was the year of, well, You…You, the consumer, drove the economy."
RING IN THE NEW NBC's Pete Williams offered a rundown of new laws coming into effect with the New Year. School bullies will be documented in South Carolina; cell phones will be recycled in New York City; half-drunk bottles of wine can be taken home from Illinois restaurants. And congratulations minimum-wage workers in 15 states: you get a raise.
The most common New Year's Resolution is to lose weight so CBS sent Jon LaPook to Cornell University's Food Laboratory to find out why we continue to eat when we are not hungry: "We eat with our eyes not with our stomachs." For example, if we serve meals on smaller plates, smaller portions look sufficient.
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: Ethiopian troops rout Islamist forces and occupy the Somali capital of Mogadishu…in Indonesia, an internal flight of Adam Air crashes, killing all 102 on board…Chief Justice John Roberts applies for a pay raise for his colleagues in the federal judiciary.
