 |           |
TYNDALL HEADLINE: HIGHLIGHTS FROM OCTOBER 01, 2007
All four Mondays this October, ABC World News will broadcast with a single sponsor--this time it was Big Pharma's Pfizer--and limited commercial interruptions. So today, ABC's editorial newshole for its half-hour newscast was one-fifth longer (24 min v CBS 20, NBC 20) than its rivals'. Too bad that all this extra time was freed up on a day when hardly any news happened. The Story of the Day belonged to the topic ABC chose for its extended mid-newscast feature series, entitled Key to Success. There was not a single development that warranted coverage by a correspondent on all three newscasts. ABC led with statistics from Iraq; CBS and NBC led with statistics from the airlines.
TYNDALL PICKS FOR OCTOBER 01, 2007: CLICK ON GRID ELEMENTS TO SEARCH FOR MATCHING ITEMS
LITTLE NEWS TO FILL LARGER HOLE All four Mondays this October, ABC World News will broadcast with a single sponsor--this time it was Big Pharma's Pfizer--and limited commercial interruptions. So today, ABC's editorial newshole for its half-hour newscast was one-fifth longer (24 min v CBS 20, NBC 20) than its rivals'. Too bad that all this extra time was freed up on a day when hardly any news happened. The Story of the Day belonged to the topic ABC chose for its extended mid-newscast feature series, entitled Key to Success. There was not a single development that warranted coverage by a correspondent on all three newscasts. ABC led with statistics from Iraq; CBS and NBC led with statistics from the airlines.
NBC's airlines decision, assigned to Tom Costello, was more serious than CBS'. He told us about the current "golden age of safety." Fatalities from accidents involving domestic flights have fallen by 65% since 1996 compared with the previous decade, this despite the fact that "the skies are more crowded, more planes, more passengers." Costello ticked off a list of improvements--improved planes, more training for controlers, higher-tech warning devices, better flight simulators for pilots--but he did not include the primary reason why the death rate looks so low. It only counted accidents. The major cause of death from domestic flights in the past decade has not been accidents but terrorism.
Accordingly, a bizarre death at Phoenix Airport inspired CBS' Kelly Wallace to examine the impact of increased counterterrorist screening at airport terminals. The dead woman, Carol Anne Gotbaum, was "the daughter-in-law of a top New York City official." Wallace reported that she may have become irate when tight security made her miss her flight; she was arrested and handcuffed; and found dead in a holding cell. Wallace noted that the Transportation Security Administration now trains screeners to be on the lookout for "signs of stress, fear and deception" in passengers and that Gotbaum was en route to "alcohol rehab in Tucson."
Wallace's story was not CBS' lead however. That was about the "record number of bags getting lost." Nancy Cordes explained the combination of factors that lead to mishandled luggage: after liquid carry-ons were banned more passengers used check-in; smaller regional jets have less room for carry-ons; labor force downsizing has resulted in fewer baggage handlers. Still, CBS' decision to make luggage its lead was needlessly alarmist--especially when Cordes used the following blind quote from "one travel expert." He recommends that passengers pack "assuming that their bags will get to their destination about 24 hours after they do." Hearing such a recommendation one would conclude that there is something like a 50/50 chance of bags going missing. Hardly: even in the summer's worst month just eight checked bags out of every 1,000 were lost or delayed or damaged or stolen. That is a 99.2% chance of success.
IRAQ ROUND-UP There was a cluster of stories about Iraq. ABC led from Baghdad with the news that the violent death rate for civilians declined last month to less than 900 compared with more than 1,700 in August. Miguel Marquez' explanation made note of a lull in terrorist bombings and the onset of the sacred month of Ramadan: "More Iraqis are staying home." In Baghdad, where September's civilian death toll was 543, Marquez credited the efforts of the US military surge, which has "walled off and shut down large areas."
All three networks had their Pentagon correspondent cover an Iraq angle. CBS' David Martin was on hand as Gen Peter Pace left his job as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Pace declared he was "sad to leave" even as Martin characterized his mood as "bitter." Inside the Pentagon, Martin reported, Pace is blamed by his colleagues for his failure to stand up to Donald Rumsfeld when he was Secretary of Defense. Martin called Pace "another casualty of the war."
On ABC, Jonathan Karl (at the tail of the Marquez videostream) covered the lighter-than-normal US military death toll in September, the least lethal month of the last twelve: one resistance force, the Mahdi Army, led by the cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, has suspended its military operations for six months; a second, al-Qaeda has had its operations "disrupted for now," Karl's unnamed administration sources told him. Karl quoted from a note written by abu-Osama al-Tunisi, an alleged al-Qaeda leader killed in an air raid: "I have been surrounded. We are so desperate for your help."
NBC decided to preview House hearings into Blackwater USA's bodyguard operation in Iraq for the State Department. Jim Miklaszewski reported that the civilian death toll for last month's Baghdad shootout has now risen to 17. He called it "no isolated incident" since Blackwater personnel have engaged in almost 200 firefights in less than three years. By reputation they have "very quick trigger fingers and act like cowboys."
MONKFREE Only ABC followed up on last week's anti-junta protests in Myanmar that were led by Burmese monks. Jim Sciutto (subscription required) crossed the border from Thailand to visit a rural Buddhist monastery. He found it "deserted except for a lone monk." Sciutto reported the same on city streets, "once teeming with Buddhist monks--their absence is glaring." Sciutto repeated reports that the military had incarcerated "tens of thousands" of monks, either locked in their monasteries or held in "jails, universities, even a race course."
NORTH BY SOUTHWEST For NBC's In Depth, Mark Potter told us about the new circuitous route from Cuba in the wake of a Coast Guard crackdown on the Straits of Florida. Potter reminded us of the Cold-War-era law that grants Cubans "unique immigration status" in the United States: "If they can make it to a US land border they are almost always allowed to enter and stay with political asylum virtually guaranteed." The latest land border in question is Brownsville Texas. Nowadays speedboat smugglers travel southwest from Cuba instead of north, heading for Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula. Mexico turns a blind eye because "they do not want to hamper improving relations with Cuba." Once in Mexico, the Cubans head north to Texas before settling in southern Florida, whose families pay the smugglers $10,000 per entry. In the first nine months of this year, 11,000 have been granted asylum at Brownsville.
PRO-LIFE PARTY? All three networks offered an update on Campaign 2008. CBS looked at fundraising; ABC and NBC at a possible third-party run by normally-Republican pro-life conservatives. Such a split might occur if the GOP nominates Rudolph Giuliani, whose position on social issues such as abortion are "at odds with the party's base," as NBC's David Gregory put it. Gregory noted that Giuliani makes the pragmatic horse-race argument that he is the lone Republican with a chance to defeat Hillary Rodham Clinton. The pro-lifers counter that it is "not worth electing someone with whom they hold such fundamental disagreements just so the Republican Party can continue to control the White House," according to ABC's Jake Tapper. Tapper added this spin about the leaders of the Christian conservative movement from the Giuliani Campaign: if their man does win the nomination, "it will call into question just how influential they truly are."
Armen Keteyian's Follow the Money report for CBS looked at bundlers, the 2,000-or-so elite fundraisers who package smaller donations from friends, family and business associates into lump sums. A study of Bundlers for Bush revealed that 27 of the current President's ambassadors and four Cabinet members had raised at least $100,000 for his campaigns. "When you unbundle the names," declared Keteyian, "you may well see the faces of the next administration."
PERNICIOUS BIGOTS My Grandfather's Son is the title of the just-published memoir by Clarence Thomas. On this first Monday in October, the Justice's book tour brought him to ABC where Supreme Court correspondent Jan Crawford Greenburg (subscription required) handled the q-&-a. She called him "a complex and compelling man" registering a range of emotions from sadness to anger to tenderness to humor: "He has got this big booming laugh that is always at the ready." Even 16 years after his successful confirmation to the Court, he called his Senate hearings "the most inhumane thing that has ever happened to me" and accused the Democrats who opposed him of "pernicious bigotry." Crawford Greenburg asked him about the "stereotype" that Thomas is "a puppet of conservative white Justice Antonin Scalia." Thomas paraphrased the accusation: "I could not be doing this myself. He must be doing it for me--because I am black. That is obvious. Again I go back to my point. Who are the real bigots?"
BIGGER THAN MCDONALDS Methamphetamine qualified as the Story of the Day when ABC made use of its extra editorial time to assign a six-minute Key to Success to Bill Weir in Montana. Big Sky Country has been Speed Central: "For years it poured out of cabins and campsites. Hikers would find empty Sudafed packs and piles of batteries, a smell of ammonia in the air." New laws have made ingredients for do-it-yourself laboratories harder to obtain, driving up the cost of the once-cheap drug so that it now rivals cocaine. But Weir did not give credit to market forces for reducing Montana's appetite for meth. Instead he tipped his hat to advertising. Billionaire rancher Tom Siebel has financed a $15m billboard and television anti-drug campaign in the state, a media buy that surpasses that of McDonalds.
Weir called them "thirty-second trips into the hell of meth addiction" showing some clips from the Montana Meth Project: pimp your girlfriend to obtain drugs…beat your mother for money for drugs…get strung out for lack of drugs…initiate a child into taking drugs. If the drugs are that bad, why indulge? Onetime addict Lee Mcafey described the high: "You feel like God, like you control everything."
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: a safety recall of hamburger meat for fear of e.coli was extended nationwide…a Texas businessman copped a plea on a graft rap in the United Nation's oil-for-food program for Iraq…longtime Louisiana law enforcement personality Sheriff Harry Lee died, aged 75…the chimes on London's Big Ben clock have been renovated.
NBC's airlines decision, assigned to Tom Costello, was more serious than CBS'. He told us about the current "golden age of safety." Fatalities from accidents involving domestic flights have fallen by 65% since 1996 compared with the previous decade, this despite the fact that "the skies are more crowded, more planes, more passengers." Costello ticked off a list of improvements--improved planes, more training for controlers, higher-tech warning devices, better flight simulators for pilots--but he did not include the primary reason why the death rate looks so low. It only counted accidents. The major cause of death from domestic flights in the past decade has not been accidents but terrorism.
Accordingly, a bizarre death at Phoenix Airport inspired CBS' Kelly Wallace to examine the impact of increased counterterrorist screening at airport terminals. The dead woman, Carol Anne Gotbaum, was "the daughter-in-law of a top New York City official." Wallace reported that she may have become irate when tight security made her miss her flight; she was arrested and handcuffed; and found dead in a holding cell. Wallace noted that the Transportation Security Administration now trains screeners to be on the lookout for "signs of stress, fear and deception" in passengers and that Gotbaum was en route to "alcohol rehab in Tucson."
Wallace's story was not CBS' lead however. That was about the "record number of bags getting lost." Nancy Cordes explained the combination of factors that lead to mishandled luggage: after liquid carry-ons were banned more passengers used check-in; smaller regional jets have less room for carry-ons; labor force downsizing has resulted in fewer baggage handlers. Still, CBS' decision to make luggage its lead was needlessly alarmist--especially when Cordes used the following blind quote from "one travel expert." He recommends that passengers pack "assuming that their bags will get to their destination about 24 hours after they do." Hearing such a recommendation one would conclude that there is something like a 50/50 chance of bags going missing. Hardly: even in the summer's worst month just eight checked bags out of every 1,000 were lost or delayed or damaged or stolen. That is a 99.2% chance of success.
IRAQ ROUND-UP There was a cluster of stories about Iraq. ABC led from Baghdad with the news that the violent death rate for civilians declined last month to less than 900 compared with more than 1,700 in August. Miguel Marquez' explanation made note of a lull in terrorist bombings and the onset of the sacred month of Ramadan: "More Iraqis are staying home." In Baghdad, where September's civilian death toll was 543, Marquez credited the efforts of the US military surge, which has "walled off and shut down large areas."
All three networks had their Pentagon correspondent cover an Iraq angle. CBS' David Martin was on hand as Gen Peter Pace left his job as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Pace declared he was "sad to leave" even as Martin characterized his mood as "bitter." Inside the Pentagon, Martin reported, Pace is blamed by his colleagues for his failure to stand up to Donald Rumsfeld when he was Secretary of Defense. Martin called Pace "another casualty of the war."
On ABC, Jonathan Karl (at the tail of the Marquez videostream) covered the lighter-than-normal US military death toll in September, the least lethal month of the last twelve: one resistance force, the Mahdi Army, led by the cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, has suspended its military operations for six months; a second, al-Qaeda has had its operations "disrupted for now," Karl's unnamed administration sources told him. Karl quoted from a note written by abu-Osama al-Tunisi, an alleged al-Qaeda leader killed in an air raid: "I have been surrounded. We are so desperate for your help."
NBC decided to preview House hearings into Blackwater USA's bodyguard operation in Iraq for the State Department. Jim Miklaszewski reported that the civilian death toll for last month's Baghdad shootout has now risen to 17. He called it "no isolated incident" since Blackwater personnel have engaged in almost 200 firefights in less than three years. By reputation they have "very quick trigger fingers and act like cowboys."
MONKFREE Only ABC followed up on last week's anti-junta protests in Myanmar that were led by Burmese monks. Jim Sciutto (subscription required) crossed the border from Thailand to visit a rural Buddhist monastery. He found it "deserted except for a lone monk." Sciutto reported the same on city streets, "once teeming with Buddhist monks--their absence is glaring." Sciutto repeated reports that the military had incarcerated "tens of thousands" of monks, either locked in their monasteries or held in "jails, universities, even a race course."
NORTH BY SOUTHWEST For NBC's In Depth, Mark Potter told us about the new circuitous route from Cuba in the wake of a Coast Guard crackdown on the Straits of Florida. Potter reminded us of the Cold-War-era law that grants Cubans "unique immigration status" in the United States: "If they can make it to a US land border they are almost always allowed to enter and stay with political asylum virtually guaranteed." The latest land border in question is Brownsville Texas. Nowadays speedboat smugglers travel southwest from Cuba instead of north, heading for Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula. Mexico turns a blind eye because "they do not want to hamper improving relations with Cuba." Once in Mexico, the Cubans head north to Texas before settling in southern Florida, whose families pay the smugglers $10,000 per entry. In the first nine months of this year, 11,000 have been granted asylum at Brownsville.
PRO-LIFE PARTY? All three networks offered an update on Campaign 2008. CBS looked at fundraising; ABC and NBC at a possible third-party run by normally-Republican pro-life conservatives. Such a split might occur if the GOP nominates Rudolph Giuliani, whose position on social issues such as abortion are "at odds with the party's base," as NBC's David Gregory put it. Gregory noted that Giuliani makes the pragmatic horse-race argument that he is the lone Republican with a chance to defeat Hillary Rodham Clinton. The pro-lifers counter that it is "not worth electing someone with whom they hold such fundamental disagreements just so the Republican Party can continue to control the White House," according to ABC's Jake Tapper. Tapper added this spin about the leaders of the Christian conservative movement from the Giuliani Campaign: if their man does win the nomination, "it will call into question just how influential they truly are."
Armen Keteyian's Follow the Money report for CBS looked at bundlers, the 2,000-or-so elite fundraisers who package smaller donations from friends, family and business associates into lump sums. A study of Bundlers for Bush revealed that 27 of the current President's ambassadors and four Cabinet members had raised at least $100,000 for his campaigns. "When you unbundle the names," declared Keteyian, "you may well see the faces of the next administration."
PERNICIOUS BIGOTS My Grandfather's Son is the title of the just-published memoir by Clarence Thomas. On this first Monday in October, the Justice's book tour brought him to ABC where Supreme Court correspondent Jan Crawford Greenburg (subscription required) handled the q-&-a. She called him "a complex and compelling man" registering a range of emotions from sadness to anger to tenderness to humor: "He has got this big booming laugh that is always at the ready." Even 16 years after his successful confirmation to the Court, he called his Senate hearings "the most inhumane thing that has ever happened to me" and accused the Democrats who opposed him of "pernicious bigotry." Crawford Greenburg asked him about the "stereotype" that Thomas is "a puppet of conservative white Justice Antonin Scalia." Thomas paraphrased the accusation: "I could not be doing this myself. He must be doing it for me--because I am black. That is obvious. Again I go back to my point. Who are the real bigots?"
BIGGER THAN MCDONALDS Methamphetamine qualified as the Story of the Day when ABC made use of its extra editorial time to assign a six-minute Key to Success to Bill Weir in Montana. Big Sky Country has been Speed Central: "For years it poured out of cabins and campsites. Hikers would find empty Sudafed packs and piles of batteries, a smell of ammonia in the air." New laws have made ingredients for do-it-yourself laboratories harder to obtain, driving up the cost of the once-cheap drug so that it now rivals cocaine. But Weir did not give credit to market forces for reducing Montana's appetite for meth. Instead he tipped his hat to advertising. Billionaire rancher Tom Siebel has financed a $15m billboard and television anti-drug campaign in the state, a media buy that surpasses that of McDonalds.
Weir called them "thirty-second trips into the hell of meth addiction" showing some clips from the Montana Meth Project: pimp your girlfriend to obtain drugs…beat your mother for money for drugs…get strung out for lack of drugs…initiate a child into taking drugs. If the drugs are that bad, why indulge? Onetime addict Lee Mcafey described the high: "You feel like God, like you control everything."
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: a safety recall of hamburger meat for fear of e.coli was extended nationwide…a Texas businessman copped a plea on a graft rap in the United Nation's oil-for-food program for Iraq…longtime Louisiana law enforcement personality Sheriff Harry Lee died, aged 75…the chimes on London's Big Ben clock have been renovated.
