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TYNDALL HEADLINE: HIGHLIGHTS FROM NOVEMBER 8, 2007
Prospects for a faltering economy made headlines for the second straight day. Yesterday a selloff on Wall Street was Story of the Day. Now attention turns to fears of recession. Benjamin Bernanke, the Chairman of the Federal Reserve, testified on Capitol Hill that the growth of consumer spending is likely to slow. He cited a trio of adverse factors--high energy prices, tight lending by banks, falling house values--even though his economists "have not calculated the probability of recession." Meanwhile, the retail sector's sales last month were sluggish, the slowest October in more than a decade. NBC had its sibling network CNBC lead with the economic Story of the Day. ABC and CBS each chose to start its newscast with the potential danger of collisions on airport runways.
TYNDALL PICKS FOR NOVEMBER 8, 2007: CLICK ON GRID ELEMENTS TO SEARCH FOR MATCHING ITEMS
MORE MONEY WORRIES Prospects for a faltering economy made headlines for the second straight day. Yesterday a selloff on Wall Street was Story of the Day. Now attention turns to fears of recession. Benjamin Bernanke, the Chairman of the Federal Reserve, testified on Capitol Hill that the growth of consumer spending is likely to slow. He cited a trio of adverse factors--high energy prices, tight lending by banks, falling house values--even though his economists "have not calculated the probability of recession." Meanwhile, the retail sector's sales last month were sluggish, the slowest October in more than a decade. NBC had its sibling network CNBC lead with the economic Story of the Day. ABC and CBS each chose to start its newscast with the potential danger of collisions on airport runways.
Both CNBC's Trish Regan and CBS' Anthony Mason cast the economic anxiety in seasonal terms. Mason surveyed empty retail aisles and idle cashiers' checkouts and concluded that "it is not beginning to look anything like Christmas" and Regan worried that higher gasoline prices could "turn out to be the Grinch." She cited statistics that an average household will spend $100 each month more on gasoline than it did this time last year. ABC's David Muir (no link) focused on the currency, observing that "weak dollars, quite simply, do not go as far." The greenback's value in Canada, for example, is "the weakest exchange in 50 years."
NTSB PR PRESSURE ON FAA The public relations apparatus for the National Transportation Safety Board made a score with ABC and CBS when it provided animation and audiotape of a pair of narrowly avoided collisions on airport runways, one at San Francisco, one at Fort Lauderdale. The NTSB released the material as part of its campaign to put pressure on the Federal Aviation Administration to install collision warning radar systems in the cockpits of jetliners. ABC's Lisa Stark (no link) found board members "frustrated at the lack of progress." CBS' Nancy Cordes went on a test flight at Syracuse Airport to publicize the system, manufactured by Honeywell Flight Ops, that can issue the audio alert Runway Occupied to planes as they approach for landing. The system "will take at least three years to implement," Cordes told us, with no mention of the cost. NBC did not find the NTSB's pleas newsworthy.
READY TO RALLY IN RAWALPINDI President Pervez Musharraf of Pakistan "announced something of a plan--it was light on details" to end the martial law he imposed with his State of Emergency, reported CBS' Sheila MacVicar. Musharraf promised to hold January's parliamentary elections no later than mid-February and to become a civilian but with "no date for him to resign his military command." MacVicar called those two promises "not nearly enough to head that protest off" that had been called for Rawalpindi tomorrow by opposition leader Benazir Bhutto, Pakistan's former prime minister.
Musharraf's pledge, on the other hand, "was welcomed by the White House," NBC's Richard Engel reported from Islamabad. Unidentified "US officials" told Engel that "they have privately told Bhutto not to hold the demonstration" and his sources inside the Musharraf junta informed him of plans to put Bhutto "temporarily under house arrest." For her part, Bhutto called for a massive turnout: "I have appealed to all the political parties to join us. I have appealed to the religious parties to walk side by side with us. I have appealed to the poor and the hungry to join us." Mused Engel, "a popular revolution is spreading."
On ABC, Martha Raddatz traveled north from Islamabad to the onetime tourist resort of the Swat Valley for an Exclusive: "If Pervez Musharraf has been cracking down on militants, it certainly is not evident here," she observed. The valley's population of 1.5m is now under the control of an Islamist militia. A local police precinct, for example, has been renamed Taliban Station. "This area is looking more and more like Afghanistan under Taliban rule," Raddatz remarked, showing the vandalized ruins of a girls' school. The takeover has created 200,000 refugees: "People are terrified here." Yet, far from a defeat for Musharraf's troops, the Swat Valley takeover could turn out to be his vindication: he "may soon mount a major operation here to show that his emergency decree is, indeed, intended to battle extremists."
COMPLEXITY OF HUMAN LIFE Campaign coverage was split between Rudolph Giuliani, Barack Obama and John McCain. The spotlight on Republican candidate Giuliani concerned how he would spin the looming rap for graft of Bernard Kerik, his "longtime friend, protege and business partner," as NBC's John Yang put it. The expected indictment probes Kerik's tenure in charge of New York City's prisons when Giuliani was mayor. Giuliani was briefed about Kerik's alleged receipt of "gifts" from a mobbed-up business yet promoted him from prisons to the police department anyway…and "later pushed President Bush to name Kerik head of Homeland Security." Giuliani's defense to Yang was that he is not running as "perfect" but as someone who had "great success." To ABC's Jake Tapper (no link), Giuliani cited Kerik as an example of "the complexity of human life" while crediting him with "excellent results." Yang concluded that Kerik's character offers an insight into how the former mayor "might staff a Giuliani White House."
CBS assigned Dean Reynolds to follow Democrat Obama on the campaign trail in Iowa to check whether the more forceful challenge to Hillary Rodham Clinton he had promised has materialized. NBC's David Gregory reported on the plan last week--and Reynolds now covers the execution with an answer in the affirmative. "The rollout is over. The rumble is on." Reynolds finds "a tougher, more competitive tone in debates and on the stump" and a candidate "trying to draw ever sharper distinctions" on Iraq, on Iran, on immigration and on "who could better unite the country." Obama claims Rodham Clinton's play-it-safe campaign is just following inside-the-Beltway conventional wisdom: "Make yourself a small target by avoiding being definitive about anything."
On ABC, anchor Charles Gibson (no link) sat down with Republican candidate John McCain for the latest in his Who Is? series on the personal backgrounds of the candidates. Previous profiles have been on Barack Obama, Mike Huckabee, Fred Thompson and Bill Richardson (all subscription required). With McCain, Gibson concentrated on military matters. A self-confessed "rebellious" youth, reacting to a family tradition of high-ranking admirals, he graduated from the US Naval Academy "by the skin of his teeth…fifth from the bottom of his class." "Was it girls? Was it driving? Was it drinking?" Gibson wondered. "All of the above--well not so much the drinking," He was turned off booze because his father was an alcoholic. The event in his life that changed him from "respect and honor" for the United States to "really fall in love with my country" was his abusive five-year stint, including torture, in a Hanoi prisoner of war camp, "a time in my life that I will always cherish in many ways. I observed a thousand acts of courage and compassion and love--and those that I know best and love most are those that I was there with."
FROM ANTARCTICA TO CALIFORNIA There was not much news to report in Ann Curry's report from the South Pole for NBC's Our Planet series. She flew in after eight days of delays caused by storms. The headline was simply her presence. Only 7,000-or-so human beings have ever been there. "When you step off the plane you are immediately hit with face-numbing cold. I mean it feels like your skin is on fire," Curry related at -53F. "Secondly you are at more than 9,000ft so your breathing becomes labored."
CBS and ABC both went less far afield for their nature stories--to California instead of Antarctica. ABC's Neal Karlinsky was in the Sierra Nevada, where the town of Mammoth Lakes, population 7,000, does not use guns to cope with black bears. Instead Steve Searles has adopted the role of alpha male: "I have them mentally convinced that I am boss." Searles realizes that a bear is nothing more than "a stomach with feet" but he manages to keep them out of the garbage with his "weapon--a booming voice." His job will be over for the year a month from now: "They will be hibernating." CBS sent John Blackstone to the shores of San Francisco Bay to check the health of its "rich abundance of water fowl" after a container ship rammed into a support of the Bay Bridge in thick fog and leaked 58,000 gallons of fuel oil. Back in 1989, Blackstone was CBS' correspondent in Alaska for the Exxon Valdez so this must have been small beer.
DRUNKEN TODDLER Yesterday only ABC assigned a reporter to the recall of Aqua Dots, the arts and crafts toy for toddlers. Lisa Stark warned us that the coating of some of the kit's beads can break down into a chemical that is found in GBH, the so-called date rape drug, and can lead to seizures, breathing problems, even comas in young children. Now ABC's David Kerley profiles 20-month-old Jacob Esses, whose mother Shelby found him "weaving kind of like he was drunk or something and he fell down." She showed doctors a list of Aqua Dots ingredients from the toy's distributor in Canada "and right there listed in black and white is the chemical that can become a date rape drug when ingested." Kerley pointed out that its listing contradicts the toymaker's claim that the ingredient had been illicitly substituted without notification by a supplier in China. NBC's Tom Costello made note that Aqua Dots was merely the latest toy to be recalled. He relayed the suggestion by consumer advocates that concerned parents should log on to the Consumer Product Safety Commission's Website cpsc.gov and sign up for e-mailed recall alerts.
THERE’S NO BUSINESS ABC anchor Charles Gibson filed his serious Who Is? feature on candidate John McCain. His two rival anchors turned to show business instead. CBS' Katie Couric (no link) was on the road in Nashville where she closed with her profile of the Bluebird Cafe, founded 25 years ago by Amy Kurland as "a gourmet restaurant serving lunch and dinner with a few light songs on the side." It has turned into the premiere country music "testing ground and launching pad" for new talent and new tunes. To make sure "these songbirds will never have to leave the nest," Kurland is moving on and handing over ownership to the Nashville Songwriters Association. NBC's Brian Williams sat on a Broadway stage with producer Mel Brooks to preview opening night for Young Frankenstein, a second musical based on one of his own movies, following The Producers. There were two questions Brooks refused to address. Why are some tickets as expensive as $450? What is it like putting on a show as a widower, two years after the death of Anne Bancroft, his "soulmate, partner and…beloved wife?" "No! I am not going to talk about that. We are not going to talk about that."
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: a USArmy Blackhawk helicopter crashed during training in Italy, killing five of the eleven on board…homelessness statistics reveal that as many as one quarter of all street people are military veterans…the east coast of England is bracing for floods from a tidal surge caused by a storm in the North Sea…former NFL star OJ Simpson appeared in court in Las Vegas for a pre-trial hearing in a spat over sporting memorabilia…memorabilia is missing from the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library, perhaps theft, perhaps sloppy inventory.
Both CNBC's Trish Regan and CBS' Anthony Mason cast the economic anxiety in seasonal terms. Mason surveyed empty retail aisles and idle cashiers' checkouts and concluded that "it is not beginning to look anything like Christmas" and Regan worried that higher gasoline prices could "turn out to be the Grinch." She cited statistics that an average household will spend $100 each month more on gasoline than it did this time last year. ABC's David Muir (no link) focused on the currency, observing that "weak dollars, quite simply, do not go as far." The greenback's value in Canada, for example, is "the weakest exchange in 50 years."
NTSB PR PRESSURE ON FAA The public relations apparatus for the National Transportation Safety Board made a score with ABC and CBS when it provided animation and audiotape of a pair of narrowly avoided collisions on airport runways, one at San Francisco, one at Fort Lauderdale. The NTSB released the material as part of its campaign to put pressure on the Federal Aviation Administration to install collision warning radar systems in the cockpits of jetliners. ABC's Lisa Stark (no link) found board members "frustrated at the lack of progress." CBS' Nancy Cordes went on a test flight at Syracuse Airport to publicize the system, manufactured by Honeywell Flight Ops, that can issue the audio alert Runway Occupied to planes as they approach for landing. The system "will take at least three years to implement," Cordes told us, with no mention of the cost. NBC did not find the NTSB's pleas newsworthy.
READY TO RALLY IN RAWALPINDI President Pervez Musharraf of Pakistan "announced something of a plan--it was light on details" to end the martial law he imposed with his State of Emergency, reported CBS' Sheila MacVicar. Musharraf promised to hold January's parliamentary elections no later than mid-February and to become a civilian but with "no date for him to resign his military command." MacVicar called those two promises "not nearly enough to head that protest off" that had been called for Rawalpindi tomorrow by opposition leader Benazir Bhutto, Pakistan's former prime minister.
Musharraf's pledge, on the other hand, "was welcomed by the White House," NBC's Richard Engel reported from Islamabad. Unidentified "US officials" told Engel that "they have privately told Bhutto not to hold the demonstration" and his sources inside the Musharraf junta informed him of plans to put Bhutto "temporarily under house arrest." For her part, Bhutto called for a massive turnout: "I have appealed to all the political parties to join us. I have appealed to the religious parties to walk side by side with us. I have appealed to the poor and the hungry to join us." Mused Engel, "a popular revolution is spreading."
On ABC, Martha Raddatz traveled north from Islamabad to the onetime tourist resort of the Swat Valley for an Exclusive: "If Pervez Musharraf has been cracking down on militants, it certainly is not evident here," she observed. The valley's population of 1.5m is now under the control of an Islamist militia. A local police precinct, for example, has been renamed Taliban Station. "This area is looking more and more like Afghanistan under Taliban rule," Raddatz remarked, showing the vandalized ruins of a girls' school. The takeover has created 200,000 refugees: "People are terrified here." Yet, far from a defeat for Musharraf's troops, the Swat Valley takeover could turn out to be his vindication: he "may soon mount a major operation here to show that his emergency decree is, indeed, intended to battle extremists."
COMPLEXITY OF HUMAN LIFE Campaign coverage was split between Rudolph Giuliani, Barack Obama and John McCain. The spotlight on Republican candidate Giuliani concerned how he would spin the looming rap for graft of Bernard Kerik, his "longtime friend, protege and business partner," as NBC's John Yang put it. The expected indictment probes Kerik's tenure in charge of New York City's prisons when Giuliani was mayor. Giuliani was briefed about Kerik's alleged receipt of "gifts" from a mobbed-up business yet promoted him from prisons to the police department anyway…and "later pushed President Bush to name Kerik head of Homeland Security." Giuliani's defense to Yang was that he is not running as "perfect" but as someone who had "great success." To ABC's Jake Tapper (no link), Giuliani cited Kerik as an example of "the complexity of human life" while crediting him with "excellent results." Yang concluded that Kerik's character offers an insight into how the former mayor "might staff a Giuliani White House."
CBS assigned Dean Reynolds to follow Democrat Obama on the campaign trail in Iowa to check whether the more forceful challenge to Hillary Rodham Clinton he had promised has materialized. NBC's David Gregory reported on the plan last week--and Reynolds now covers the execution with an answer in the affirmative. "The rollout is over. The rumble is on." Reynolds finds "a tougher, more competitive tone in debates and on the stump" and a candidate "trying to draw ever sharper distinctions" on Iraq, on Iran, on immigration and on "who could better unite the country." Obama claims Rodham Clinton's play-it-safe campaign is just following inside-the-Beltway conventional wisdom: "Make yourself a small target by avoiding being definitive about anything."
On ABC, anchor Charles Gibson (no link) sat down with Republican candidate John McCain for the latest in his Who Is? series on the personal backgrounds of the candidates. Previous profiles have been on Barack Obama, Mike Huckabee, Fred Thompson and Bill Richardson (all subscription required). With McCain, Gibson concentrated on military matters. A self-confessed "rebellious" youth, reacting to a family tradition of high-ranking admirals, he graduated from the US Naval Academy "by the skin of his teeth…fifth from the bottom of his class." "Was it girls? Was it driving? Was it drinking?" Gibson wondered. "All of the above--well not so much the drinking," He was turned off booze because his father was an alcoholic. The event in his life that changed him from "respect and honor" for the United States to "really fall in love with my country" was his abusive five-year stint, including torture, in a Hanoi prisoner of war camp, "a time in my life that I will always cherish in many ways. I observed a thousand acts of courage and compassion and love--and those that I know best and love most are those that I was there with."
FROM ANTARCTICA TO CALIFORNIA There was not much news to report in Ann Curry's report from the South Pole for NBC's Our Planet series. She flew in after eight days of delays caused by storms. The headline was simply her presence. Only 7,000-or-so human beings have ever been there. "When you step off the plane you are immediately hit with face-numbing cold. I mean it feels like your skin is on fire," Curry related at -53F. "Secondly you are at more than 9,000ft so your breathing becomes labored."
CBS and ABC both went less far afield for their nature stories--to California instead of Antarctica. ABC's Neal Karlinsky was in the Sierra Nevada, where the town of Mammoth Lakes, population 7,000, does not use guns to cope with black bears. Instead Steve Searles has adopted the role of alpha male: "I have them mentally convinced that I am boss." Searles realizes that a bear is nothing more than "a stomach with feet" but he manages to keep them out of the garbage with his "weapon--a booming voice." His job will be over for the year a month from now: "They will be hibernating." CBS sent John Blackstone to the shores of San Francisco Bay to check the health of its "rich abundance of water fowl" after a container ship rammed into a support of the Bay Bridge in thick fog and leaked 58,000 gallons of fuel oil. Back in 1989, Blackstone was CBS' correspondent in Alaska for the Exxon Valdez so this must have been small beer.
DRUNKEN TODDLER Yesterday only ABC assigned a reporter to the recall of Aqua Dots, the arts and crafts toy for toddlers. Lisa Stark warned us that the coating of some of the kit's beads can break down into a chemical that is found in GBH, the so-called date rape drug, and can lead to seizures, breathing problems, even comas in young children. Now ABC's David Kerley profiles 20-month-old Jacob Esses, whose mother Shelby found him "weaving kind of like he was drunk or something and he fell down." She showed doctors a list of Aqua Dots ingredients from the toy's distributor in Canada "and right there listed in black and white is the chemical that can become a date rape drug when ingested." Kerley pointed out that its listing contradicts the toymaker's claim that the ingredient had been illicitly substituted without notification by a supplier in China. NBC's Tom Costello made note that Aqua Dots was merely the latest toy to be recalled. He relayed the suggestion by consumer advocates that concerned parents should log on to the Consumer Product Safety Commission's Website cpsc.gov and sign up for e-mailed recall alerts.
THERE’S NO BUSINESS ABC anchor Charles Gibson filed his serious Who Is? feature on candidate John McCain. His two rival anchors turned to show business instead. CBS' Katie Couric (no link) was on the road in Nashville where she closed with her profile of the Bluebird Cafe, founded 25 years ago by Amy Kurland as "a gourmet restaurant serving lunch and dinner with a few light songs on the side." It has turned into the premiere country music "testing ground and launching pad" for new talent and new tunes. To make sure "these songbirds will never have to leave the nest," Kurland is moving on and handing over ownership to the Nashville Songwriters Association. NBC's Brian Williams sat on a Broadway stage with producer Mel Brooks to preview opening night for Young Frankenstein, a second musical based on one of his own movies, following The Producers. There were two questions Brooks refused to address. Why are some tickets as expensive as $450? What is it like putting on a show as a widower, two years after the death of Anne Bancroft, his "soulmate, partner and…beloved wife?" "No! I am not going to talk about that. We are not going to talk about that."
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: a USArmy Blackhawk helicopter crashed during training in Italy, killing five of the eleven on board…homelessness statistics reveal that as many as one quarter of all street people are military veterans…the east coast of England is bracing for floods from a tidal surge caused by a storm in the North Sea…former NFL star OJ Simpson appeared in court in Las Vegas for a pre-trial hearing in a spat over sporting memorabilia…memorabilia is missing from the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library, perhaps theft, perhaps sloppy inventory.
