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TYNDALL HEADLINE: HIGHLIGHTS FROM OCTOBER 24, 2007
The Santa Ana winds may have abated--allowing thousands of evacuated San Diegans to return to their homes and firefighters to start to contain the dozen-or-so blazes bedeviling southern California. But the networks' coverage of the wildfires continues as strong as ever. For another day all three anchors camped out in San Diego County for newscasts that were virtually as fire dominated (46 min, 77% of the three-network newshole) as yesterday's (47 min, 79%).
TYNDALL PICKS FOR OCTOBER 24, 2007: CLICK ON GRID ELEMENTS TO SEARCH FOR MATCHING ITEMS
WINDS ABATE, COVERAGE PERSISTS The Santa Ana winds may have abated--allowing thousands of evacuated San Diegans to return to their homes and firefighters to start to contain the dozen-or-so blazes bedeviling southern California. But the networks' coverage of the wildfires continues as strong as ever. For another day all three anchors camped out in San Diego County for newscasts that were virtually as fire dominated (46 min, 77% of the three-network newshole) as yesterday's (47 min, 79%).
As it did yesterday, a logofree NBC (12 min v ABC 15, CBS 19) covered the fires slightly less intensively than its rivals. Anchor Brian Williams handed off to correspondent George Lewis at San Diego's Qualcomm Stadium--where the crowd of evacuees had "diminished somewhat"--for an overview of the region. Lewis showed us video from the International Space Station that showed the extent of the smoke. He checked off the various angles: public health--wear facemasks; law enforcement--a manhunt for arsonists; transportation--Interstate 5 cut off; agricultural--major damage to the avocado crop; firefighting--USNavy helicopters have joined the effort.
Under ABC's California Burning logo, Ryan Owens (subscription required) gave us the good news that "the view from the frontlines has changed dramatically in the last 24 hours" as hot, dry, easterly Santa Ana winds were superseded by moister, onshore air coming off the Pacific Ocean. So "it was finally time to launch a counterattack after three hellish days of losing ground," announced CBS' Katie Couric under her network's Firestorm in California logo. Those three days had seen 1500 homes destroyed and $1bn in property damage. Al Roker, the weathercaster on NBC's Today pointed out to anchor Brian Williams that the onshore winds do have a "downside" because they are weaker than the Santa Ana. "Historically more have been killed because of the onshore winds…they are less predictable; they can switch at any time, switch direction."
Both CBS' Dean Reynolds and ABC anchor Charles Gibson profiled the firefighters based at the central command station in Escondido. They are being deployed in 24 hour on, 24 hour off shifts against San Diego County's largest remaining blaze, the Witch Fire. "If they are lucky they get 18 hours off after they drive in and out of the fire zone," Gibson shrugged. When they get tired, "adrenaline kicks in," a visiting firefighter from Tehama County near Sacramento explained. ABC also sent Laura Marquez to the mountains near Lake Arrowhead. Firefighters told her they had "zero containment" around Running Springs, "not one big fire but hundreds of small ones." She showed us the so-called spot fires that "come out of nowhere and because the terrain is so rugged they race right up the hill, taking everything in their path."
TELEMARKETING IS GOOD FOR YOU Despite all the property damage, ABC anchor Charles Gibson found the death toll "heartening" compared with the 22 who were killed in the similar Cedar Fire four years ago. So far six people are known dead, but Gibson stated that only one death was "as direct result of fire." He credited the Reverse 911 for the safe mandatory evacuation--"a kind a telemarketing system for lifesavers. Authorities can program it to alert entire communities at once." On CBS, CNN's in-house physician Sanjay Gupta cautioned that hospitals may be undercounting burn injuries. Trauma Center doctors are worried that "there are a lot of undocumented workers out there who are just fearful to come to emergency rooms and may not be seeking care." The other health danger from the fires is lung damage: CBS' Sandra Hughes warned about "soot, chemical irritants and particles so tiny that they are inhaled deep into the lungs." Los Angeles residents have been instructed not to exercise outdoors and when they do go outside to wear a mask.
ROLLS OF TOILET PAPER All three networks discovered unlucky San Diego County residents whose homes had been burned out. ABC's Neal Karlinsky (subscription required) followed an "underground information network" among the evacuees at Qualcomm Stadium whereby residents sneaked through police lines into closed neighborhoods and called back with the news on which homes had survived. Karlinsky was in Rancho Bernardo when the Bircham family drew the short straw and "found out their lives will never be the same." CBS anchor Katie Couric went to Ramona with Christie Williams, a young mother of three, when she discovered that her home, named Shangrila, was razed: "It just looks like the moon," Williams exclaimed. "You never want to live in a brand new house. I love the old homes. I love the quirkiness--but I guess I am going to have to learn to change what I love. Learn to adapt." And George and Jan Kolarov took NBC's Don Teague to sift through their "pile of ashes, still too hot to dig through, and a million-dollar view" on a hilltop in Poway. In the haste of their evacuation, what did she grab? A box of baklava and three rolls of toilet paper. "You are a very strong person because you are here smiling, talking about all of this," Teague admired. "Well you know it is kind of funny."
And on CBS, Bill Whitaker brought us Dayna Czermak of Lake Arrowhead, whose home is, so far, still standing. In 1994, Czermak was in Northridge visiting her brother when the earthquake struck. She lived in New Orleans and had her home destroyed by Hurricane Katrina in 2005. Evacuation took her to Houston where Hurricane Rita "forced her and her family to run again." When fires started she refused to leave. "I do not feel unlucky," she insisted. "I do feel like disaster is following me."
READY TO EXPLODE Reporting on the ecology of these fires, NBC's Anne Thompson yesterday in her Our Planet feature made a halfhearted case for blaming global warming. Now CBS' John Blackstone, too, offered half a nod to climate change, before zeroing in on a century-old policy of forest management: refusing to let fires burn. "We are now in the Age of the Megafire…throughout the west, fires have been burning bigger, hotter, faster." He pointed back to Yellowstone National Park in 1988 as the first such megafire: "Decades of putting out every fire left the Park unnaturally thick with trees and debris." Yet the knowledge that burning is sound practice conflicts with increased homebuilding in forests and wild lands--"homes surrounded by vegetation ready to explode."
DOWNSIZING & OUTSOURCING Away from the wildfires there were a couple of stories from Capitol Hill--and one of them was about global warming. ABC's Lisa Stark reported that the testimony by the Centers for Disease Control on the public health risks of climate change for a Senate panel had been "cut down" by the White House. Director Julie Gerberding wanted to cite a dozen dangers including asthma, heat stress and food borne illnesses--but they were edited out. Her report was trimmed from an original 14 pages to six, dropping the phrases "a serious public health concern" and "likely experience difficult challenges."
NBC's Andrea Mitchell reported on Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice's testimony before a House panel about her department's outsourcing of security and support services. Diplomats used to do everything in-house until 13 years ago when a small program started in Haiti using 43 trainers to build a local police force. By 2001, the annual budget for contractors was $1.7bn; nowadays it is $5bn worldwide. Rice's staff for this entire program consists of 17 managers. "Under fire, Secretary Rice today promised more oversight."
HIGH SEAS Earlier this month, NBC's Mark Potter told us about the circuitous route that Cuban emigrants use--southwest to the Yucatan Peninsula and then north through Mexico--to arrive at the United States border and win political asylum. Now in an Exclusive, Potter reports from Havana on the direct route out of the "hidden coves and islands" along Cuba's northern coast. Potter showed nighttime surveillance footage of high-speed smuggling powerboats carrying emigrants to south Florida for $10,000 per trip. He also showed us the do-it-yourself method: he slipped with a clandestine camera into a secret garage where "they are quietly building a boat to the United States--they know it is illegal and dangerous." A young man's death at sea, lamented Potter, is "a tragedy shared by a lot of Cuban mothers."
ANIMALWATCH AND NAVELGAZE The volume of coverage today may not have indicated that the wildfires story is on the wane--but its content offered clues. There are two topics that are surefire signs that the source of legitimate hard news in a headline story is drying up. NBC closed with the first sign--assigning Lester Holt to the animals angle: not only humans have been dislocated but also goats and llamas, pets and horses. The other surefire sign is navelgazing--when some reporter is assigned to report on how the news media reported on the story. Expect that one tomorrow.
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 Congressional Budget Office came up with a cost estimate for a decade of war in Afghanistan and Iraq--$2.4tr…the space program in China launched an orbiter probe to survey the moon…President George Bush insulted the Communist regime in Cuba as "a repressive, disgraced and dying order"…a State Department sponsored peace conference on Israel-Palestine may take place next month or in December.
As it did yesterday, a logofree NBC (12 min v ABC 15, CBS 19) covered the fires slightly less intensively than its rivals. Anchor Brian Williams handed off to correspondent George Lewis at San Diego's Qualcomm Stadium--where the crowd of evacuees had "diminished somewhat"--for an overview of the region. Lewis showed us video from the International Space Station that showed the extent of the smoke. He checked off the various angles: public health--wear facemasks; law enforcement--a manhunt for arsonists; transportation--Interstate 5 cut off; agricultural--major damage to the avocado crop; firefighting--USNavy helicopters have joined the effort.
Under ABC's California Burning logo, Ryan Owens (subscription required) gave us the good news that "the view from the frontlines has changed dramatically in the last 24 hours" as hot, dry, easterly Santa Ana winds were superseded by moister, onshore air coming off the Pacific Ocean. So "it was finally time to launch a counterattack after three hellish days of losing ground," announced CBS' Katie Couric under her network's Firestorm in California logo. Those three days had seen 1500 homes destroyed and $1bn in property damage. Al Roker, the weathercaster on NBC's Today pointed out to anchor Brian Williams that the onshore winds do have a "downside" because they are weaker than the Santa Ana. "Historically more have been killed because of the onshore winds…they are less predictable; they can switch at any time, switch direction."
Both CBS' Dean Reynolds and ABC anchor Charles Gibson profiled the firefighters based at the central command station in Escondido. They are being deployed in 24 hour on, 24 hour off shifts against San Diego County's largest remaining blaze, the Witch Fire. "If they are lucky they get 18 hours off after they drive in and out of the fire zone," Gibson shrugged. When they get tired, "adrenaline kicks in," a visiting firefighter from Tehama County near Sacramento explained. ABC also sent Laura Marquez to the mountains near Lake Arrowhead. Firefighters told her they had "zero containment" around Running Springs, "not one big fire but hundreds of small ones." She showed us the so-called spot fires that "come out of nowhere and because the terrain is so rugged they race right up the hill, taking everything in their path."
TELEMARKETING IS GOOD FOR YOU Despite all the property damage, ABC anchor Charles Gibson found the death toll "heartening" compared with the 22 who were killed in the similar Cedar Fire four years ago. So far six people are known dead, but Gibson stated that only one death was "as direct result of fire." He credited the Reverse 911 for the safe mandatory evacuation--"a kind a telemarketing system for lifesavers. Authorities can program it to alert entire communities at once." On CBS, CNN's in-house physician Sanjay Gupta cautioned that hospitals may be undercounting burn injuries. Trauma Center doctors are worried that "there are a lot of undocumented workers out there who are just fearful to come to emergency rooms and may not be seeking care." The other health danger from the fires is lung damage: CBS' Sandra Hughes warned about "soot, chemical irritants and particles so tiny that they are inhaled deep into the lungs." Los Angeles residents have been instructed not to exercise outdoors and when they do go outside to wear a mask.
ROLLS OF TOILET PAPER All three networks discovered unlucky San Diego County residents whose homes had been burned out. ABC's Neal Karlinsky (subscription required) followed an "underground information network" among the evacuees at Qualcomm Stadium whereby residents sneaked through police lines into closed neighborhoods and called back with the news on which homes had survived. Karlinsky was in Rancho Bernardo when the Bircham family drew the short straw and "found out their lives will never be the same." CBS anchor Katie Couric went to Ramona with Christie Williams, a young mother of three, when she discovered that her home, named Shangrila, was razed: "It just looks like the moon," Williams exclaimed. "You never want to live in a brand new house. I love the old homes. I love the quirkiness--but I guess I am going to have to learn to change what I love. Learn to adapt." And George and Jan Kolarov took NBC's Don Teague to sift through their "pile of ashes, still too hot to dig through, and a million-dollar view" on a hilltop in Poway. In the haste of their evacuation, what did she grab? A box of baklava and three rolls of toilet paper. "You are a very strong person because you are here smiling, talking about all of this," Teague admired. "Well you know it is kind of funny."
And on CBS, Bill Whitaker brought us Dayna Czermak of Lake Arrowhead, whose home is, so far, still standing. In 1994, Czermak was in Northridge visiting her brother when the earthquake struck. She lived in New Orleans and had her home destroyed by Hurricane Katrina in 2005. Evacuation took her to Houston where Hurricane Rita "forced her and her family to run again." When fires started she refused to leave. "I do not feel unlucky," she insisted. "I do feel like disaster is following me."
READY TO EXPLODE Reporting on the ecology of these fires, NBC's Anne Thompson yesterday in her Our Planet feature made a halfhearted case for blaming global warming. Now CBS' John Blackstone, too, offered half a nod to climate change, before zeroing in on a century-old policy of forest management: refusing to let fires burn. "We are now in the Age of the Megafire…throughout the west, fires have been burning bigger, hotter, faster." He pointed back to Yellowstone National Park in 1988 as the first such megafire: "Decades of putting out every fire left the Park unnaturally thick with trees and debris." Yet the knowledge that burning is sound practice conflicts with increased homebuilding in forests and wild lands--"homes surrounded by vegetation ready to explode."
DOWNSIZING & OUTSOURCING Away from the wildfires there were a couple of stories from Capitol Hill--and one of them was about global warming. ABC's Lisa Stark reported that the testimony by the Centers for Disease Control on the public health risks of climate change for a Senate panel had been "cut down" by the White House. Director Julie Gerberding wanted to cite a dozen dangers including asthma, heat stress and food borne illnesses--but they were edited out. Her report was trimmed from an original 14 pages to six, dropping the phrases "a serious public health concern" and "likely experience difficult challenges."
NBC's Andrea Mitchell reported on Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice's testimony before a House panel about her department's outsourcing of security and support services. Diplomats used to do everything in-house until 13 years ago when a small program started in Haiti using 43 trainers to build a local police force. By 2001, the annual budget for contractors was $1.7bn; nowadays it is $5bn worldwide. Rice's staff for this entire program consists of 17 managers. "Under fire, Secretary Rice today promised more oversight."
HIGH SEAS Earlier this month, NBC's Mark Potter told us about the circuitous route that Cuban emigrants use--southwest to the Yucatan Peninsula and then north through Mexico--to arrive at the United States border and win political asylum. Now in an Exclusive, Potter reports from Havana on the direct route out of the "hidden coves and islands" along Cuba's northern coast. Potter showed nighttime surveillance footage of high-speed smuggling powerboats carrying emigrants to south Florida for $10,000 per trip. He also showed us the do-it-yourself method: he slipped with a clandestine camera into a secret garage where "they are quietly building a boat to the United States--they know it is illegal and dangerous." A young man's death at sea, lamented Potter, is "a tragedy shared by a lot of Cuban mothers."
ANIMALWATCH AND NAVELGAZE The volume of coverage today may not have indicated that the wildfires story is on the wane--but its content offered clues. There are two topics that are surefire signs that the source of legitimate hard news in a headline story is drying up. NBC closed with the first sign--assigning Lester Holt to the animals angle: not only humans have been dislocated but also goats and llamas, pets and horses. The other surefire sign is navelgazing--when some reporter is assigned to report on how the news media reported on the story. Expect that one tomorrow.
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 Congressional Budget Office came up with a cost estimate for a decade of war in Afghanistan and Iraq--$2.4tr…the space program in China launched an orbiter probe to survey the moon…President George Bush insulted the Communist regime in Cuba as "a repressive, disgraced and dying order"…a State Department sponsored peace conference on Israel-Palestine may take place next month or in December.
