 |           |
TYNDALL HEADLINE: HIGHLIGHTS FROM NOVEMBER 13, 2007
The political crisis in Pakistan escalated as the pair of rivals that the State Department had hoped would work together arrived at loggerheads. Pervez Musharraf, the army general turned martial law president, declared: "This reconciliation effort has gone into the thin air." Benazir Bhutto, the former prime minister confined under house arrest in Lahore, demanded of Musharraf: "Leave. Simply leave." Although it was the Story of the Day, none of the networks led with Pakistan. Both ABC and NBC chose economic stories--gasoline prices and the stock market respectively. CBS, which had a larger newshole (25 min v ABC 18, NBC 19) thanks to the sole sponsorship of Pfizer's Celebrex brand, kicked off with new NIH brain scan research into Attention Deficit Disorder.
TYNDALL PICKS FOR NOVEMBER 13, 2007: CLICK ON GRID ELEMENTS TO SEARCH FOR MATCHING ITEMS
BHUTTO & MUSHARRAF HEAD FOR SPLITSVILLE The political crisis in Pakistan escalated as the pair of rivals that the State Department had hoped would work together arrived at loggerheads. Pervez Musharraf, the army general turned martial law president, declared: "This reconciliation effort has gone into the thin air." Benazir Bhutto, the former prime minister confined under house arrest in Lahore, demanded of Musharraf: "Leave. Simply leave." Although it was the Story of the Day, none of the networks led with Pakistan. Both ABC and NBC chose economic stories--gasoline prices and the stock market respectively. CBS, which had a larger newshole (25 min v ABC 18, NBC 19) thanks to the sole sponsorship of Pfizer's Celebrex brand, kicked off with new NIH brain scan research into Attention Deficit Disorder.
ABC's Dan Harris and CBS' Sheila MacVicar both covered the Bhutto angle from Lahore. NBC's Richard Engel was in Islamabad, where he was granted a sitdown with Musharraf. The general offered his media criticism: "Unfortunately in your media in the West you are impressed if, instead of a gent, there is a lady. Very good! And if she speaks very good English, very good! And if she happens also to be good looking, well, even better!" Musharraf blasted Bhutto's "totally confrontationist mode…she distorts facts and reality." As for his own ideology, he portrayed himself as patriot first, democrat second: "There is a clash between democracy and the stability of the country. The country is more important than anything else."
ABC's Harris saw "serious trouble" for what he called the "US-sponsored marriage of convenience between a Harvard-educated former prime minister with a reputation for corruption and a military dictator disinclined to share power." And CBS' MacVicar cautioned us not to view Bhutto as the heroine of this drama. She reminded us that Bhutto had been "twice dismissed for corruption and incompetence." On the streets of Lahore "for every rapturous supporter we have seen, we have watched dozens stand indifferent to Bhutto or turn their backs." Yet her unpopularity does not redound to his benefit: "There is no question the general is much weakened."
PROUTY & PARTY OF GOD All three networks covered the spy scandal of Nada Prouty, a 38-year-old Lebanese-born CIA case officer, who pled guilty in federal court in Detroit to invading FBI secrets. Prouty became a citizen 18 years ago through a green card marriage; worked as a special agent for the FBI for four years; and then transferred to the CIA. The secret database in question contained FBI files on Hezbollah, the Shiite militia and political party based in Beirut. CBS' Bob Orr reported that Prouty was accused of searching for her own name, that of her sister, and of Talil Chahine, her brother-in-law. Chahine is "a wanted fugitive thought to have close ties to the leader of Hezbollah," ABC's Pierre Thomas (subscription required) told us. However, noted NBC's Lisa Myers, Prouty herself "is not accused of being a spy."
BEARS AND BULLS Last Wednesday, when the Dow Jones Industrial Average fell by 361 points all three networks led with the selloff and it was Story of the Day. So, it turns out, bears are more newsworthy than bulls. Today the DJIA climbed 319 points: only NBC led with it; ABC mentioned it only in passing; and the coverage by CBS' Anthony Mason and CNBC's Erin Burnett for NBC consisted merely of a brief stand-up that neither network considered substantial enough to post online.
ABC's economic lead concerned the rising price of gasoline. David Muir covered the projections of the Department of Energy that costs at the pump will reach an all-time high next month. Gasoline accounts for fully 5% of the average household's budget and Muir calculated that the increased price accounts for an $800 extra annual expenditure, "what the average American spends on the holidays--the cards, the food, the gifts." Muir consulted retail analysts who told him that mid-priced restaurants and retailers--think Chili's, Applebee's, JC Penney, GAP--will suffer from such crimped purchasing power and discounters like Wal-Mart will benefit.
After Burnett's brief stand-up on stocks, NBC turned to its theme of the day, the auto industry. After Brian Williams' trip to Cleveland (text link) yesterday he moved on to anchor from a pick-up truck plant in Warren Mich. "Engine buffs will recognize that as the Hemi engine," he stated, pointing to the production line for his interview with Chrysler executive Jim Press. "The body gets picked up, laid down on the chassis. This is going to make some buyer somewhere very happy." Yet CNBC's Burnett pointed out that Detroit's downsized Smaller Three are no longer the backbone of the regional economy: "In 1978 more than 400,000 people built cars in Motown factories. By 2006 that was down by almost half."
BRAIN WAVES There was news about the brain, young and old--Attention Deficit Disorder in children and Alzheimer's Disease in the elderly.
The hook for the Alzheimer's coverage was the fate of the 55-year marriage of Sandra Day O'Connor. From the Supreme Court, NBC's Pete Williams relayed the reporting by his network's Phoenix affiliate KPNX-TV on the former Justice's husband John, an Alzheimer's patient, now living in a care facility in Arizona. Their son Scott revealed that his father has found a new love with a fellow patient: "He is happy, you know, visiting with his girlfriend, sitting on the porch swing, holding hands." David Wright (no link) took A Closer Look for ABC, reminding us that late life love amid a forgotten marriage was the plot of the recent Julie Christie movie Away From Her. NBC's Williams noted that Day O'Connor has "declined to comment--but without her cooperation her husband's story would never be told." Alzheimer's experts told Williams that such romances "actually happen often."
CBS had its in-house physician Jon LaPook lead with ADD. He explained the NIH research that used MRI scans to examine the neurology of children diagnosed with the disorder. It indicated that ADD is not a brain disease; instead it is the symptom of slower development. There is a "three to five year lag" in pre-teen children; "by mid-adolescence that gap has narrowed." ABC anchor Charles Gibson consulted his network's in-house physician Timothy Johnson (subscription required). He speculated that this finding may lead to different treatments for ADD children--"a better school environment, more attention, shorter assignments…rather than simply go to medicines."
THEIR QUIETUS MAKE The extra time granted CBS by its limited commercials was assigned to a six-minute Investigation by Armen Keteyian. After four months of research using Freedom of Information Act requests and analysis by biostatistician Steve Rathbun at the University of Georgia, Keteyian announced findings on a mental health crisis facing military veterans and those on active duty. Each year, as many as 7,000 soldiers or veterans commit suicide--specifically Keteyian collected data on just 45 of the 50 states, finding 6,256 suicides annually among veterans and 188 on active duty. Rathbun calculated the suicide rate for veterans as at least double that for non-veterans, maybe four times as high among twentysomethings. "There is no epidemic of suicide," Ira Katz, the VA's head of mental health, told Keteyian, "but suicide is a major problem."
DARK HORSE HUCKABEE The decision by the National Right to Life Committee to endorse Fred Thompson for President raised Jake Tapper's eyebrows at ABC. After all, Thompson "opposes a Constitutional amendment to ban abortion." Tapper investigated the committee's explanation that "there was no other choice." Granted Rudolph Giuliani supports abortion rights and Mitt Romney used to do so and John McCain endorses stem cell research on human embryos. But what about "a less popular but more pure" Mike Huckabee? "Huckabee, they said, cannot win." Tapper sarcastically summed up: "Conservative groups are not only focused on the viability of life inside the womb. Political viability matters as well."
Funnily enough, CBS News' latest poll of likely Republican caucusgoers in Iowa showed Huckabee "now in striking distance" (21% v Romney 27%, Giuliani 15%) according to anchor Katie Couric. She was followed immediately by the caveat from political correspondent Jeff Greenfield that in "election after election primary voters decide very late." Greenfield lashed out in a torrent of navel-gazing self-criticism, decrying campaign journalism for "obsessing over every line of every debate, every YouTube video, every slip of the tongue…inflating every event or non-event as if every one were a matter of cataclysmic consequence." He described himself and his colleagues as "kids in the back seat of a car as the family sets out on vacation demanding to know: 'Are we there yet?' No! We are not."
RAIN MAN Meanwhile there is still no rain in Georgia. ABC and CBS both covered the statehouse ceremony conducted by Sonny Perdue, the Republican governor, "praying for God to shower the state with liquid blessings," as ABC's Steve Osunsami (subscription required) put it. CBS' Mark Strassmann nodded to the small crowd of atheists and agnostics protesting "a clear church-state violation" before illustrating Perdue's prayers with images of parched African villagers--making Perdue seem closer to anthropology than religiosity. "In desperate droughts praying for rain goes back thousands of years."
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 so-called surge of US military personnel in Iraq is beginning to ebb, with the first brigade heading home to Fort Hood…storms in the Black Sea have now sunk eleven ships, with the latest estimate of the oil spill at 500,000 gallons…a blood safety test before organ transplants in Chicago failed to pick up a late infection and now four patients are HIV-positive…the New Frontier Casino on the Las Vegas Strip has been demolished by developers.
ABC's Dan Harris and CBS' Sheila MacVicar both covered the Bhutto angle from Lahore. NBC's Richard Engel was in Islamabad, where he was granted a sitdown with Musharraf. The general offered his media criticism: "Unfortunately in your media in the West you are impressed if, instead of a gent, there is a lady. Very good! And if she speaks very good English, very good! And if she happens also to be good looking, well, even better!" Musharraf blasted Bhutto's "totally confrontationist mode…she distorts facts and reality." As for his own ideology, he portrayed himself as patriot first, democrat second: "There is a clash between democracy and the stability of the country. The country is more important than anything else."
ABC's Harris saw "serious trouble" for what he called the "US-sponsored marriage of convenience between a Harvard-educated former prime minister with a reputation for corruption and a military dictator disinclined to share power." And CBS' MacVicar cautioned us not to view Bhutto as the heroine of this drama. She reminded us that Bhutto had been "twice dismissed for corruption and incompetence." On the streets of Lahore "for every rapturous supporter we have seen, we have watched dozens stand indifferent to Bhutto or turn their backs." Yet her unpopularity does not redound to his benefit: "There is no question the general is much weakened."
PROUTY & PARTY OF GOD All three networks covered the spy scandal of Nada Prouty, a 38-year-old Lebanese-born CIA case officer, who pled guilty in federal court in Detroit to invading FBI secrets. Prouty became a citizen 18 years ago through a green card marriage; worked as a special agent for the FBI for four years; and then transferred to the CIA. The secret database in question contained FBI files on Hezbollah, the Shiite militia and political party based in Beirut. CBS' Bob Orr reported that Prouty was accused of searching for her own name, that of her sister, and of Talil Chahine, her brother-in-law. Chahine is "a wanted fugitive thought to have close ties to the leader of Hezbollah," ABC's Pierre Thomas (subscription required) told us. However, noted NBC's Lisa Myers, Prouty herself "is not accused of being a spy."
BEARS AND BULLS Last Wednesday, when the Dow Jones Industrial Average fell by 361 points all three networks led with the selloff and it was Story of the Day. So, it turns out, bears are more newsworthy than bulls. Today the DJIA climbed 319 points: only NBC led with it; ABC mentioned it only in passing; and the coverage by CBS' Anthony Mason and CNBC's Erin Burnett for NBC consisted merely of a brief stand-up that neither network considered substantial enough to post online.
ABC's economic lead concerned the rising price of gasoline. David Muir covered the projections of the Department of Energy that costs at the pump will reach an all-time high next month. Gasoline accounts for fully 5% of the average household's budget and Muir calculated that the increased price accounts for an $800 extra annual expenditure, "what the average American spends on the holidays--the cards, the food, the gifts." Muir consulted retail analysts who told him that mid-priced restaurants and retailers--think Chili's, Applebee's, JC Penney, GAP--will suffer from such crimped purchasing power and discounters like Wal-Mart will benefit.
After Burnett's brief stand-up on stocks, NBC turned to its theme of the day, the auto industry. After Brian Williams' trip to Cleveland (text link) yesterday he moved on to anchor from a pick-up truck plant in Warren Mich. "Engine buffs will recognize that as the Hemi engine," he stated, pointing to the production line for his interview with Chrysler executive Jim Press. "The body gets picked up, laid down on the chassis. This is going to make some buyer somewhere very happy." Yet CNBC's Burnett pointed out that Detroit's downsized Smaller Three are no longer the backbone of the regional economy: "In 1978 more than 400,000 people built cars in Motown factories. By 2006 that was down by almost half."
BRAIN WAVES There was news about the brain, young and old--Attention Deficit Disorder in children and Alzheimer's Disease in the elderly.
The hook for the Alzheimer's coverage was the fate of the 55-year marriage of Sandra Day O'Connor. From the Supreme Court, NBC's Pete Williams relayed the reporting by his network's Phoenix affiliate KPNX-TV on the former Justice's husband John, an Alzheimer's patient, now living in a care facility in Arizona. Their son Scott revealed that his father has found a new love with a fellow patient: "He is happy, you know, visiting with his girlfriend, sitting on the porch swing, holding hands." David Wright (no link) took A Closer Look for ABC, reminding us that late life love amid a forgotten marriage was the plot of the recent Julie Christie movie Away From Her. NBC's Williams noted that Day O'Connor has "declined to comment--but without her cooperation her husband's story would never be told." Alzheimer's experts told Williams that such romances "actually happen often."
CBS had its in-house physician Jon LaPook lead with ADD. He explained the NIH research that used MRI scans to examine the neurology of children diagnosed with the disorder. It indicated that ADD is not a brain disease; instead it is the symptom of slower development. There is a "three to five year lag" in pre-teen children; "by mid-adolescence that gap has narrowed." ABC anchor Charles Gibson consulted his network's in-house physician Timothy Johnson (subscription required). He speculated that this finding may lead to different treatments for ADD children--"a better school environment, more attention, shorter assignments…rather than simply go to medicines."
THEIR QUIETUS MAKE The extra time granted CBS by its limited commercials was assigned to a six-minute Investigation by Armen Keteyian. After four months of research using Freedom of Information Act requests and analysis by biostatistician Steve Rathbun at the University of Georgia, Keteyian announced findings on a mental health crisis facing military veterans and those on active duty. Each year, as many as 7,000 soldiers or veterans commit suicide--specifically Keteyian collected data on just 45 of the 50 states, finding 6,256 suicides annually among veterans and 188 on active duty. Rathbun calculated the suicide rate for veterans as at least double that for non-veterans, maybe four times as high among twentysomethings. "There is no epidemic of suicide," Ira Katz, the VA's head of mental health, told Keteyian, "but suicide is a major problem."
DARK HORSE HUCKABEE The decision by the National Right to Life Committee to endorse Fred Thompson for President raised Jake Tapper's eyebrows at ABC. After all, Thompson "opposes a Constitutional amendment to ban abortion." Tapper investigated the committee's explanation that "there was no other choice." Granted Rudolph Giuliani supports abortion rights and Mitt Romney used to do so and John McCain endorses stem cell research on human embryos. But what about "a less popular but more pure" Mike Huckabee? "Huckabee, they said, cannot win." Tapper sarcastically summed up: "Conservative groups are not only focused on the viability of life inside the womb. Political viability matters as well."
Funnily enough, CBS News' latest poll of likely Republican caucusgoers in Iowa showed Huckabee "now in striking distance" (21% v Romney 27%, Giuliani 15%) according to anchor Katie Couric. She was followed immediately by the caveat from political correspondent Jeff Greenfield that in "election after election primary voters decide very late." Greenfield lashed out in a torrent of navel-gazing self-criticism, decrying campaign journalism for "obsessing over every line of every debate, every YouTube video, every slip of the tongue…inflating every event or non-event as if every one were a matter of cataclysmic consequence." He described himself and his colleagues as "kids in the back seat of a car as the family sets out on vacation demanding to know: 'Are we there yet?' No! We are not."
RAIN MAN Meanwhile there is still no rain in Georgia. ABC and CBS both covered the statehouse ceremony conducted by Sonny Perdue, the Republican governor, "praying for God to shower the state with liquid blessings," as ABC's Steve Osunsami (subscription required) put it. CBS' Mark Strassmann nodded to the small crowd of atheists and agnostics protesting "a clear church-state violation" before illustrating Perdue's prayers with images of parched African villagers--making Perdue seem closer to anthropology than religiosity. "In desperate droughts praying for rain goes back thousands of years."
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 so-called surge of US military personnel in Iraq is beginning to ebb, with the first brigade heading home to Fort Hood…storms in the Black Sea have now sunk eleven ships, with the latest estimate of the oil spill at 500,000 gallons…a blood safety test before organ transplants in Chicago failed to pick up a late infection and now four patients are HIV-positive…the New Frontier Casino on the Las Vegas Strip has been demolished by developers.
