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TYNDALL HEADLINE: HIGHLIGHTS FROM OCTOBER 02, 2007
Blackwater USA was the unanimous choice for Story of the Day. Erik Prince, founder and chief executive of the paramilitary firm that supplies bodyguards for State Department personnel in Iraq, appeared at hearings on Capitol Hill. All three networks led with his testimony before a House panel; all three assigned their Pentagon correspondent to the story. And all three used the same exchange in which Prince denied involvement in the deaths of a dozen-or-so Iraqis in last month's firefight in the Mansour neighborhood of Baghdad. "You do admit that Blackwater personnel have shot and killed innocent civilians, don't you?" asked Rep Danny Davis (D-IL). "No, sir. I disagree with that," replied the former USNavy SEAL, before qualifying his denial to admit deaths from bullet ricochets and traffic accidents.
TYNDALL PICKS FOR OCTOBER 02, 2007: CLICK ON GRID ELEMENTS TO SEARCH FOR MATCHING ITEMS
BLACKWATER DENIES CIVILIAN DEATHS Blackwater USA was the unanimous choice for Story of the Day. Erik Prince, founder and chief executive of the paramilitary firm that supplies bodyguards for State Department personnel in Iraq, appeared at hearings on Capitol Hill. All three networks led with his testimony before a House panel; all three assigned their Pentagon correspondent to the story. And all three used the same exchange in which Prince denied involvement in the deaths of a dozen-or-so Iraqis in last month's firefight in the Mansour neighborhood of Baghdad. "You do admit that Blackwater personnel have shot and killed innocent civilians, don't you?" asked Rep Danny Davis (D-IL). "No, sir. I disagree with that," replied the former USNavy SEAL, before qualifying his denial to admit deaths from bullet ricochets and traffic accidents.
The accusations against Blackwater were considerably more serious than car crashes and ricochets. ABC's Jonathan Karl (subscription required) quoted from the Congressional investigation that found Blackwater guards firing weapons on 200 separate occasions, "almost never stopping to see if anybody was killed or wounded." Prince insisted that his guards "use deadly force only in self-defense," noted NBC's Jim Miklaszewski. ABC's Karl characterized the portrayal of Blackwater as "a band of out-of-control mercenaries;" NBC's Miklaszewski used the phrase "trigger happy cowboys;" CBS' David Martin "out-of-control guns for hire." All three reporters included the tale of last Christmas Eve in Baghdad's Green Zone, when a bodyguard for Iraq's Vice President was killed by a drunken Blackwater hand--he was sent home and lost his job but was never prosecuted.
From Baghdad, CBS' Elizabeth Palmer pointed out that "there has not been a single prosecution of a foreign security contractor since the invasion." That may change, she speculated, as Iraq's Minister of the Interior has asked for the names of the bodyguards involved in Mansour: "He says if there is a trial, it should be in Iraq." ABC's Karl reported that Blackwater's $400K billing for each bodyguard is less costly than the State Department's $500K estimate for each member of its federal Diplomatic Security Service. In all, Karl calculated, Blackwater USA has been paid more than $1bn in government contracts since 2001.
SATURDAY NIGHT HILLARY The fundraising data are in for the Presidential candidates in the third quarter of 2007. NBC's Political Director Chuck Todd assigned "bragging rights" to Hillary Rodham Clinton, with her campaign being "absolutely giddy" about not only outraising Barack Obama ($22m vs $19m) but also outnumbering his donating supporters. Low-priced events "were key to bringing in 100,000 new donors," her operatives told ABC's Kate Snow (subscription required). "It is what Obama has been doing all year."
ABC's Snow saw Rodham Clinton edging towards inevitable status, with a lead not only in fundraising but also in national polls. Snow liked the "shrewd satire" on NBC's Saturday Night Live and played a clip: "A little more than a year from now, you, the American people, will go to the polls and elect me President of the United States." The frontrunner's biggest potential stumbling block, Snow suggested, will be the Iowa caucuses, where she is running neck-and-neck with Obama and John Edwards. With Edwards raising just $7m in the last three months, NBC's Todd called the Democratic contest "just a two-person race--financially."
NBC's Todd understated that Republican "are not exciting donors very well" as the third quarter saw Mitt Romney raise less than half what Rodham Clinton pulled in ($10m vs Rudolph Giuliani $9m, Fred Thompson $8m, John McCain $5m). "Perhaps the biggest surprise is Ron Paul, the little-known Congressman from Texas." Paul's $3m exceeded the fundraising of "supposedly more serious candidates" Christopher Dodd, Joe Biden and Mick Huckabee.
CRIME & PUNISHMENT CBS' Wyatt Andrews listened to Supreme Court arguments in the case of the so-called 100-to-1 guideline. Federal narcotics sentencing rules require a ten-year prison term for selling 50 grams of crack cocaine and 5,000 grams of its powdered form: "That difference has made it a racial issue because most crack dealers are black. African-Americans tend to think the law was written that way to put black men away." Meanwhile NBC sent Bob Faw behind bars to Louisiana's Angola Penitentiary for its Faith in America series. Since a Baptist seminary set up ministry classes, almost 150 inmates have graduated and are spreading the gospel prisonwide to their fellow convicts. "Angola, synonymous with violence and depravity, has become a kind of Earthly Eden," Faw exaggerated.
CANUCK BUCK The decline of the price of the US dollar on foreign exchange markets is slowly starting to make news. Last month ABC's Betsy Stark (subscription required) covered the impact on American tourists and exporters. Now NBC's Peter Alexander looks at the impact of parity for the loon. Just five years ago, he recalled $100 American could buy $160 Canadian. On the west coast, British Columbians are house hunting in Washington. On the east, New York State is advertising for tourists from Ontario. "Oh! Canada! After three decades a buck is now a buck on both sides of the border."
TWO THOMASES Justice Clarence Thomas' book tour--covered yesterday by ABC's Jan Crawford Greenburg (subscription required)--had already returned workplace sexual harassment to the news agenda even before a jury returned an $11m verdict against Madison Square Garden in the harassment case against Isiah Thomas, the coach of its NBA Knickerbocker franchise.
Justice Thomas called his 1991 sexual harassment accuser Anita Hill a "most traitrous adversary" in his book My Grandfather's Son. Professor Hill (no link) appeared on ABC's Good Morning America to respond: his approach "is really so typical of people who are accused of wrongdoing--they trash their accusers." When Hill claimed that the workplace climate for women has improved since the Thomas hearings, ABC's Betsy Stark concurred: "After her testimony women who believed they were victims of sexual harassment were emboldened to speak out" while employers have become "more enlightened and more fearful of being sued."
Hoopster Thomas denied the sexual harassment of fired marketing manager Anucha Browne Sanders--"I am very innocent and I did not do the things she accused me in this courtroom of doing"--even as a jury voted to believe her. ABC's Jim Avila (no link) cornily called the harassment Thomas' "biggest personal foul ever" and the verdict a "slam dunk." NBC's Savannah Guthrie noted that "it definitely could have been worse" for Thomas since the damages were assessed only against Browne Sanders' employer for retaliation against her complaints--not against the former athlete for the insult itself.
THIN NECKS Both CBS and NBC covered a study in the Journal of Athletic Training about on-the-field sports problems for girls. On both the soccer field and the basketball court, girls are more likely than boys to get concussions when they injure their heads--although, as CBS' Sandra Hughes pointed out, boys' football still dominates as the source of sports injuries to the brain. NBC's in-house physician Nancy Snyderman suggested an anatomical reason for the gender gap: "Girls' heads are smaller and their neck muscles are not as strong." Study author Dr Robert Cantu, of Brigham & Women's Hospital, suggested to CBS' Hughes that "women my just be a bit more honest," admitting to headaches instead of playing through pain.
FREE PUBLICITY The Boston advertising agency bzzAgent received plenty of free advertising buzz from CBS' Anthony Mason. It is a firm whose medium is word of mouth, deploying at least 12,000 agents with coupons and free samples to talk up a product to friends, acquaintances, family members and colleagues. The firm claims that during the course of a campaign, each agent talks one-on-one to 60 people, generating up to 900,000 "conversations about a product." Best of all for bzzAgent's business model, its advertisers work for free--the product samples they hand out are their only income.
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: on the Korean peninsula, the presidents of North and South met in a diplomatic summit…a United Nations envoy met with leaders of Myanmar's military junta…violence in Afghanistan is at its worst level since the United States went to war there in 2001…Britain will pull 1,000 more troops out of southern Iraq…the real estate housing market continues to slump as the Pending Home Sales statistic was 21% lower than a year ago…Israel confirmed that its planes did indeed bomb a target deep inside Syria.
The accusations against Blackwater were considerably more serious than car crashes and ricochets. ABC's Jonathan Karl (subscription required) quoted from the Congressional investigation that found Blackwater guards firing weapons on 200 separate occasions, "almost never stopping to see if anybody was killed or wounded." Prince insisted that his guards "use deadly force only in self-defense," noted NBC's Jim Miklaszewski. ABC's Karl characterized the portrayal of Blackwater as "a band of out-of-control mercenaries;" NBC's Miklaszewski used the phrase "trigger happy cowboys;" CBS' David Martin "out-of-control guns for hire." All three reporters included the tale of last Christmas Eve in Baghdad's Green Zone, when a bodyguard for Iraq's Vice President was killed by a drunken Blackwater hand--he was sent home and lost his job but was never prosecuted.
From Baghdad, CBS' Elizabeth Palmer pointed out that "there has not been a single prosecution of a foreign security contractor since the invasion." That may change, she speculated, as Iraq's Minister of the Interior has asked for the names of the bodyguards involved in Mansour: "He says if there is a trial, it should be in Iraq." ABC's Karl reported that Blackwater's $400K billing for each bodyguard is less costly than the State Department's $500K estimate for each member of its federal Diplomatic Security Service. In all, Karl calculated, Blackwater USA has been paid more than $1bn in government contracts since 2001.
SATURDAY NIGHT HILLARY The fundraising data are in for the Presidential candidates in the third quarter of 2007. NBC's Political Director Chuck Todd assigned "bragging rights" to Hillary Rodham Clinton, with her campaign being "absolutely giddy" about not only outraising Barack Obama ($22m vs $19m) but also outnumbering his donating supporters. Low-priced events "were key to bringing in 100,000 new donors," her operatives told ABC's Kate Snow (subscription required). "It is what Obama has been doing all year."
ABC's Snow saw Rodham Clinton edging towards inevitable status, with a lead not only in fundraising but also in national polls. Snow liked the "shrewd satire" on NBC's Saturday Night Live and played a clip: "A little more than a year from now, you, the American people, will go to the polls and elect me President of the United States." The frontrunner's biggest potential stumbling block, Snow suggested, will be the Iowa caucuses, where she is running neck-and-neck with Obama and John Edwards. With Edwards raising just $7m in the last three months, NBC's Todd called the Democratic contest "just a two-person race--financially."
NBC's Todd understated that Republican "are not exciting donors very well" as the third quarter saw Mitt Romney raise less than half what Rodham Clinton pulled in ($10m vs Rudolph Giuliani $9m, Fred Thompson $8m, John McCain $5m). "Perhaps the biggest surprise is Ron Paul, the little-known Congressman from Texas." Paul's $3m exceeded the fundraising of "supposedly more serious candidates" Christopher Dodd, Joe Biden and Mick Huckabee.
CRIME & PUNISHMENT CBS' Wyatt Andrews listened to Supreme Court arguments in the case of the so-called 100-to-1 guideline. Federal narcotics sentencing rules require a ten-year prison term for selling 50 grams of crack cocaine and 5,000 grams of its powdered form: "That difference has made it a racial issue because most crack dealers are black. African-Americans tend to think the law was written that way to put black men away." Meanwhile NBC sent Bob Faw behind bars to Louisiana's Angola Penitentiary for its Faith in America series. Since a Baptist seminary set up ministry classes, almost 150 inmates have graduated and are spreading the gospel prisonwide to their fellow convicts. "Angola, synonymous with violence and depravity, has become a kind of Earthly Eden," Faw exaggerated.
CANUCK BUCK The decline of the price of the US dollar on foreign exchange markets is slowly starting to make news. Last month ABC's Betsy Stark (subscription required) covered the impact on American tourists and exporters. Now NBC's Peter Alexander looks at the impact of parity for the loon. Just five years ago, he recalled $100 American could buy $160 Canadian. On the west coast, British Columbians are house hunting in Washington. On the east, New York State is advertising for tourists from Ontario. "Oh! Canada! After three decades a buck is now a buck on both sides of the border."
TWO THOMASES Justice Clarence Thomas' book tour--covered yesterday by ABC's Jan Crawford Greenburg (subscription required)--had already returned workplace sexual harassment to the news agenda even before a jury returned an $11m verdict against Madison Square Garden in the harassment case against Isiah Thomas, the coach of its NBA Knickerbocker franchise.
Justice Thomas called his 1991 sexual harassment accuser Anita Hill a "most traitrous adversary" in his book My Grandfather's Son. Professor Hill (no link) appeared on ABC's Good Morning America to respond: his approach "is really so typical of people who are accused of wrongdoing--they trash their accusers." When Hill claimed that the workplace climate for women has improved since the Thomas hearings, ABC's Betsy Stark concurred: "After her testimony women who believed they were victims of sexual harassment were emboldened to speak out" while employers have become "more enlightened and more fearful of being sued."
Hoopster Thomas denied the sexual harassment of fired marketing manager Anucha Browne Sanders--"I am very innocent and I did not do the things she accused me in this courtroom of doing"--even as a jury voted to believe her. ABC's Jim Avila (no link) cornily called the harassment Thomas' "biggest personal foul ever" and the verdict a "slam dunk." NBC's Savannah Guthrie noted that "it definitely could have been worse" for Thomas since the damages were assessed only against Browne Sanders' employer for retaliation against her complaints--not against the former athlete for the insult itself.
THIN NECKS Both CBS and NBC covered a study in the Journal of Athletic Training about on-the-field sports problems for girls. On both the soccer field and the basketball court, girls are more likely than boys to get concussions when they injure their heads--although, as CBS' Sandra Hughes pointed out, boys' football still dominates as the source of sports injuries to the brain. NBC's in-house physician Nancy Snyderman suggested an anatomical reason for the gender gap: "Girls' heads are smaller and their neck muscles are not as strong." Study author Dr Robert Cantu, of Brigham & Women's Hospital, suggested to CBS' Hughes that "women my just be a bit more honest," admitting to headaches instead of playing through pain.
FREE PUBLICITY The Boston advertising agency bzzAgent received plenty of free advertising buzz from CBS' Anthony Mason. It is a firm whose medium is word of mouth, deploying at least 12,000 agents with coupons and free samples to talk up a product to friends, acquaintances, family members and colleagues. The firm claims that during the course of a campaign, each agent talks one-on-one to 60 people, generating up to 900,000 "conversations about a product." Best of all for bzzAgent's business model, its advertisers work for free--the product samples they hand out are their only income.
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: on the Korean peninsula, the presidents of North and South met in a diplomatic summit…a United Nations envoy met with leaders of Myanmar's military junta…violence in Afghanistan is at its worst level since the United States went to war there in 2001…Britain will pull 1,000 more troops out of southern Iraq…the real estate housing market continues to slump as the Pending Home Sales statistic was 21% lower than a year ago…Israel confirmed that its planes did indeed bomb a target deep inside Syria.
