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TYNDALL HEADLINE: HIGHLIGHTS FROM OCTOBER 23, 2007
The wildfires rampaging through southern California hogged headlines. All three anchors jetted off to San Diego to survey the damage. ABC and CBS both slapped a logo on the story--California Burning and Firestorm in California respectively--and both Charles Gibson and Katie Couric kicked off their coverage with a helicopter tour over the flames. On a logofree NBC, anchor Brian Williams started from the ground in a scorched suburban cul de sac. This was only the third time all year that all three newscasts have originated from the scene of a breaking story: the others were the Virginia Tech campus shooting in April (54 min) and the Minneapolis I-35 bridge collapse in August (45 min). These fires (47 min) accounted for a massive 79% of the three-network newshole.
TYNDALL PICKS FOR OCTOBER 23, 2007: CLICK ON GRID ELEMENTS TO SEARCH FOR MATCHING ITEMS
ALL EYES ON CALIFORNIA’S FIRES The wildfires rampaging through southern California hogged headlines. All three anchors jetted off to San Diego to survey the damage. ABC and CBS both slapped a logo on the story--California Burning and Firestorm in California respectively--and both Charles Gibson and Katie Couric kicked off their coverage with a helicopter tour over the flames. On a logofree NBC, anchor Brian Williams started from the ground in a scorched suburban cul de sac. This was only the third time all year that all three newscasts have originated from the scene of a breaking story: the others were the Virginia Tech campus shooting in April (54 min) and the Minneapolis I-35 bridge collapse in August (45 min). These fires (47 min) accounted for a massive 79% of the three-network newshole.
A dozen or more fires burned out of control in seven counties. "These fires are not isolated in forests somewhere. They are right…in highly populated areas," ABC's Gibson explained. He pointed down from his helicopter: "Those are not low lying clouds sitting over a valley area. That is simply smoke." In San Diego County alone, CBS' Couric calculated, 346,000 homes had been ordered evacuated. NBC's Williams (at the head of the Don Teague videostream) relayed the Associated Press estimate of displaced persons at 950,000: "Much larger than Katrina, it would make it the largest single peacetime movement of Americans since the Civil War." Already 1,000 homes have been incinerated in San Diego, Gibson recounted, and some 200 in the resort community of Lake Arrowhead, in the mountains east of Los Angeles. Couric was told that the total of lost homes would be 2,000 before the fires were doused. Yet the evacuations have succeeded. So far the fires have killed only two people: "That is an amazingly low death toll," marveled Gibson.
HOMELESSNESS CBS' Dean Reynolds went along as firefighters enforced mandatory evacuation orders in San Diego's Spring Valley neighborhood. He found some homeowners staying put, "in a serious state of denial." A fire along a ridge on San Miguel Mountain was "of special concern" as it moved towards a "house, where, we are told, there are several 55-gallon drums of racing fuel…if those things explode the whole hilltop will become an inferno." In the San Diego suburb of Rancho Bernardo, NBC's Don Teague showed us neighbors gather in a grocery store parking lot as one by one, the address of each destroyed home was read aloud. "The house is gone. We have nothing," a newly homeless resident declared.
All three networks sent reporters to Lake Arrowhead where "house after house after house burned to the ground," as ABC's Laura Marquez put it. She showed us a former patio set, "the only indication this once was a porch." CBS' Bill Whitaker took us to the bottom of one mountainside: "It is so steep and so dry that all it takes is one gust of wind to send these flames shooting straight up the mountain." NBC's Lester Holt (no link), meanwhile, offered the overhead shot of the same phenomenon from a helicopter: "We have watched these flames march right up the ridge…huge, huge flames now and they move very quickly."
AIR SUPPLY In Orange County, ABC's Ryan Owens saw "not much of a fight. Once again today the fires were winning…Throughout the canyons of Orange County homes were reduced to shells and cinder." CBS' John Blackstone (no link) heard the county's Fire Chief Chip Prather "angrily" blame his inability to fight the fires on his lack of back-up: "It is an absolute fact that, had we had more air resources, we would have been able to control this fire." Blackstone was skeptical: "Even the planes available here have had little effectiveness. Strong winds have often left them grounded." Airborne firefighting was on display in abundance in Malibu, where ABC's Neal Karlinsky followed 23 airplanes and 50 helicopters as they dropped "water on hotspots, specialized foam on stubborn areas that water cannot put out--and flame retardant ahead of fire lines." The aircraft made as many as 50 separate drops in an eight-hour shift, directed by their own airborne traffic controlers flying above them.
SUPERIOR STADIUM Evacuated San Diegans gathered at the city's NFL football field. "This is humanity on the run, hundreds of thousands uprooted, scrambling to collect their loved ones and pets," ABC's Mike von Fremd (no link) mused, as the National Guard delivered sleeping cots. "All the roads leading into Qualcomm Stadium are jammed tonight," noted NBC's George Lewis. "The number of refugees almost quadrupled." Calling such temporarily displaced residents "refugees" was too melodramatic. The terminology used during Hurricane Katrina--"evacuees"--is more apt. That comparison with Katrina was made by all three anchors. "You remember the desperation of the Superdome?" ABC's Gibson asked von Fremd. "Qualcomm was quite a contrast." CBS' Couric checked out an army of volunteers and the tons of donated food, and called it "a massive tailgate party"--unlike the Superdome, which was "a small city of violence, filth and chaos."
NBC's Williams, who was actually in the Superdome during the hurricane, saw residents patiently wait in line for hours for a police escort to return home as a measure to prevent looting: "Do you think any of this came out of Katrina--learning to treat people better and respond to emergencies?" he wondered. Partly Katrina, a woman conceded, "but I also think San Diego has learned a lot from the Cedar Fire"--a blaze that caused similar disruption just four years ago. Williams concluded that coping the wildfires "is part of the deal. It is part of the contract you make with nature if you are going to live in a beautiful, kind of wild, unusual kind of place."
CLIMATIC CONTEXT Yesterday, ABC's Brian Rooney (subscription required), CBS' John Blackstone and KNBC meteorologist Fritz Coleman explained the role of the Santa Ana winds in the wildfires. Dave Price, meteorologist for CBS' Early Show, added another factor: "Go back to the winter and spring of 2005," he reminded us. That season was so wet that "lots of things were in bloom, even in Death Valley." The kindling for these fires turns out to be that excess vegetation two years later, all dried out. NBC tried to generalize from these fires. Environmental correspondent Anne Thompson filed an Our Planet feature that reminded us that the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change had warned that one consequence of global warming would be an increase in wildfires. Thompson also checked off this fall's stronger-than-usual tornados, the lack of fall foliage in the Carolinas and a late first frost in Minnesota as other possible symptoms of a trend. "Does this all add up to global warming?" she wondered--before equivocating. "Scientists say you cannot answer that question after just one season."
MARIA HOLDS COURT NBC (13 min v ABC 16, CBS 18) spent slightly less time on the wildfires than its rivals. Instead, Kelly O'Donnell was assigned to cover a Campaign 2008 conference in Long Beach entitled Women as Architects of Change. It discussed the role of candidates' spouses on the campaign trail. O'Donnell shared soundbites from the wives of Edwards, McCain, Obama, Romney and Thompson--"less like a debate, more like Oprah," she called it. Why would NBC spend time on fluff on such a heavy news day? Perhaps the conference's hostess, the First Lady of California, called in a favor: Mrs Schwarzenegger is better known as Maria Shriver, the former NBC News anchor.
WHAT’S LOVE GOT TO DO WITH IT? Yesterday, in ABC's Key to Success series, Dan Harris (subscription required) told us about the program in Oregon's Clackamas County that tries to strengthen the institution of marriage by obliging engaged couples to delay their wedding ceremony. In Brooklyn, they use the opposite approach, Rehema Ellis told us for NBC's Making a Difference series. There, cohabiting parents raising children together are encouraged to abandon singlehood and participate in mass nuptials, ten couples getting hitched all at once. The plan, dubbed Marry Your Baby Daddy Day, is the inspiration of novelist Maryann Reid, who conceived of it "after she was left at the altar." Reid organizes all-expenses-paid weddings for African-Americans. "People are living together and having children together. Why do they need to be married?" Ellis wondered. Love apparently has nothing to do with it. "It is an issue of security for the family and the child" was Reid's unromantic response.
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: the Space Shuttle Discovery took off for the International Space Station from Florida…Dyncorp, a State Department contractor, is accused of mismanaging a $1.2bn budget for police training in Iraq… double ordering of anthrax vaccine by both the Pentagon and the federal Health Department led to the purchase of an extra $100m worth of shots…the floods in New Orleans required the protective closure of a canal that leads to weak levees.
A dozen or more fires burned out of control in seven counties. "These fires are not isolated in forests somewhere. They are right…in highly populated areas," ABC's Gibson explained. He pointed down from his helicopter: "Those are not low lying clouds sitting over a valley area. That is simply smoke." In San Diego County alone, CBS' Couric calculated, 346,000 homes had been ordered evacuated. NBC's Williams (at the head of the Don Teague videostream) relayed the Associated Press estimate of displaced persons at 950,000: "Much larger than Katrina, it would make it the largest single peacetime movement of Americans since the Civil War." Already 1,000 homes have been incinerated in San Diego, Gibson recounted, and some 200 in the resort community of Lake Arrowhead, in the mountains east of Los Angeles. Couric was told that the total of lost homes would be 2,000 before the fires were doused. Yet the evacuations have succeeded. So far the fires have killed only two people: "That is an amazingly low death toll," marveled Gibson.
HOMELESSNESS CBS' Dean Reynolds went along as firefighters enforced mandatory evacuation orders in San Diego's Spring Valley neighborhood. He found some homeowners staying put, "in a serious state of denial." A fire along a ridge on San Miguel Mountain was "of special concern" as it moved towards a "house, where, we are told, there are several 55-gallon drums of racing fuel…if those things explode the whole hilltop will become an inferno." In the San Diego suburb of Rancho Bernardo, NBC's Don Teague showed us neighbors gather in a grocery store parking lot as one by one, the address of each destroyed home was read aloud. "The house is gone. We have nothing," a newly homeless resident declared.
All three networks sent reporters to Lake Arrowhead where "house after house after house burned to the ground," as ABC's Laura Marquez put it. She showed us a former patio set, "the only indication this once was a porch." CBS' Bill Whitaker took us to the bottom of one mountainside: "It is so steep and so dry that all it takes is one gust of wind to send these flames shooting straight up the mountain." NBC's Lester Holt (no link), meanwhile, offered the overhead shot of the same phenomenon from a helicopter: "We have watched these flames march right up the ridge…huge, huge flames now and they move very quickly."
AIR SUPPLY In Orange County, ABC's Ryan Owens saw "not much of a fight. Once again today the fires were winning…Throughout the canyons of Orange County homes were reduced to shells and cinder." CBS' John Blackstone (no link) heard the county's Fire Chief Chip Prather "angrily" blame his inability to fight the fires on his lack of back-up: "It is an absolute fact that, had we had more air resources, we would have been able to control this fire." Blackstone was skeptical: "Even the planes available here have had little effectiveness. Strong winds have often left them grounded." Airborne firefighting was on display in abundance in Malibu, where ABC's Neal Karlinsky followed 23 airplanes and 50 helicopters as they dropped "water on hotspots, specialized foam on stubborn areas that water cannot put out--and flame retardant ahead of fire lines." The aircraft made as many as 50 separate drops in an eight-hour shift, directed by their own airborne traffic controlers flying above them.
SUPERIOR STADIUM Evacuated San Diegans gathered at the city's NFL football field. "This is humanity on the run, hundreds of thousands uprooted, scrambling to collect their loved ones and pets," ABC's Mike von Fremd (no link) mused, as the National Guard delivered sleeping cots. "All the roads leading into Qualcomm Stadium are jammed tonight," noted NBC's George Lewis. "The number of refugees almost quadrupled." Calling such temporarily displaced residents "refugees" was too melodramatic. The terminology used during Hurricane Katrina--"evacuees"--is more apt. That comparison with Katrina was made by all three anchors. "You remember the desperation of the Superdome?" ABC's Gibson asked von Fremd. "Qualcomm was quite a contrast." CBS' Couric checked out an army of volunteers and the tons of donated food, and called it "a massive tailgate party"--unlike the Superdome, which was "a small city of violence, filth and chaos."
NBC's Williams, who was actually in the Superdome during the hurricane, saw residents patiently wait in line for hours for a police escort to return home as a measure to prevent looting: "Do you think any of this came out of Katrina--learning to treat people better and respond to emergencies?" he wondered. Partly Katrina, a woman conceded, "but I also think San Diego has learned a lot from the Cedar Fire"--a blaze that caused similar disruption just four years ago. Williams concluded that coping the wildfires "is part of the deal. It is part of the contract you make with nature if you are going to live in a beautiful, kind of wild, unusual kind of place."
CLIMATIC CONTEXT Yesterday, ABC's Brian Rooney (subscription required), CBS' John Blackstone and KNBC meteorologist Fritz Coleman explained the role of the Santa Ana winds in the wildfires. Dave Price, meteorologist for CBS' Early Show, added another factor: "Go back to the winter and spring of 2005," he reminded us. That season was so wet that "lots of things were in bloom, even in Death Valley." The kindling for these fires turns out to be that excess vegetation two years later, all dried out. NBC tried to generalize from these fires. Environmental correspondent Anne Thompson filed an Our Planet feature that reminded us that the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change had warned that one consequence of global warming would be an increase in wildfires. Thompson also checked off this fall's stronger-than-usual tornados, the lack of fall foliage in the Carolinas and a late first frost in Minnesota as other possible symptoms of a trend. "Does this all add up to global warming?" she wondered--before equivocating. "Scientists say you cannot answer that question after just one season."
MARIA HOLDS COURT NBC (13 min v ABC 16, CBS 18) spent slightly less time on the wildfires than its rivals. Instead, Kelly O'Donnell was assigned to cover a Campaign 2008 conference in Long Beach entitled Women as Architects of Change. It discussed the role of candidates' spouses on the campaign trail. O'Donnell shared soundbites from the wives of Edwards, McCain, Obama, Romney and Thompson--"less like a debate, more like Oprah," she called it. Why would NBC spend time on fluff on such a heavy news day? Perhaps the conference's hostess, the First Lady of California, called in a favor: Mrs Schwarzenegger is better known as Maria Shriver, the former NBC News anchor.
WHAT’S LOVE GOT TO DO WITH IT? Yesterday, in ABC's Key to Success series, Dan Harris (subscription required) told us about the program in Oregon's Clackamas County that tries to strengthen the institution of marriage by obliging engaged couples to delay their wedding ceremony. In Brooklyn, they use the opposite approach, Rehema Ellis told us for NBC's Making a Difference series. There, cohabiting parents raising children together are encouraged to abandon singlehood and participate in mass nuptials, ten couples getting hitched all at once. The plan, dubbed Marry Your Baby Daddy Day, is the inspiration of novelist Maryann Reid, who conceived of it "after she was left at the altar." Reid organizes all-expenses-paid weddings for African-Americans. "People are living together and having children together. Why do they need to be married?" Ellis wondered. Love apparently has nothing to do with it. "It is an issue of security for the family and the child" was Reid's unromantic response.
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: the Space Shuttle Discovery took off for the International Space Station from Florida…Dyncorp, a State Department contractor, is accused of mismanaging a $1.2bn budget for police training in Iraq… double ordering of anthrax vaccine by both the Pentagon and the federal Health Department led to the purchase of an extra $100m worth of shots…the floods in New Orleans required the protective closure of a canal that leads to weak levees.
