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TYNDALL HEADLINE: HIGHLIGHTS FROM OCTOBER 29, 2007
The American Academy of Pediatrics made a splash when it announced its revised guidelines for diagnosing autism in toddlers. In a unanimous decision all three networks chose to lead with the recommendation for universal screening of children at 18 months and again at 24 months. Needless to say, autism was Story of the Day. This was another Monday for limited commercials. This time NBC had the newscast with the expanded newshole (24 min ABC 19, CBS 19), courtesy of its pharmaceutical sponsor Detrol.
TYNDALL PICKS FOR OCTOBER 29, 2007: CLICK ON GRID ELEMENTS TO SEARCH FOR MATCHING ITEMS
PEDIATRIC SPLIT PERSONALITY The American Academy of Pediatrics made a splash when it announced its revised guidelines for diagnosing autism in toddlers. In a unanimous decision all three networks chose to lead with the recommendation for universal screening of children at 18 months and again at 24 months. Needless to say, autism was Story of the Day. This was another Monday for limited commercials. This time NBC had the newscast with the expanded newshole (24 min ABC 19, CBS 19), courtesy of its pharmaceutical sponsor Detrol.
As CBS anchor Katie Couric pointed out, autism is not a common condition, afflicting fewer than 0.7% of all children, or one in 150. So it was remarkable that this pediatric story should get such play. Contrast that with the previous pediatric Story of the Day. President George Bush's veto earlier this month of the five-year $35bn extension of the federal subsidy for the S-CHIP children's healthcare plan (text link) led only one newscast, ABC's; NBC did not even consider it worthy of coverage by a correspondent.
The early diagnostic signs of autism had been covered by ABC's Jon Donvan two weeks ago when he introduced us to the autismspeaks.org videostreams that contrast a healthy toddler with a disordered one. Now CBS' in-house physician Jon LaPook and NBC's Tom Costello catch up by including that site in their report on the AAP's guidelines.
All three checked off a cluster of autistic symptoms: failure to respond to one's name, to return a smile, to make eye contact, to point at objects. ABC's Donvan commented: "It sounds simple but these tests are not something doctors are taught in medical school." NBC's Costello noted that "the definition of autism has expanded over the past 20 years" so the number of diagnosis has risen. The object of the universal screening, however, is not to diagnose even more cases, CBS' LaPook explained, but to catch them earlier, since early treatment is more efficacious.
This is all informative enough--as far as it goes. Here are the questions none of the three reporters addressed. Does the AAP agree with the network newscasts that autism screening is a pediatric issue more worthy of coverage than the S-CHIP debate? How does the AAP propose offering universal screening to toddlers when there is no universal healthcare coverage for them? NBC's Costello reported that behavioral treatments for autism take 25 hours each week. How much does that cost? How much extra will the cost be with these earlier diagnoses? Is it covered by insurance? According to the AAP, should it be government funded?
These two pediatric stories are a typical example of the split personality of the networks' healthcare coverage. The S-CHIP story was peppered with interest groups and cost-benefits and trade-offs and power struggles; the autism story enjoys a fantasy of scrupulous care and infinite caution and universal access and cost as no object. The realpolitik approach could be leavened with idealism; and the idealistic approach needs a dose of reality.
GLOBALIZATION AND ITS DISCONTENTS Both CBS and ABC turned to the potential dangers to children of globalization. ABC made the bigger splash, dispatching David Kerley to kick off its Made in China series. Kerley accompanied Curt Stoelting, boss of RC2 Corp, the toy company that markets Thomas the Tank Engine and his friends as he visited factories where wooden blocks had been tainted with lead-based paint. Stoelting tried to reassure us with his new procedures for screening paint, his tracking system with date codes and his "hi-tech X-ray guns" whose "beams can detect more than a half dozen heavy metals." CBS had the more serious story, as John Blackstone reported on a newspaper expose in The Observer of London of a New Delhi sweatshop with "children as young as ten sewing clothing carrying the GAP label." GAP--"a retailer that has long promoted itself as socially responsible"--has destroyed the garments the sweatshop produced and has promised to pay for education and job training for the children. "This is not what the company wants us to think of when we think of GAP Kids."
BILLIONAIRE’S ROW ABC's David Muir (subscription required) gave us the news that Stanley O'Neal, the boss of the brokerage firm Merrill Lynch, is expected to be fired, with a severance bonus of $200m, for leading his firm to an $8bn loss from mortgage investments gone sour, "the company's biggest quarterly loss in 93 years." Meanwhile, NBC's extended newshole allowed it to assign former anchor Tom Brokaw to a five-minute profile of Warren Buffett, "the Oracle of Omaha and the world's third richest man." Buffett is protesting the "fundamental injustice" of the tax system--not the income tax but the other taxes we pay. He surveyed 15 of his co-workers at his Berkshire Hathaway office and contrasted the bite they pay in taxes, mostly from the payroll tax, with his own, mostly through the capital gains tax. The office average was 33%; Buffett's was 18%. Concluded Brokaw: "Buffett has challenged--he has offered $1m to charity--any of the Forbes 400 richest people who can show that, on average, they pay a higher tax rate than their secretaries pay. So far he has had no takers."
And NBC's Josh Mankiewicz wondered why there is "a new class of professionals…whose titles are longer than their resumes." So he asked billionaire Donald Trump why corporate vice presidents proliferate. "I love handing people a vice presidency but keeping their salary down. I feel great if I can give somebody a title and not have to pay them for it." The brokerage Goldman Sachs has 6,500 vice presidents.
FIXED COSTS NBC also covered the middle class--but in a vague and confusing way. Lee Cowan cited statistics from Elizabeth Warren of the Harvard Law School that contrast the non-discretionary costs of a middle class household now with a generation ago. Warren claims that since 1975 housing costs have risen 76%, healthcare 74% and transportation 50%. But Cowan did not tell us how she defined the middle class or how much its income has risen in the same period or what proportion of its expenditure is absorbed by those three categories. Illustrating straitened means with an "emptier than ever" church collection plate, Cowan concluded that "a generation ago the middle class was comfortable. These days they are comfortable--but scared--living on a wing and a prayer." He seemed to hope that we take that assertion on faith.
CBS had Nancy Cordes catch up on the impact on households of the rising price of oil. Friday, CNBC's Trish Regan covered the same topic for NBC and David Muir filed for ABC. For Cordes the bottom lines were a 25% hike in home heating costs this winter compared with last and an increase in the average price of a gallon of gasoline by next spring from the current $2.87 to at least $3.50.
SOUR NOTE The date of the Iowa caucuses has been fixed. Both parties will meet on January 3rd, ABC's Jake Tapper (subscription required) reported, but the competitions will not be equally intense. For Republicans, he declared "Iowa is not do or die" since the strategy of both Rudolph Giuliani and Fred Thompson is to look beyond Iowa and New Hampshire "focusing on South Carolina and Florida." Not so for the Democrats. "If Barack Obama and John Edwards have any hope of upsetting the Clinton Juggernaut they have to do it in Iowa." NBC's David Gregory saw Obama "stepping up his attack" on the frontrunner Hillary Rodham Clinton. At a forum run by MTV and mySpace.com Obama insisted that his self-styled Politics of Hope "is not just based on us all holding hands and singing Kumbaya." Certainly Donnie McClurkin, one of Obama's spokesman on a gospel music tour in South Carolina, was not singing in chorus with the candidate's gay supporters, Gregory noted: "McClurkin claims homosexuality is a choice and that he was cured of it through prayer. Under pressure from gay activists, Obama condemned McClurkin's views--but refused to cancel his appearance."
DIPLOMATS OFFER IMMUNITY Since diplomatic bodyguards working for the Blackwater USA paramilitary contractor killed 17 Iraqi civilians in Baghdad's Nisoor Square, CBS (14 reports v ABC 4, NBC 9) has followed up on the story most intensely. David Martin's latest update from the Pentagon reveals that the FBI probe into the killings "has hit a stumbling block." Before any of the bodyguards was interrogated, "the State Department granted them immunity." Now nothing they said under questioning can be used in a prosecution. All evidence would have to be developed independently.
ALONG THE BEACHFRONT CBS offered a pair of reports from the beach resorts of the Atlantic coastline, one grisly, one cute. Mark Strassmann showed us homevideo of the fire at a fraternity beach house on Ocean Isle Beach in North Carolina. Students from Tri Delta and Sigma Alpha Epsilon had been partying until 4:30am, neighbors said. They were trapped in a pre-dawn blaze that started on the back deck just two hours later: seven of the 13 died as their structure was consumed by a fireball. Meanwhile on Daytona Beach in Florida, Kelly Cobiella showed us so-called "wash backs." Baby sea turtles live in clumps of seaweed in the open ocean. When the wind turns easterly, the seaweed gets washed back onto the shore and the three-inch-long creatures get stranded "by the bucketful." Cobiella showed us the Volusia County Marine Science Center "where every last one gets a checkup and fluids." The center's Michelle Bauer implored us: "Look in their little eyes and they have that cuteness to them…They have been on Earth longer than we have. So they are just ancient. They have got that history to them."
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 First Lady of Argentina, Cristina Fernandez, wife of incumbent Nestor Kirchner, was elected President in her own right…Tropical Storm Noel is battering the Dominican Republic…Gen Jeffrey Dorko of the Army Corps of Engineers became the highest ranked officer to be wounded in Iraq…the government of Iraq took over control for the Province of Karbala from occupation forces…Iraqi police recruits in Baqubah, in Diyala Province, were killed by a bomber on a bicycle…Country & Western singer Porter Wagoner died, aged 80…former NBC newsman Jim Cummins, who retired just this spring, died, aged 62.
As CBS anchor Katie Couric pointed out, autism is not a common condition, afflicting fewer than 0.7% of all children, or one in 150. So it was remarkable that this pediatric story should get such play. Contrast that with the previous pediatric Story of the Day. President George Bush's veto earlier this month of the five-year $35bn extension of the federal subsidy for the S-CHIP children's healthcare plan (text link) led only one newscast, ABC's; NBC did not even consider it worthy of coverage by a correspondent.
The early diagnostic signs of autism had been covered by ABC's Jon Donvan two weeks ago when he introduced us to the autismspeaks.org videostreams that contrast a healthy toddler with a disordered one. Now CBS' in-house physician Jon LaPook and NBC's Tom Costello catch up by including that site in their report on the AAP's guidelines.
All three checked off a cluster of autistic symptoms: failure to respond to one's name, to return a smile, to make eye contact, to point at objects. ABC's Donvan commented: "It sounds simple but these tests are not something doctors are taught in medical school." NBC's Costello noted that "the definition of autism has expanded over the past 20 years" so the number of diagnosis has risen. The object of the universal screening, however, is not to diagnose even more cases, CBS' LaPook explained, but to catch them earlier, since early treatment is more efficacious.
This is all informative enough--as far as it goes. Here are the questions none of the three reporters addressed. Does the AAP agree with the network newscasts that autism screening is a pediatric issue more worthy of coverage than the S-CHIP debate? How does the AAP propose offering universal screening to toddlers when there is no universal healthcare coverage for them? NBC's Costello reported that behavioral treatments for autism take 25 hours each week. How much does that cost? How much extra will the cost be with these earlier diagnoses? Is it covered by insurance? According to the AAP, should it be government funded?
These two pediatric stories are a typical example of the split personality of the networks' healthcare coverage. The S-CHIP story was peppered with interest groups and cost-benefits and trade-offs and power struggles; the autism story enjoys a fantasy of scrupulous care and infinite caution and universal access and cost as no object. The realpolitik approach could be leavened with idealism; and the idealistic approach needs a dose of reality.
GLOBALIZATION AND ITS DISCONTENTS Both CBS and ABC turned to the potential dangers to children of globalization. ABC made the bigger splash, dispatching David Kerley to kick off its Made in China series. Kerley accompanied Curt Stoelting, boss of RC2 Corp, the toy company that markets Thomas the Tank Engine and his friends as he visited factories where wooden blocks had been tainted with lead-based paint. Stoelting tried to reassure us with his new procedures for screening paint, his tracking system with date codes and his "hi-tech X-ray guns" whose "beams can detect more than a half dozen heavy metals." CBS had the more serious story, as John Blackstone reported on a newspaper expose in The Observer of London of a New Delhi sweatshop with "children as young as ten sewing clothing carrying the GAP label." GAP--"a retailer that has long promoted itself as socially responsible"--has destroyed the garments the sweatshop produced and has promised to pay for education and job training for the children. "This is not what the company wants us to think of when we think of GAP Kids."
BILLIONAIRE’S ROW ABC's David Muir (subscription required) gave us the news that Stanley O'Neal, the boss of the brokerage firm Merrill Lynch, is expected to be fired, with a severance bonus of $200m, for leading his firm to an $8bn loss from mortgage investments gone sour, "the company's biggest quarterly loss in 93 years." Meanwhile, NBC's extended newshole allowed it to assign former anchor Tom Brokaw to a five-minute profile of Warren Buffett, "the Oracle of Omaha and the world's third richest man." Buffett is protesting the "fundamental injustice" of the tax system--not the income tax but the other taxes we pay. He surveyed 15 of his co-workers at his Berkshire Hathaway office and contrasted the bite they pay in taxes, mostly from the payroll tax, with his own, mostly through the capital gains tax. The office average was 33%; Buffett's was 18%. Concluded Brokaw: "Buffett has challenged--he has offered $1m to charity--any of the Forbes 400 richest people who can show that, on average, they pay a higher tax rate than their secretaries pay. So far he has had no takers."
And NBC's Josh Mankiewicz wondered why there is "a new class of professionals…whose titles are longer than their resumes." So he asked billionaire Donald Trump why corporate vice presidents proliferate. "I love handing people a vice presidency but keeping their salary down. I feel great if I can give somebody a title and not have to pay them for it." The brokerage Goldman Sachs has 6,500 vice presidents.
FIXED COSTS NBC also covered the middle class--but in a vague and confusing way. Lee Cowan cited statistics from Elizabeth Warren of the Harvard Law School that contrast the non-discretionary costs of a middle class household now with a generation ago. Warren claims that since 1975 housing costs have risen 76%, healthcare 74% and transportation 50%. But Cowan did not tell us how she defined the middle class or how much its income has risen in the same period or what proportion of its expenditure is absorbed by those three categories. Illustrating straitened means with an "emptier than ever" church collection plate, Cowan concluded that "a generation ago the middle class was comfortable. These days they are comfortable--but scared--living on a wing and a prayer." He seemed to hope that we take that assertion on faith.
CBS had Nancy Cordes catch up on the impact on households of the rising price of oil. Friday, CNBC's Trish Regan covered the same topic for NBC and David Muir filed for ABC. For Cordes the bottom lines were a 25% hike in home heating costs this winter compared with last and an increase in the average price of a gallon of gasoline by next spring from the current $2.87 to at least $3.50.
SOUR NOTE The date of the Iowa caucuses has been fixed. Both parties will meet on January 3rd, ABC's Jake Tapper (subscription required) reported, but the competitions will not be equally intense. For Republicans, he declared "Iowa is not do or die" since the strategy of both Rudolph Giuliani and Fred Thompson is to look beyond Iowa and New Hampshire "focusing on South Carolina and Florida." Not so for the Democrats. "If Barack Obama and John Edwards have any hope of upsetting the Clinton Juggernaut they have to do it in Iowa." NBC's David Gregory saw Obama "stepping up his attack" on the frontrunner Hillary Rodham Clinton. At a forum run by MTV and mySpace.com Obama insisted that his self-styled Politics of Hope "is not just based on us all holding hands and singing Kumbaya." Certainly Donnie McClurkin, one of Obama's spokesman on a gospel music tour in South Carolina, was not singing in chorus with the candidate's gay supporters, Gregory noted: "McClurkin claims homosexuality is a choice and that he was cured of it through prayer. Under pressure from gay activists, Obama condemned McClurkin's views--but refused to cancel his appearance."
DIPLOMATS OFFER IMMUNITY Since diplomatic bodyguards working for the Blackwater USA paramilitary contractor killed 17 Iraqi civilians in Baghdad's Nisoor Square, CBS (14 reports v ABC 4, NBC 9) has followed up on the story most intensely. David Martin's latest update from the Pentagon reveals that the FBI probe into the killings "has hit a stumbling block." Before any of the bodyguards was interrogated, "the State Department granted them immunity." Now nothing they said under questioning can be used in a prosecution. All evidence would have to be developed independently.
ALONG THE BEACHFRONT CBS offered a pair of reports from the beach resorts of the Atlantic coastline, one grisly, one cute. Mark Strassmann showed us homevideo of the fire at a fraternity beach house on Ocean Isle Beach in North Carolina. Students from Tri Delta and Sigma Alpha Epsilon had been partying until 4:30am, neighbors said. They were trapped in a pre-dawn blaze that started on the back deck just two hours later: seven of the 13 died as their structure was consumed by a fireball. Meanwhile on Daytona Beach in Florida, Kelly Cobiella showed us so-called "wash backs." Baby sea turtles live in clumps of seaweed in the open ocean. When the wind turns easterly, the seaweed gets washed back onto the shore and the three-inch-long creatures get stranded "by the bucketful." Cobiella showed us the Volusia County Marine Science Center "where every last one gets a checkup and fluids." The center's Michelle Bauer implored us: "Look in their little eyes and they have that cuteness to them…They have been on Earth longer than we have. So they are just ancient. They have got that history to them."
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 First Lady of Argentina, Cristina Fernandez, wife of incumbent Nestor Kirchner, was elected President in her own right…Tropical Storm Noel is battering the Dominican Republic…Gen Jeffrey Dorko of the Army Corps of Engineers became the highest ranked officer to be wounded in Iraq…the government of Iraq took over control for the Province of Karbala from occupation forces…Iraqi police recruits in Baqubah, in Diyala Province, were killed by a bomber on a bicycle…Country & Western singer Porter Wagoner died, aged 80…former NBC newsman Jim Cummins, who retired just this spring, died, aged 62.
