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TYNDALL HEADLINE: HIGHLIGHTS FROM OCTOBER 26, 2007
The announcement that San Diego's Qualcomm Stadium would revert to its intended function--a football field rather than an evacuation center--was an indication that southern California's wildfire emergency has calmed down. Another indication was that for the first time this week, the fires were not the unanimous choice to lead all three networks' nightly newscasts. ABC and CBS continued to choose San Diego to kick off but NBC opted instead for the rising price of crude oil.
TYNDALL PICKS FOR OCTOBER 26, 2007: CLICK ON GRID ELEMENTS TO SEARCH FOR MATCHING ITEMS
FROM FLAMES TO FOOTBALL The announcement that San Diego's Qualcomm Stadium would revert to its intended function--a football field rather than an evacuation center--was an indication that southern California's wildfire emergency has calmed down. Another indication was that for the first time this week, the fires were not the unanimous choice to lead all three networks' nightly newscasts. ABC and CBS continued to choose San Diego to kick off but NBC opted instead for the rising price of crude oil.
"Silly as it may seem," mused ABC's Neal Karlinsky, "that football game is the first real sign to a lot of people around here that San Diego is now back on its feet--or soon will be." NBC's George Lewis took solace from the weather, as a coastal fog rolled in: "The skies may have been gloomy this morning but it was a beautiful sight for the firefighters, a return to normal weather."
CBS' Dean Reynolds flashed back to the height of the crisis, airing homevideo from brothers Nick and John Yphantides, who defied a mandatory evacuation to protect their Escondido home with a garden hose until firefighters arrived: "Because their homes occupied the ridge line over the San Pasqual Valley, they were the first line of defense for the whole neighborhood. They saved all but one home." Homeowners in Rancho Bernardo were not so lucky. Bobbi Davis gave Reynolds a guided tour of her home. "This is the living room over here. This right here was the garage," gesturing at dust and ashes. "It was a high ceiling," she explained, laughing as she looked up at the clear blue sky. "Not this high, but…"
ABC's week-ending Person of the Week was Bob Green, the coordinator for the state of California's firefighting effort. Anchor Charles Gibson ticked off Green's resources: 13,000 firefighters, 1,500 fire engines, 80 bulldozers, 66 fixed wing air tankers, 80 water-dropping helicopters. Firefighting runs in Green's blood: his father fought fires, two uncles, a brother, a nephew--and his 25-year-old daughter. "I am daddy's girl," Nicole Green confessed.
NBC's Making a Difference featured the dynamic work of Los Angeles Times photojournalist Karen Tapia-Anderson. She caught a crew of twelve Orange County firefighters in Santiago Canyon just as the wind turned. They were forced to pull out their silver-coated emergency shelters and crawl inside. Don Teague told us that on the hilltop "the ground itself was at least 300F so crawling into one of these was like crawling into an oven." For 15 minutes they waited for a helicopter to douse the flames surrounding them. Tapia-Anderson's photographs show them emerging alive from the silver "one at a time like a little cocoon," as she put it.
The wildfires surely make for spectacular images. Thus they are tailormade for television news. But did a local story from southern California warrant such national attention from the networks? After all, the death toll may not even reach double figures and fewer than 2,000 homes have been destroyed. CBS' John Blackstone offered statistics from the insurance industry that support the case that the flames have been hyped. Damage claims are expected to total between $1bn and $2bn. Compare that to Hurricane Andrew's $22bn, the Northridge earthquake's $17bn, the World Trade Center's $21bn and Hurricane Katrina's $42bn. "The southern California fires are barely a blip," Blackstone concluded.
HEADING TOWARDS 1980 NBC and ABC both covered the climb of crude oil prices towards that $100-a-barrel mark. Now nearly $92, a barrel cost just $60 a year ago, ABC's David Muir remarked. He ticked off three oil producing countries with uncertain supplies: Iran, because of frictions with the United States; Iraq, because of frictions with Turkey; and Nigeria, where an oil rig has been sabotaged. Adjusted for inflation, the record high price was $100 in 1980, Muir reminded us, "so we are not there yet." NBC for its lead turned to Trish Regan of its sibling financial channel CNBC. She predicted the domestic ripple effect of rising crude: the annual inflation in home heating will be 22% , in gasoline 30%. Her colleague CNBC Larry Kudlow obtained a sitdown with Dick Cheney. The Vice president was unperturbed by the high cost of oil. This is his soundbite: "We are twice as efficient now as we were ten or twelve years ago with respect to how we use energy."
WOODSTOCK GENERATION Hillary Rodham Clinton received a 60th birthday gift from CBS' Jeff Greenfield yesterday in the form of an examination of her frontrunner status for the Democratic nomination. Now ABC's Kate Snow (subscription required) chimes in. Her Democratic rivals may be "trying to knock her off her perch," Snow observed, but her Republican opponents exude "venom." Snow quoted Mitt Romney's Halloween riff about Hillary's House of Horrors should she be elected. The United States will have a Raise Your Taxes Room, a Weaker Military Room and a Family Values in Shambles Room. John McCain has made a campaign commercial of his crack in last weekend's Fox News Channel debate denouncing Rodham Clinton's support for a Woodstock Museum: "Now my friends, I was not there. I am sure it was a cultural and pharmaceutical event. I was, I was tied up at the time."
The birthday girl, by contrast, tries to "stay above the fray" by criticizing her opponents only obliquely instead of by name. "I have been a fan, and I remain a fan, of the New York Yankees. No changes. No looking to curry favor with anybody else," she declared at her party after the Big Apple's former mayor had let New Hampshire voters know that the Red Sox do not suck so much, after all.
EYE IN THE SKY From the Pentagon, CBS' David Martin offered an Exclusive on a scheme to forestall Turkey's full scale invasion of Iraqi Kurdistan. Martin quoted the official statement by Gen Benjamin Mixon about the extent of US military plans against Turkey's Kurdish rebels, the PKK guerrillas: "Absolutely nothing." However, to encourage Ankara to confine its cross-border incursions to air raids, artillery strikes and commando raids--instead of the 60,000-strong force being amassed along its southeastern border--the Pentagon will offer to spy on Turkey's behalf. It will deploy unmanned Predator reconnaissance drones to pinpoint PKK positions and supply targeting coordinates. Martin predicted that such a US-Turkey deal will be sealed in ten days.
NOT SO URGENT The NATO plan to deploy an anti-missile defense in Poland and the Czech Republic drew the renewed wrath of the Russian President. Those sites are as proximate as the Soviet Union's weapons were proximate to the United States in 1962, Vladimir Putin complained, "likening the plan to deploy a missile shield on Russia's doorstep to the Cuban Missile Crisis," as NBC's David Gregory put it. Gregory reminded us that Putin had suggested that the appropriate location for the missile defense was "somewhere on the moon."
Gregory is NBC's White House correspondent so he tried to offer the President's side of this argument too. George Bush emphasizes that the system is designed against Iran not against Russia. To reassure Russia, the United States has made an offer that "the system will not be activated until the Iranian threat can be verified." So when will that be? That is when Gregory's reporting got confusing: he claimed that Bush insists that the system is "urgently needed"--but then backed that up with a soundbite that Iran "could" develop an ICBM "before 2015."
OVERZEALOUS Both NBC and ABC assigned reporters to cover the case of Genarlow Wilson, the 21-year-old Georgia man released from prison after serving two years of a ten-year sentence. He had been convicted of aggravated child molestation. Hardly a pedophile pervert, his crime had consisted of "consensual oral sex," as ABC's Dan Harris (subscription required) delicately put it, at a New Year's Eve party, with a 15-year-old girl, when he was 17. The state court commuted his sentence as "grossly disproportionate" and "cruel and unusual punishment." NBC's Mark Potter generalized from this single sad case, citing criticism of prosecutors for being routinely overzealous in targeting young African-American men.
FRIDAY FUN CBS had fun this Friday with its features. Anthony Mason spiced up his report on real estate woes by offering a plug to Nashua Video Tours, a firm that shoots homes for sale in a flattering light and posts them online…Steve Hartman's Assignment America profiled a pair of nine-year-old best friends in Medford Ore. Dominic Ramos saved Harrison Weidman's life when he started choking on a tortilla chip. Their classmate called it the Heimlich Remover…Sharyl Attkisson pursued her Follow The Money quest to eradicate earmarked funding from the federal budget by targeting the Center for Grape Research in the Finger Lakes. The $11m to help make wine taste better was defended by Rep Maurice Hinchey (D-NY): "The cost of this building is what we spend in Iraq in two hours." Replied Attkisson: "But if you compare anything to the cost of the war in Iraq you can make it sound very tiny"--which seems to indicate that her future Follow the Money features should be on Iraq nor earmark.
Most fun, however, was Jeff Greenfield's skewering of FEMA for its phony press conference in which public relations bureaucrats posed as journalists to ask questions of their boss. NBC's Kelly O'Donnell covered the fake session too--it was carried live on MSNBC--but not with Greenfield's gusto. Instead of the standard graphics identifying participants, Greenfield used balloons, pop-up video style. "I would be glad to take some of your questions," declared FEMA's Harvey Johnson. "Well, of course he was happy to answer questions. Know why? Because the questions were not being asked by real reporters," muttered Greenfield. "Can you talk a little bit about what it means to have the President issue an emergency declaration as opposed to a major disaster declaration?" asked a flack, causing Greenfield to expostulate: "He is not a reporter but he is playing one on TV--and he has asked a question only a bureaucrat could love."
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: severe smog in Beijing raises doubts about the safety of some events at next year's Olympic Games…the US military claims to have uncovered a cache of Iranian-made EFP bombs in Iraq…a new living module is being added to the International Space Station…Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has been taking advice on the Middle East peace process from a pair of Democrats--former Presidents Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton.
"Silly as it may seem," mused ABC's Neal Karlinsky, "that football game is the first real sign to a lot of people around here that San Diego is now back on its feet--or soon will be." NBC's George Lewis took solace from the weather, as a coastal fog rolled in: "The skies may have been gloomy this morning but it was a beautiful sight for the firefighters, a return to normal weather."
CBS' Dean Reynolds flashed back to the height of the crisis, airing homevideo from brothers Nick and John Yphantides, who defied a mandatory evacuation to protect their Escondido home with a garden hose until firefighters arrived: "Because their homes occupied the ridge line over the San Pasqual Valley, they were the first line of defense for the whole neighborhood. They saved all but one home." Homeowners in Rancho Bernardo were not so lucky. Bobbi Davis gave Reynolds a guided tour of her home. "This is the living room over here. This right here was the garage," gesturing at dust and ashes. "It was a high ceiling," she explained, laughing as she looked up at the clear blue sky. "Not this high, but…"
ABC's week-ending Person of the Week was Bob Green, the coordinator for the state of California's firefighting effort. Anchor Charles Gibson ticked off Green's resources: 13,000 firefighters, 1,500 fire engines, 80 bulldozers, 66 fixed wing air tankers, 80 water-dropping helicopters. Firefighting runs in Green's blood: his father fought fires, two uncles, a brother, a nephew--and his 25-year-old daughter. "I am daddy's girl," Nicole Green confessed.
NBC's Making a Difference featured the dynamic work of Los Angeles Times photojournalist Karen Tapia-Anderson. She caught a crew of twelve Orange County firefighters in Santiago Canyon just as the wind turned. They were forced to pull out their silver-coated emergency shelters and crawl inside. Don Teague told us that on the hilltop "the ground itself was at least 300F so crawling into one of these was like crawling into an oven." For 15 minutes they waited for a helicopter to douse the flames surrounding them. Tapia-Anderson's photographs show them emerging alive from the silver "one at a time like a little cocoon," as she put it.
The wildfires surely make for spectacular images. Thus they are tailormade for television news. But did a local story from southern California warrant such national attention from the networks? After all, the death toll may not even reach double figures and fewer than 2,000 homes have been destroyed. CBS' John Blackstone offered statistics from the insurance industry that support the case that the flames have been hyped. Damage claims are expected to total between $1bn and $2bn. Compare that to Hurricane Andrew's $22bn, the Northridge earthquake's $17bn, the World Trade Center's $21bn and Hurricane Katrina's $42bn. "The southern California fires are barely a blip," Blackstone concluded.
HEADING TOWARDS 1980 NBC and ABC both covered the climb of crude oil prices towards that $100-a-barrel mark. Now nearly $92, a barrel cost just $60 a year ago, ABC's David Muir remarked. He ticked off three oil producing countries with uncertain supplies: Iran, because of frictions with the United States; Iraq, because of frictions with Turkey; and Nigeria, where an oil rig has been sabotaged. Adjusted for inflation, the record high price was $100 in 1980, Muir reminded us, "so we are not there yet." NBC for its lead turned to Trish Regan of its sibling financial channel CNBC. She predicted the domestic ripple effect of rising crude: the annual inflation in home heating will be 22% , in gasoline 30%. Her colleague CNBC Larry Kudlow obtained a sitdown with Dick Cheney. The Vice president was unperturbed by the high cost of oil. This is his soundbite: "We are twice as efficient now as we were ten or twelve years ago with respect to how we use energy."
WOODSTOCK GENERATION Hillary Rodham Clinton received a 60th birthday gift from CBS' Jeff Greenfield yesterday in the form of an examination of her frontrunner status for the Democratic nomination. Now ABC's Kate Snow (subscription required) chimes in. Her Democratic rivals may be "trying to knock her off her perch," Snow observed, but her Republican opponents exude "venom." Snow quoted Mitt Romney's Halloween riff about Hillary's House of Horrors should she be elected. The United States will have a Raise Your Taxes Room, a Weaker Military Room and a Family Values in Shambles Room. John McCain has made a campaign commercial of his crack in last weekend's Fox News Channel debate denouncing Rodham Clinton's support for a Woodstock Museum: "Now my friends, I was not there. I am sure it was a cultural and pharmaceutical event. I was, I was tied up at the time."
The birthday girl, by contrast, tries to "stay above the fray" by criticizing her opponents only obliquely instead of by name. "I have been a fan, and I remain a fan, of the New York Yankees. No changes. No looking to curry favor with anybody else," she declared at her party after the Big Apple's former mayor had let New Hampshire voters know that the Red Sox do not suck so much, after all.
EYE IN THE SKY From the Pentagon, CBS' David Martin offered an Exclusive on a scheme to forestall Turkey's full scale invasion of Iraqi Kurdistan. Martin quoted the official statement by Gen Benjamin Mixon about the extent of US military plans against Turkey's Kurdish rebels, the PKK guerrillas: "Absolutely nothing." However, to encourage Ankara to confine its cross-border incursions to air raids, artillery strikes and commando raids--instead of the 60,000-strong force being amassed along its southeastern border--the Pentagon will offer to spy on Turkey's behalf. It will deploy unmanned Predator reconnaissance drones to pinpoint PKK positions and supply targeting coordinates. Martin predicted that such a US-Turkey deal will be sealed in ten days.
NOT SO URGENT The NATO plan to deploy an anti-missile defense in Poland and the Czech Republic drew the renewed wrath of the Russian President. Those sites are as proximate as the Soviet Union's weapons were proximate to the United States in 1962, Vladimir Putin complained, "likening the plan to deploy a missile shield on Russia's doorstep to the Cuban Missile Crisis," as NBC's David Gregory put it. Gregory reminded us that Putin had suggested that the appropriate location for the missile defense was "somewhere on the moon."
Gregory is NBC's White House correspondent so he tried to offer the President's side of this argument too. George Bush emphasizes that the system is designed against Iran not against Russia. To reassure Russia, the United States has made an offer that "the system will not be activated until the Iranian threat can be verified." So when will that be? That is when Gregory's reporting got confusing: he claimed that Bush insists that the system is "urgently needed"--but then backed that up with a soundbite that Iran "could" develop an ICBM "before 2015."
OVERZEALOUS Both NBC and ABC assigned reporters to cover the case of Genarlow Wilson, the 21-year-old Georgia man released from prison after serving two years of a ten-year sentence. He had been convicted of aggravated child molestation. Hardly a pedophile pervert, his crime had consisted of "consensual oral sex," as ABC's Dan Harris (subscription required) delicately put it, at a New Year's Eve party, with a 15-year-old girl, when he was 17. The state court commuted his sentence as "grossly disproportionate" and "cruel and unusual punishment." NBC's Mark Potter generalized from this single sad case, citing criticism of prosecutors for being routinely overzealous in targeting young African-American men.
FRIDAY FUN CBS had fun this Friday with its features. Anthony Mason spiced up his report on real estate woes by offering a plug to Nashua Video Tours, a firm that shoots homes for sale in a flattering light and posts them online…Steve Hartman's Assignment America profiled a pair of nine-year-old best friends in Medford Ore. Dominic Ramos saved Harrison Weidman's life when he started choking on a tortilla chip. Their classmate called it the Heimlich Remover…Sharyl Attkisson pursued her Follow The Money quest to eradicate earmarked funding from the federal budget by targeting the Center for Grape Research in the Finger Lakes. The $11m to help make wine taste better was defended by Rep Maurice Hinchey (D-NY): "The cost of this building is what we spend in Iraq in two hours." Replied Attkisson: "But if you compare anything to the cost of the war in Iraq you can make it sound very tiny"--which seems to indicate that her future Follow the Money features should be on Iraq nor earmark.
Most fun, however, was Jeff Greenfield's skewering of FEMA for its phony press conference in which public relations bureaucrats posed as journalists to ask questions of their boss. NBC's Kelly O'Donnell covered the fake session too--it was carried live on MSNBC--but not with Greenfield's gusto. Instead of the standard graphics identifying participants, Greenfield used balloons, pop-up video style. "I would be glad to take some of your questions," declared FEMA's Harvey Johnson. "Well, of course he was happy to answer questions. Know why? Because the questions were not being asked by real reporters," muttered Greenfield. "Can you talk a little bit about what it means to have the President issue an emergency declaration as opposed to a major disaster declaration?" asked a flack, causing Greenfield to expostulate: "He is not a reporter but he is playing one on TV--and he has asked a question only a bureaucrat could love."
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: severe smog in Beijing raises doubts about the safety of some events at next year's Olympic Games…the US military claims to have uncovered a cache of Iranian-made EFP bombs in Iraq…a new living module is being added to the International Space Station…Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has been taking advice on the Middle East peace process from a pair of Democrats--former Presidents Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton.
