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TYNDALL HEADLINE: HIGHLIGHTS FROM OCTOBER 03, 2007
As he had repeatedly promised, President George Bush exercised his veto against a $35bn five-year extension of the federal subsidy for state-run children's healthcare, dubbed S-CHIP. He attracted just enough attention to qualify as Story of the Day. But the no-surprise veto was accompanied by offers of compromise so only ABC treated it as lead material--and NBC did not even bother to assign a reporter. CBS chose to lead for a second day with the Blackwater USA paramilitary operation in Iraq. And all three networks turned their attention to Campaign 2008, with both ABC and NBC publishing their own poll numbers, NBC as its newscast's lead.
TYNDALL PICKS FOR OCTOBER 03, 2007: CLICK ON GRID ELEMENTS TO SEARCH FOR MATCHING ITEMS
LITTLE DRAMA IN HEALTH PLAN VETO As he had repeatedly promised, President George Bush exercised his veto against a $35bn five-year extension of the federal subsidy for state-run children's healthcare, dubbed S-CHIP. He attracted just enough attention to qualify as Story of the Day. But the no-surprise veto was accompanied by offers of compromise so only ABC treated it as lead material--and NBC did not even bother to assign a reporter. CBS chose to lead for a second day with the Blackwater USA paramilitary operation in Iraq. And all three networks turned their attention to Campaign 2008, with both ABC and NBC publishing their own poll numbers, NBC as its newscast's lead.
The two polls measured the strengths of the GOP Presidential candidates in nationwide polls of Republicans--and came up with the same answers, within their margin of error: both had Rudolph Giuliani in the lead (ABC 34%, NBC 30%), followed by Fred Thompson (ABC 17%, NBC 23%), John McCain (ABC 12%, NBC 15%) and Mitt Romney (ABC 11%, NBC 10%). NBC's Tim Russert went inside the numbers to rank the issues of greatest importance to Republican voters: in declining order of importance they were Defense (including terrorism), then Domestic (such as healthcare), then Morals (social issues) with Economics (read taxes) bringing up the rear. ABC poll also found that Hillary Rodham Clinton would beat Giuliani (51% vs 43%) in a hypothetical General Election. "Get this, Charlie," George Stephanopoulos (no link) alerted his anchor Charles Gibson: Rodham Clinton's popular husband Bill is "as much of a plus" for her as Giuliani's experience on September 11th, 2001, is for the former mayor.
ABC and NBC both followed up with features on Republican contenders. NBC chose Fred Thompson, as anchor Brian Williams pointed out, an actor on his network's Law & Order in primetime. Kelly O'Donnell observed that Thompson is not quite ready for primetime in his late-starting campaign, citing "a handful of slipups that rival campaigns are happy to point out." Thompson, she pointed out, "is courting evangelical and social conservatives but says he is not a regular churchgoer himself."
For the first time on any network nightly newscast, Republican Ron Paul was the topic of a personal profile. The reason, ABC's Jake Tapper explained, was that Paul "unlike almost every other Republican" is increasing his fundraising quarter-over-quarter. Yesterday, NBC Political Director Chuck Todd predicted that Paul's haul for the last three months would be $3m. It turned out to be $5m. ABC's in-house conservative columnist George Will credited Paul's anti-war message: "Just come home. We just marched in. We can just come home." Representative Paul is also an obstetrician. On Capitol Hill, he votes against so many spending bills that his nickname, Tapper told us, is Dr No.
CBS chose to feature the Democratic field. Anchor Katie Couric sat down with Drew Westen, one of their consultants and author of The Political Brain. Westen's winning recipe is that Democrats should be "warmer and less wonky," more worried about conveying honest human feelings than policy platforms. "Candidates should go for words that will send hearts soaring not heads spinning," was how Couric paraphrased Westen's message. "The bottom line is--authenticity counts."
As the saying goes: authenticity, if you can fake that, you can fake anything.
NUMBER FOUR "The President says he is curbing runaway spending," CBS' Jim Axelrod reported from the White House as the veto was signed. Axelrod spelled out the problems: Bush is nixing $35bn in spending while seeking $190bn to fight wars; the advocacy group Families USA is running a "shame on you campaign" in favor of an override; Democrats have to convert only 15 Republicans in the House in the coming two weeks to prevail; and a GOP strategist told him, in a blind quote, that "poor kids' healthcare trumps fiscal restraint every time." ABC's Martha Raddatz (subscription required) called the veto "by far the most unpopular" of the four of Bush's Presidency and saw the White House start to relent: "We are willing to talk about how much more needs to be done," was how she paraphrased their negotiating position. "The White House does say it is willing to compromise."
HELICOPTER HEROES On the day after the boss of Blackwater USA was defending his bodyguards at House hearings (text link), CBS had Elizabeth Palmer lead with their rescue of a wounded diplomat from an ambush in the Baghdad neighborhood of Karrada. Palmer pointed out that Blackwater had the only air rescue team at the American Embassy's disposal when the distress call came in from the Ambassador of Poland: it "shows just how essential the company still is to the American and international presence here in Iraq." NBC's Richard Engel called the insertion of the "little bird helicopter" into the street "heroic." CBS' Palmer noted that Blackwater "is famous for its aggressive use of helicopters in Iraq," including ammunition supplies during rooftop fighting in Najaf and caught-on-videotape stunt aerobatics through "Iraq's most famous war memorials." Back at the Pentagon, CBS' David Martin detected Blackwater-generated friction: his unnamed military source "blamed the State Department for not supervising Blackwater more closely." Martin added that the investigation into Blackwater's killing of up to 17 civilians last month in Baghdad will be removed from the State Department and assigned to the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
TURN AROUND TWICE At ABC, Pentagon correspondent Jonathan Karl (subscription required) was assigned to North Korea instead, as Pyongyang agreed "to disable its nuclear program by the end of the year, to make a complete accounting of its nuclear stockpile and, perhaps most remarkably, inviting a team of United States experts to lead the effort to take apart the nuclear facilities." Karl called it "a stunning turnaround" twice: first the North Korea would give up its weapons; second that US diplomats backtracked on their pledge to offer "no rewards" until disarmament had occurred. The "rewards" agreed to include energy assistance and removal of North Korea from the list of terrorist sponsors. "To get something in this world you have to give something," was how Karl quoted his anonymous "senior official" source in justification.
HOLE IN THE ROAD An essentially local story out of San Diego made it onto the national news agenda because of its startling visuals. A sinkhole, 50 yards wide and 20 feet deep, appeared in the hills of La Jolla dragging a million-dollar house down a hillside and threatening as many as 50 of its neighboring homes. ABC's Brian Rooney (subscription required) was on the scene; CBS' John Blackstone narrated the story from San Francisco; NBC ran videotape with an anchor's voiceover. The homes were built 45 years ago, ABC's Rooney explained, using a now-discredited "cut and fill" technique that creates tiers of lots in unstable terraces. "California's unstable geology makes landslides a frequent worry here. A nearby fault may have weakened that slope," added CBS' Blackstone.
NIAGARA DOLLAR FALLS After NBC's Peter Alexander yesterday and ABC's Betsy Stark (subscription required) last month, CBS' Cynthia Bowers jumped on the sinking dollar story. She listed the declines over the last five years: against the Euro down 30%, against the pound sterling 23% , against Canada's loon 37%. Filing from Niagara Falls, she found that "cross border traffic has done a 180." With four out of five Canadians living within 100 miles of the border with the United States "many are pulling out their passports along with their credit cards to take advantage of deals at American shops."
GREAT WALL NOT ENOUGH Viewers of the broadcast nightly newscasts--as opposed to the videostream links offered by Tyndall Report--will have noted the advertising campaign mounted by the United States Postal Service's fakechecks.org warning against get-rich-scheme scams. The spot features a disheveled double-speaking bus passenger offering a bogus foreign lottery win in the shape of a crumpled check. So it was peculiar to see CBS' Bob Orr grant free, and uncritical, publicity to the USPS postal inspectors' fakechecks.org effort, granting what amounted to an editorial endorsement of an advertiser's claims. CBS' Kelly Cobiella provided similar coverage last month, reporting on the American Cancer Society's decision to mount a campaign on behalf of universal healthcare on the very newscast that was selling time to the ACS to run its ads.
Newscasts should go one step beyond merely keeping advertising sales and editorial story selection separate with their so-called Chinese Wall. They should proactively reassure viewers that any coverage does not constitute a journalistic kickback, rewarding advertisers for spending money on their airwaves.
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: an elevator accident in the Elandsrand gold mine near Johannesburg has stranded 3,2000 miners underground…former President Jimmy Carter feuded with Sudanese officials as he visited a refugee camp in Darfur…the Russian space program will search for water on the moon and on Mars…an southern California sweep by Immigration & Customs Enforcement against illegal residents netted 1,300 arrests…a National Guard unit from Minnesota will likely qualify for GI Bill benefits even though their deployment in Iraq was officially one day short of requirements…colon cancer can be effectively detected by CT scans…many sleep problems in women are caused by sharing their bed with men.
The two polls measured the strengths of the GOP Presidential candidates in nationwide polls of Republicans--and came up with the same answers, within their margin of error: both had Rudolph Giuliani in the lead (ABC 34%, NBC 30%), followed by Fred Thompson (ABC 17%, NBC 23%), John McCain (ABC 12%, NBC 15%) and Mitt Romney (ABC 11%, NBC 10%). NBC's Tim Russert went inside the numbers to rank the issues of greatest importance to Republican voters: in declining order of importance they were Defense (including terrorism), then Domestic (such as healthcare), then Morals (social issues) with Economics (read taxes) bringing up the rear. ABC poll also found that Hillary Rodham Clinton would beat Giuliani (51% vs 43%) in a hypothetical General Election. "Get this, Charlie," George Stephanopoulos (no link) alerted his anchor Charles Gibson: Rodham Clinton's popular husband Bill is "as much of a plus" for her as Giuliani's experience on September 11th, 2001, is for the former mayor.
ABC and NBC both followed up with features on Republican contenders. NBC chose Fred Thompson, as anchor Brian Williams pointed out, an actor on his network's Law & Order in primetime. Kelly O'Donnell observed that Thompson is not quite ready for primetime in his late-starting campaign, citing "a handful of slipups that rival campaigns are happy to point out." Thompson, she pointed out, "is courting evangelical and social conservatives but says he is not a regular churchgoer himself."
For the first time on any network nightly newscast, Republican Ron Paul was the topic of a personal profile. The reason, ABC's Jake Tapper explained, was that Paul "unlike almost every other Republican" is increasing his fundraising quarter-over-quarter. Yesterday, NBC Political Director Chuck Todd predicted that Paul's haul for the last three months would be $3m. It turned out to be $5m. ABC's in-house conservative columnist George Will credited Paul's anti-war message: "Just come home. We just marched in. We can just come home." Representative Paul is also an obstetrician. On Capitol Hill, he votes against so many spending bills that his nickname, Tapper told us, is Dr No.
CBS chose to feature the Democratic field. Anchor Katie Couric sat down with Drew Westen, one of their consultants and author of The Political Brain. Westen's winning recipe is that Democrats should be "warmer and less wonky," more worried about conveying honest human feelings than policy platforms. "Candidates should go for words that will send hearts soaring not heads spinning," was how Couric paraphrased Westen's message. "The bottom line is--authenticity counts."
As the saying goes: authenticity, if you can fake that, you can fake anything.
NUMBER FOUR "The President says he is curbing runaway spending," CBS' Jim Axelrod reported from the White House as the veto was signed. Axelrod spelled out the problems: Bush is nixing $35bn in spending while seeking $190bn to fight wars; the advocacy group Families USA is running a "shame on you campaign" in favor of an override; Democrats have to convert only 15 Republicans in the House in the coming two weeks to prevail; and a GOP strategist told him, in a blind quote, that "poor kids' healthcare trumps fiscal restraint every time." ABC's Martha Raddatz (subscription required) called the veto "by far the most unpopular" of the four of Bush's Presidency and saw the White House start to relent: "We are willing to talk about how much more needs to be done," was how she paraphrased their negotiating position. "The White House does say it is willing to compromise."
HELICOPTER HEROES On the day after the boss of Blackwater USA was defending his bodyguards at House hearings (text link), CBS had Elizabeth Palmer lead with their rescue of a wounded diplomat from an ambush in the Baghdad neighborhood of Karrada. Palmer pointed out that Blackwater had the only air rescue team at the American Embassy's disposal when the distress call came in from the Ambassador of Poland: it "shows just how essential the company still is to the American and international presence here in Iraq." NBC's Richard Engel called the insertion of the "little bird helicopter" into the street "heroic." CBS' Palmer noted that Blackwater "is famous for its aggressive use of helicopters in Iraq," including ammunition supplies during rooftop fighting in Najaf and caught-on-videotape stunt aerobatics through "Iraq's most famous war memorials." Back at the Pentagon, CBS' David Martin detected Blackwater-generated friction: his unnamed military source "blamed the State Department for not supervising Blackwater more closely." Martin added that the investigation into Blackwater's killing of up to 17 civilians last month in Baghdad will be removed from the State Department and assigned to the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
TURN AROUND TWICE At ABC, Pentagon correspondent Jonathan Karl (subscription required) was assigned to North Korea instead, as Pyongyang agreed "to disable its nuclear program by the end of the year, to make a complete accounting of its nuclear stockpile and, perhaps most remarkably, inviting a team of United States experts to lead the effort to take apart the nuclear facilities." Karl called it "a stunning turnaround" twice: first the North Korea would give up its weapons; second that US diplomats backtracked on their pledge to offer "no rewards" until disarmament had occurred. The "rewards" agreed to include energy assistance and removal of North Korea from the list of terrorist sponsors. "To get something in this world you have to give something," was how Karl quoted his anonymous "senior official" source in justification.
HOLE IN THE ROAD An essentially local story out of San Diego made it onto the national news agenda because of its startling visuals. A sinkhole, 50 yards wide and 20 feet deep, appeared in the hills of La Jolla dragging a million-dollar house down a hillside and threatening as many as 50 of its neighboring homes. ABC's Brian Rooney (subscription required) was on the scene; CBS' John Blackstone narrated the story from San Francisco; NBC ran videotape with an anchor's voiceover. The homes were built 45 years ago, ABC's Rooney explained, using a now-discredited "cut and fill" technique that creates tiers of lots in unstable terraces. "California's unstable geology makes landslides a frequent worry here. A nearby fault may have weakened that slope," added CBS' Blackstone.
NIAGARA DOLLAR FALLS After NBC's Peter Alexander yesterday and ABC's Betsy Stark (subscription required) last month, CBS' Cynthia Bowers jumped on the sinking dollar story. She listed the declines over the last five years: against the Euro down 30%, against the pound sterling 23% , against Canada's loon 37%. Filing from Niagara Falls, she found that "cross border traffic has done a 180." With four out of five Canadians living within 100 miles of the border with the United States "many are pulling out their passports along with their credit cards to take advantage of deals at American shops."
GREAT WALL NOT ENOUGH Viewers of the broadcast nightly newscasts--as opposed to the videostream links offered by Tyndall Report--will have noted the advertising campaign mounted by the United States Postal Service's fakechecks.org warning against get-rich-scheme scams. The spot features a disheveled double-speaking bus passenger offering a bogus foreign lottery win in the shape of a crumpled check. So it was peculiar to see CBS' Bob Orr grant free, and uncritical, publicity to the USPS postal inspectors' fakechecks.org effort, granting what amounted to an editorial endorsement of an advertiser's claims. CBS' Kelly Cobiella provided similar coverage last month, reporting on the American Cancer Society's decision to mount a campaign on behalf of universal healthcare on the very newscast that was selling time to the ACS to run its ads.
Newscasts should go one step beyond merely keeping advertising sales and editorial story selection separate with their so-called Chinese Wall. They should proactively reassure viewers that any coverage does not constitute a journalistic kickback, rewarding advertisers for spending money on their airwaves.
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: an elevator accident in the Elandsrand gold mine near Johannesburg has stranded 3,2000 miners underground…former President Jimmy Carter feuded with Sudanese officials as he visited a refugee camp in Darfur…the Russian space program will search for water on the moon and on Mars…an southern California sweep by Immigration & Customs Enforcement against illegal residents netted 1,300 arrests…a National Guard unit from Minnesota will likely qualify for GI Bill benefits even though their deployment in Iraq was officially one day short of requirements…colon cancer can be effectively detected by CT scans…many sleep problems in women are caused by sharing their bed with men.
