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TYNDALL HEADLINE: HIGHLIGHTS FROM OCTOBER 9, 2007
The unusual timing of the Republican Presidential candidates' debate in Michigan afforded it unusual prominence on the nightly news. CNBC, the financial news cable channel, sponsored the gabfest on economic issues, scheduling it to begin as soon as its daily coverage of stock market trading concluded. Thus the candidates' afternoon soundbites were fresh news for the newscasts. Naturally NBC led with its sibling network's event--but its two rivals found the debate newsworthy too, so it qualified as Story of the Day. CBS led with the Supreme Court's decision not to scrutinize the CIA's rendition-and-torture tactics. ABC chose the looming high cost of home heat this winter.
TYNDALL PICKS FOR OCTOBER 9, 2007: CLICK ON GRID ELEMENTS TO SEARCH FOR MATCHING ITEMS
AFTERNOON DEBATE The unusual timing of the Republican Presidential candidates' debate in Michigan afforded it unusual prominence on the nightly news. CNBC, the financial news cable channel, sponsored the gabfest on economic issues, scheduling it to begin as soon as its daily coverage of stock market trading concluded. Thus the candidates' afternoon soundbites were fresh news for the newscasts. Naturally NBC led with its sibling network's event--but its two rivals found the debate newsworthy too, so it qualified as Story of the Day. CBS led with the Supreme Court's decision not to scrutinize the CIA's rendition-and-torture tactics. ABC chose the looming high cost of home heat this winter.
If freshness is an asset it is also a drawback. All three networks quoted a clash between frontrunners Rudolph Giuliani and Mitt Romney over "who was the better tax cutter and fiscal conservative," as NBC's Kelly O'Donnell put it. The former New York City mayor cited one set of tax-and-spend statistics, which the former Massachusetts governor dismissed as "baloney." The point of airing the exchange seemed to be to use the "baloney" bite rather than to establish its veracity. No network checked either candidate's facts before airing the claims.
ABC's George Stephanopoulos scored Giuliani as the debate winner: "He was helped by the focus on the economy…and the fact that social issues really were not discussed that much." CBS' Jeff Greenfield noted that Giuliani mentioned Hillary Rodham Clinton so much that she seemed to be "his running mate." Greenfield explained Giuliani's thinking: "He is telling the Republican base, particularly those who do not like his social positions: 'You had better nominate me despite your reservations, because it is me or her.'"
The other debate angle was that this was late entrant Fred Thompson's first appearance with his rivals since he announced his candidacy. "A little nervous," was how ABC's Stephanopoulos found him; CBS' Nancy Cordes heard "initial jitters." By the end Cordes concluded that "Thompson's plain-spokenness and broad themes--smaller government, states' rights--do seem to be resonating with voters." ABC's Stephanopoulos felt that Thompson "did do enough to answer critics who say he is not in command of the facts or has not been working hard on the campaign trail."
Thompson's first appearance on the public stage was as a 30-year-old lawyer in 1973 when he served as Republican counsel on the Senate committee investigating the Watergate scandal. ABC sent Brian Ross to the National Archives to comb through Richard Nixon's Oval Office audiotapes, enabling him to offer an outline of Thompson's evolving relationship with All the President's Men. "Dumb as hell," was the initial reaction…then "not very smart but at least beginning to play ball." Finally Nixon was told that "Thompson had agreed to secretly help under cut the credibility of John Dean," a key witness against his former boss.
OPEN SECRETS To the credit of CBS--and the discredit of its rivals--it was the only network to assign coverage to the CIA torture story. NBC's substitute anchor Ann Curry mentioned it in passing. ABC did not--neither did ABC mention last week's torture story that NBC's Andrea Mitchell covered, the secret approval memoranda from the Justice Department. A factor in CBS' decision to lead with the CIA case was that its own 60 Minutes obtained the scoop of plaintiff Khaled el-Masri, an innocent German who was targeted by CIA spies because of mistaken identity and subjected to so-called rendition, "the kidnapping and handing over of terror subjects for harsh interrogation in secret overseas prisons," as CBS' Wyatt Andrews defined it.
The 60 Minutes story was not isolated. Andrews recalled "massive global publicity" plus official European investigations documenting el-Masri's claims of abuse. Yet the United States Supreme Court refused to hear his lawsuit against the Central Intelligence Agency on the grounds that "it is all still secret--that el-Masri's case could be made only with evidence that exposes how the CIA organizes its most sensitive intelligence operations." As Andrews paraphrased the arguments of civil libertarians: "If the most publicly discussed rendition case cannot go to court because it is secret--then almost anything can be secret."
CBS' David Martin followed up with the official word from CIA Director Michael Hayden that dozens of suspects have been tortured--Hayden used the phrase "special methods of interrogation"--by his spies. Hayden did not actually say dozens; he said "fewer than a third" of the "fewer than 100" held in the CIA's secret prisons. Martin ruefully commented that Hayden's statistic was "meant to reassure." Martin added that those secret prisons had been officially "but only temporarily" emptied last year, with all inmates being transferred to military custody at the Guantanamo Bay base. How many, if any, are in CIA prisons today "is what the Bush Administration calls a state secret."
GRANDFATHER SMOKES ABC and CBS had a difference of opinion over which was the day's important energy story: the looming cost of home heating this winter; or the massive EPA fine levied against 16 coal burning power plants in the midwest. ABC chose the former for its lead story: Lisa Stark (subscription required) warned that those who use oil face the largest hikes, up 22% over last year, an additional $319 for the average home. CBS chose the latter as Cynthia Bowers outlined the $4.6bn lawsuit settlement agreed to by the American Electric Power utility. NBC mentioned both stories in passing but assigned a correspondent to neither.
AEP's plants have used a loophole in the Clean Air Act, Bowers explained, that requires newly-built power plants to cut down on emissions but tolerates dirty existing plants under a grandfather clause. "There has been little incentive for companies like AEP to tear down their decades-old smokestacks and build new ones." As a result sulfur dioxide emissions have persisted, causing acid rainfall downwind, from the Chesapeake Bay to New England. The settlement, Bowers added, "will not be charged off to company shareholders" but will be paid through higher electricity rates by the utility's customers. CBS had Daniel Sieberg follow up not on the environmental damage but on the health hazards to humans. He cited studies on particle damage to heart and lungs that blamed asthma and heart attacks on power plants, $32bn in annual healthcare costs and 60,000 premature deaths each year.
GREEN LIGHT Traffic congestion is such an apt topic for a nightly newscast, since so many of its viewers must have freshly survived its rigors in order to arrive in front of the television set to watch the story. NBC's Tom Costello contributed his latest addition to this list of previous efforts. How can delays be cut by at least 15%? How can emissions be cut by 22%? How can fuel consumption be cut by 10%? The answer: improve traffic lights. It costs $3,000 to modernize each intersection, Costello reported: just add traffic sensors, install cameras, coordinate signals and constantly adjust the duration of lights as traffic patterns shift.
PHOTOSHOP Computer wizardry was the hook that turned a single criminal manhunt into an international news story. CBS' 60 Minutes set the ball rolling Sunday with its explanation of how German police came up with an image of its suspect. Naturally, the first follow-up was by CBS yesterday, when Allen Pizzey reported on the leads flowing into Interpol's hotline. Now ABC has chimed in, with Jim Sciutto (subscription required) examining how the scrambled online self-portrait of a pederast and his pre-teens was digitally unswirled and turned into a Wanted Poster. Visual clues on the images suggest that the child rapes occurred in Cambodia or Vietnam. Sciutto used the shocking statistic of "more than 200 pictures of himself on the Internet sexually abusing boys." Pizzey was more circumspect in his enumeration of the outrage, counting not the images but the boys, "about twelve." The online trail, however, may be cold: Pizzey pointed out that the suspect's most recent posting was in 2004.
MUST NOT SEE TV "TV antennas fill the sky" in Havana, NBC's Mark Potter showed us, as the Cuban government imposes a ban on satellite dishes. As a consequence, the only television that Cubans can see is broadcast--and those signals that offend the regime are jammed. Thus TV Marti, the federal government's Miami-based propaganda channel is invisible throughout the island--apart from the diplomatically immune airspace of the State Department's interest section. Potter wondered whether a $600m budget for two decades of unwatched programming has been a Fleecing of America. He quoted one common, but unattributed, criticism: the place where TV Marti is effective is "south Florida--at securing Cuban-American votes."
EYES ON THE PRIZE The award of the Nobel Prize for Physics to Albert Fert and Peter Grunberg, a pair of scientists "who make the little disk that runs inside this thing"--CBS' Mark Phillips waved his iPod--failed to impress. "A lesser scientific achievement perhaps," Phillips mused, contrasting Fert and Grunberg with Albert Einstein, Linus Pauling and Marie Curie. The Nobel Prizes are "the most coveted and prestigious in the world and, sometimes, the most controversial." He reminded us of a pair of Peace Prize laureates. Henry Kissinger's award for negotiating the end of the Vietnam War "was questioned by those who blamed him for waging it." Yasser Arafat received his prize "for agreeing to a peace that has yet to happen." As for this year's Peace Prize, Phillips consulted the rumor mill: Al Gore is "a hot tip."
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: on Wall Street, the Dow Jones Industrial Average closed at another all-time high, up 120 points to 14164…combat continued in Waziristan along the Pakistan-Afghanistan border for a fourth day, with a death toll as high as 250…Operation Community Shield concluded, the federal Immigration & Customs Enforcement crackdown on alleged gang members without legal residency papers…former Secretary of State Colin Powell launched a civics program dubbed the Above & Beyond Awards, inspired by the Congressional Medal of Honor.
Neither CBS anchor Katie Couric nor NBC's substitute Ann Curry could resist running that viral videotape of the kangaroo hopping through a racing cars in Australia.
If freshness is an asset it is also a drawback. All three networks quoted a clash between frontrunners Rudolph Giuliani and Mitt Romney over "who was the better tax cutter and fiscal conservative," as NBC's Kelly O'Donnell put it. The former New York City mayor cited one set of tax-and-spend statistics, which the former Massachusetts governor dismissed as "baloney." The point of airing the exchange seemed to be to use the "baloney" bite rather than to establish its veracity. No network checked either candidate's facts before airing the claims.
ABC's George Stephanopoulos scored Giuliani as the debate winner: "He was helped by the focus on the economy…and the fact that social issues really were not discussed that much." CBS' Jeff Greenfield noted that Giuliani mentioned Hillary Rodham Clinton so much that she seemed to be "his running mate." Greenfield explained Giuliani's thinking: "He is telling the Republican base, particularly those who do not like his social positions: 'You had better nominate me despite your reservations, because it is me or her.'"
The other debate angle was that this was late entrant Fred Thompson's first appearance with his rivals since he announced his candidacy. "A little nervous," was how ABC's Stephanopoulos found him; CBS' Nancy Cordes heard "initial jitters." By the end Cordes concluded that "Thompson's plain-spokenness and broad themes--smaller government, states' rights--do seem to be resonating with voters." ABC's Stephanopoulos felt that Thompson "did do enough to answer critics who say he is not in command of the facts or has not been working hard on the campaign trail."
Thompson's first appearance on the public stage was as a 30-year-old lawyer in 1973 when he served as Republican counsel on the Senate committee investigating the Watergate scandal. ABC sent Brian Ross to the National Archives to comb through Richard Nixon's Oval Office audiotapes, enabling him to offer an outline of Thompson's evolving relationship with All the President's Men. "Dumb as hell," was the initial reaction…then "not very smart but at least beginning to play ball." Finally Nixon was told that "Thompson had agreed to secretly help under cut the credibility of John Dean," a key witness against his former boss.
OPEN SECRETS To the credit of CBS--and the discredit of its rivals--it was the only network to assign coverage to the CIA torture story. NBC's substitute anchor Ann Curry mentioned it in passing. ABC did not--neither did ABC mention last week's torture story that NBC's Andrea Mitchell covered, the secret approval memoranda from the Justice Department. A factor in CBS' decision to lead with the CIA case was that its own 60 Minutes obtained the scoop of plaintiff Khaled el-Masri, an innocent German who was targeted by CIA spies because of mistaken identity and subjected to so-called rendition, "the kidnapping and handing over of terror subjects for harsh interrogation in secret overseas prisons," as CBS' Wyatt Andrews defined it.
The 60 Minutes story was not isolated. Andrews recalled "massive global publicity" plus official European investigations documenting el-Masri's claims of abuse. Yet the United States Supreme Court refused to hear his lawsuit against the Central Intelligence Agency on the grounds that "it is all still secret--that el-Masri's case could be made only with evidence that exposes how the CIA organizes its most sensitive intelligence operations." As Andrews paraphrased the arguments of civil libertarians: "If the most publicly discussed rendition case cannot go to court because it is secret--then almost anything can be secret."
CBS' David Martin followed up with the official word from CIA Director Michael Hayden that dozens of suspects have been tortured--Hayden used the phrase "special methods of interrogation"--by his spies. Hayden did not actually say dozens; he said "fewer than a third" of the "fewer than 100" held in the CIA's secret prisons. Martin ruefully commented that Hayden's statistic was "meant to reassure." Martin added that those secret prisons had been officially "but only temporarily" emptied last year, with all inmates being transferred to military custody at the Guantanamo Bay base. How many, if any, are in CIA prisons today "is what the Bush Administration calls a state secret."
GRANDFATHER SMOKES ABC and CBS had a difference of opinion over which was the day's important energy story: the looming cost of home heating this winter; or the massive EPA fine levied against 16 coal burning power plants in the midwest. ABC chose the former for its lead story: Lisa Stark (subscription required) warned that those who use oil face the largest hikes, up 22% over last year, an additional $319 for the average home. CBS chose the latter as Cynthia Bowers outlined the $4.6bn lawsuit settlement agreed to by the American Electric Power utility. NBC mentioned both stories in passing but assigned a correspondent to neither.
AEP's plants have used a loophole in the Clean Air Act, Bowers explained, that requires newly-built power plants to cut down on emissions but tolerates dirty existing plants under a grandfather clause. "There has been little incentive for companies like AEP to tear down their decades-old smokestacks and build new ones." As a result sulfur dioxide emissions have persisted, causing acid rainfall downwind, from the Chesapeake Bay to New England. The settlement, Bowers added, "will not be charged off to company shareholders" but will be paid through higher electricity rates by the utility's customers. CBS had Daniel Sieberg follow up not on the environmental damage but on the health hazards to humans. He cited studies on particle damage to heart and lungs that blamed asthma and heart attacks on power plants, $32bn in annual healthcare costs and 60,000 premature deaths each year.
GREEN LIGHT Traffic congestion is such an apt topic for a nightly newscast, since so many of its viewers must have freshly survived its rigors in order to arrive in front of the television set to watch the story. NBC's Tom Costello contributed his latest addition to this list of previous efforts. How can delays be cut by at least 15%? How can emissions be cut by 22%? How can fuel consumption be cut by 10%? The answer: improve traffic lights. It costs $3,000 to modernize each intersection, Costello reported: just add traffic sensors, install cameras, coordinate signals and constantly adjust the duration of lights as traffic patterns shift.
PHOTOSHOP Computer wizardry was the hook that turned a single criminal manhunt into an international news story. CBS' 60 Minutes set the ball rolling Sunday with its explanation of how German police came up with an image of its suspect. Naturally, the first follow-up was by CBS yesterday, when Allen Pizzey reported on the leads flowing into Interpol's hotline. Now ABC has chimed in, with Jim Sciutto (subscription required) examining how the scrambled online self-portrait of a pederast and his pre-teens was digitally unswirled and turned into a Wanted Poster. Visual clues on the images suggest that the child rapes occurred in Cambodia or Vietnam. Sciutto used the shocking statistic of "more than 200 pictures of himself on the Internet sexually abusing boys." Pizzey was more circumspect in his enumeration of the outrage, counting not the images but the boys, "about twelve." The online trail, however, may be cold: Pizzey pointed out that the suspect's most recent posting was in 2004.
MUST NOT SEE TV "TV antennas fill the sky" in Havana, NBC's Mark Potter showed us, as the Cuban government imposes a ban on satellite dishes. As a consequence, the only television that Cubans can see is broadcast--and those signals that offend the regime are jammed. Thus TV Marti, the federal government's Miami-based propaganda channel is invisible throughout the island--apart from the diplomatically immune airspace of the State Department's interest section. Potter wondered whether a $600m budget for two decades of unwatched programming has been a Fleecing of America. He quoted one common, but unattributed, criticism: the place where TV Marti is effective is "south Florida--at securing Cuban-American votes."
EYES ON THE PRIZE The award of the Nobel Prize for Physics to Albert Fert and Peter Grunberg, a pair of scientists "who make the little disk that runs inside this thing"--CBS' Mark Phillips waved his iPod--failed to impress. "A lesser scientific achievement perhaps," Phillips mused, contrasting Fert and Grunberg with Albert Einstein, Linus Pauling and Marie Curie. The Nobel Prizes are "the most coveted and prestigious in the world and, sometimes, the most controversial." He reminded us of a pair of Peace Prize laureates. Henry Kissinger's award for negotiating the end of the Vietnam War "was questioned by those who blamed him for waging it." Yasser Arafat received his prize "for agreeing to a peace that has yet to happen." As for this year's Peace Prize, Phillips consulted the rumor mill: Al Gore is "a hot tip."
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: on Wall Street, the Dow Jones Industrial Average closed at another all-time high, up 120 points to 14164…combat continued in Waziristan along the Pakistan-Afghanistan border for a fourth day, with a death toll as high as 250…Operation Community Shield concluded, the federal Immigration & Customs Enforcement crackdown on alleged gang members without legal residency papers…former Secretary of State Colin Powell launched a civics program dubbed the Above & Beyond Awards, inspired by the Congressional Medal of Honor.
Neither CBS anchor Katie Couric nor NBC's substitute Ann Curry could resist running that viral videotape of the kangaroo hopping through a racing cars in Australia.
