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TYNDALL HEADLINE: HIGHLIGHTS FROM JULY 18, 2007
The follow-up to yesterday's National Intelligence Estimate about the resurgence of the al-Qaeda network was Story of the Day--despite the fact that NBC almost completely ignored it. Both ABC and CBS covered the implications in both Pakistan and Iraq. ABC led with the prospects of US special forces mounting a commando raid on the tribal zones of Pakistan, with or without Islamabad's permission. CBS chose not to lead with al-Qaeda, opting for the successful filibuster in the Senate to block a proposal to withdraw troops for Iraq. The big in-house news at NBC was the death at age 67 of Wayne Downing, the retired general who served as a military analyst for the network. However NBC's lead was the deadly crash at the airport in Sao Paulo.
TYNDALL PICKS FOR JULY 18, 2007: CLICK ON GRID ELEMENTS TO SEARCH FOR MATCHING ITEMS
IRAQ & PAK AL-QAEDA ANGLES The follow-up to yesterday's National Intelligence Estimate about the resurgence of the al-Qaeda network was Story of the Day--despite the fact that NBC almost completely ignored it. Both ABC and CBS covered the implications in both Pakistan and Iraq. ABC led with the prospects of US special forces mounting a commando raid on the tribal zones of Pakistan, with or without Islamabad's permission. CBS chose not to lead with al-Qaeda, opting for the successful filibuster in the Senate to block a proposal to withdraw troops for Iraq. The big in-house news at NBC was the death at age 67 of Wayne Downing, the retired general who served as a military analyst for the network. However NBC's lead was the deadly crash at the airport in Sao Paulo.
"There are some who are questioning the timing" of the al-Qaeda news, ABC's Martha Raddatz (subscription required) observed, after the White House made "a full-blown presentation" of the arrest in Mosul of Khalid al-Mashadani, the alleged go-between between Ayman al-Zawahiri in Pakistan and abu-Ayyub al-Masri, the Egyptian exile who reputedly leads the network's guerrillas in Iraq. Raddatz raised the suspicions because yesterday's "devastating intelligence report" had put pressure on the White House to show progress--and because the arrest had actually been made two weeks ago but kept secret since then.
From Baghdad, CBS' Allen Pizzey pointed out that the arrest of al-Mashadani had disposed of another al-Qaeda leader, abu-Omar al-Baghdadi. That is because, according to Gen Kevin Bergner, al-Baghdadi does not exist: he was created by an actor for online propaganda audio messages and "even the so-called Islamic State of Iraq, which al-Baghdadi supposedly headed, only existed in cyberspace." Pizzey told us that the fake al-Baghdadi was the voice that coined the famous phrase: "If Afghanistan was a school for terrorism then Iraq is a university." He should also have reminded us that his colleague Sheila MacVicar used that very fabricated soundbite last month to illustrate her report on the danger of Iraq-trained militants infiltrating Europe. How much of the rest of MacVicar's scary report relied on imaginary terrorists?
For ABC's lead story, Brian Ross' unnamed sources insisted that infiltration is alive and well--not from Iraq but from Pakistan's North West Frontier: "Hundreds of terrorists have been trained and dispatched for attacks against the United States and Europe," Ross has been informed. "The options for the US military in this area are limited," Ross summarized, checking off just two. A large operation--"to deny the safe haven"--is not possible: that would take "a massive and sustained military action that only the Pakistani army could accomplish." A smaller one--"a pinpoint strike if there was hard intelligence on the location of Osama bin Laden or top deputies"--has not been ruled out.
Even the pinpoint strike is unacceptable in Islamabad, reported CBS' Richard Roth from London. "Pakistan insists that it will never allow in foreign troops." As for the larger military attack on that "rugged terrain where power rests with local tribes--unable to control the region Pakistan has tried to isolate it." And it is that policy that the Bush Administration, with the promise of $750m in aid, is pressuring President Pervez Musharraf to reverse with a renewed military offensive.
SLEEPOVER PARTY ABC's Jake Tapper previewed the all-night Senate debate on a required troop withdrawal from Iraq yesterday. NBC and CBS covered its conclusion--the eight-vote failure to overcome a filibuster. So responsibility for decisions about troop levels remains as is, on the desk of President George Bush. "When the sun rose the moment served only to define the entire Congress as powerless to keep the Democrats' campaign promise to force an end to the war," concluded CBS' Sharyl Attkisson. The Democrats knew they did not have the votes when they started, noted NBC's Chip Reid: "Why did they have the debate at all?" The answer he heard from Republicans was that it was "a major waste of time--somewhere between a slumber party and a political stunt." From Democrats: "It draws attention to the fact that it is Republicans who are blocking a change of course in Iraq."
DESERT COMFORT When NBC anchor Brian Williams was a war correspondent covering the US-led invasion of Iraq, military analyst Wayne Downing was at his right hand, "a dear friend…and great patriot." Williams' obituary ticked off Downing's career as Green Beret, Silver Star medalist, commander of commandos, four-star general, White House anti-terrorism czar. Downing received the surrender of dictator Manuel Noriega when the United States invaded Panama, and was in charge of the sabotage of Iraq's arsenal of Scud missiles during the first Gulf War. Williams recalled being holed up in a downed Chinook helicopter in a sandstorm in the Iraqi desert for three days in 2003: "We were comforted only by the fact that we were flying with the general."
THINK TANK NETWORKING The plight of Haleh Esfandiari has been off the networks' radar for a couple of months. NBC's Andrea Mitchell is the one who is trying to keep the case of the imprisoned Iranian-American from an inside-the-Beltway think tank in the news. Mitchell covered Esfandiari twice--here and here--when she was arrested for espionage in Teheran in May. Now, she alone has reported on a network newscast about the documentary on Iranian TV that contains her purported confession. Ali Arouzi, NBC's producer in Teheran explained that "from the perspective of the Iranian government…what she has been doing is extremely subversive." And what exactly was that? Israelis and others came to her Woodrow Wilson Center for lectures, Esfandiari stated in the documentary: "Policymakers listened to their lectures and a network was formed." According to Iran, that networking, Mitchell elaborated, amounts to "a confession to overthrow the regime."
SKID MARKS All three networks covered the airline disaster in Sao Paulo--although none of them had a correspondent filing from Brazil. CBS had Byron Pitts narrate the crash footage from New York while ABC and NBC used their Washington DC bureaus. An Airbus 320 jetliner operated by TAM Airlines crash-landed into a gasoline station on a major highway at the end of the runway at Congonhas Airport. Some 200 people were killed--every one of the 186 on the plane and others on the ground.
CBS' Pitts emphasized the driving rain at the time: "According to eyewitnesses the weather was terrible" probably forcing the pilot to attempt a "touch and go"--an effort to abort a landing, take off again and circle round. ABC's Lisa Stark concentrated on the airport's short runway, at 6,300 feet. In this country, Stark explained, the Federal Aviation Administration requires all airports to build a 1,000-foot safety zone to prevent so-called excursions beyond the length of the tarmac. Airports like New York City's LaGuardia, whose 7,000-foot runway leaves no room for such a zone, are required to build arrestor beds of crushable concrete to bring speeding planes to a stop. NBC's Tom Costello called attention to the concrete construction of the fatal runway. It is "without the cement grooves to bleed off rainwater." As a consequence, Costello suggested, the jet may have hydroplaned when the pilot tried to land it.
JUNK FOOD & ITCHY FEET Hats off to the public relations flacks at Kellogg's (text link). Last month, when that one cereals brand announced that it would no longer advertise its high-sugar, high-salt brands on children's television, all three networks responded with free publicity. Now eleven other food conglomerates--accounting for a "whopping two thirds" of all TV food advertising targeted at pre-teens, according to CBS' Kelly Wallace--have joined Kellogg's in its pledge. Those eleven have to share the spotlight with their rivals. They are not even considered newsworthy enough to warrant a reporter from NBC. And both CBS and ABC point out the loopholes in their self-denying ordinance. Stated Dan Harris in ABC's A Closer Look, "they can still run ads in primetime on, say, American Idol, which is designed for all audiences but is very popular with kids." CBS' Wallace mentioned that General Mills' ads for Chocolate Lucky Charms--14 grams of sugar per serving--will be pulled but Cocoa Puffs--12 grams--will still get on air. Furthermore this marketing restraint applies to TV ads but not to product packaging.
At the other end of the marketing demographic, NBC's In Depth offered a corrective to skeptics--including NBC's own Josh Mankiewicz this January--who suspected that Restless Leg Syndrome is a disorder invented by Big Pharma in order to create a market for GlaxoSmithKline's heavily-advertised Requip brand of pills. According to genetic research in The New England Journal of Medicine, NBC's in-house physician Nancy Snyderman told us, RLS is at least 50% authentic. Of the 20m in this country who complain of its symptoms, researchers have found that half share "the gene responsible." Snyderman did not tell us what proportion of those who carry the RLS gene turn out to have quiet feet in bed anyway.
GOING TO THE DOGS It all depends on one's mood. For a closing dog story, who wants sentimental? Who wants sickening? NBC's Mike Taibbi opted for sentiment, showing us his 14-year-old pug Scoop, ailing with bad kidneys, to illustrate his feature on the $13bn business of veterinary medicine for house pets. The latest entry is animal pharma, "everything from Puppy Prozac…to drugs for pet obesity, infertility, even carsickness."
For the sickening, CBS' Bill Whitaker picked up on the arrest of NFL quarterback Michael Vick for running pitbull fights. Using blood sport videotape, Whitaker told us that this "seamy, disturbing, yet fast growing underworld" is spreading from its origins in the rural South and "now can be found in every state, attracting urban professionals, gangbangers, even teenagers--40,000 fans by some estimates." Wayne Pacelle, Whitaker's source from the Humane Society, told him that prizefights can last as long as three hours, with the loser typically dying from "blood loss or shock."
You decide. At Tyndall Report, sickening wins our vote.
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 late-breaking explosion of an understreet steam pipe in midtown Manhattan occurred too late to be covered by a correspondent but was mentioned by all three networks…the death toll of police officers slain in the line of duty is increasing…Federal Reserve Chairman Benjamin Bernanke warned that the slump in the real estate housing market will slow overall economic growth…media mogul Rupert Murdoch appears to have succeeded in his takeover bid for Wall Street Journal publisher Dow Jones.
"There are some who are questioning the timing" of the al-Qaeda news, ABC's Martha Raddatz (subscription required) observed, after the White House made "a full-blown presentation" of the arrest in Mosul of Khalid al-Mashadani, the alleged go-between between Ayman al-Zawahiri in Pakistan and abu-Ayyub al-Masri, the Egyptian exile who reputedly leads the network's guerrillas in Iraq. Raddatz raised the suspicions because yesterday's "devastating intelligence report" had put pressure on the White House to show progress--and because the arrest had actually been made two weeks ago but kept secret since then.
From Baghdad, CBS' Allen Pizzey pointed out that the arrest of al-Mashadani had disposed of another al-Qaeda leader, abu-Omar al-Baghdadi. That is because, according to Gen Kevin Bergner, al-Baghdadi does not exist: he was created by an actor for online propaganda audio messages and "even the so-called Islamic State of Iraq, which al-Baghdadi supposedly headed, only existed in cyberspace." Pizzey told us that the fake al-Baghdadi was the voice that coined the famous phrase: "If Afghanistan was a school for terrorism then Iraq is a university." He should also have reminded us that his colleague Sheila MacVicar used that very fabricated soundbite last month to illustrate her report on the danger of Iraq-trained militants infiltrating Europe. How much of the rest of MacVicar's scary report relied on imaginary terrorists?
For ABC's lead story, Brian Ross' unnamed sources insisted that infiltration is alive and well--not from Iraq but from Pakistan's North West Frontier: "Hundreds of terrorists have been trained and dispatched for attacks against the United States and Europe," Ross has been informed. "The options for the US military in this area are limited," Ross summarized, checking off just two. A large operation--"to deny the safe haven"--is not possible: that would take "a massive and sustained military action that only the Pakistani army could accomplish." A smaller one--"a pinpoint strike if there was hard intelligence on the location of Osama bin Laden or top deputies"--has not been ruled out.
Even the pinpoint strike is unacceptable in Islamabad, reported CBS' Richard Roth from London. "Pakistan insists that it will never allow in foreign troops." As for the larger military attack on that "rugged terrain where power rests with local tribes--unable to control the region Pakistan has tried to isolate it." And it is that policy that the Bush Administration, with the promise of $750m in aid, is pressuring President Pervez Musharraf to reverse with a renewed military offensive.
SLEEPOVER PARTY ABC's Jake Tapper previewed the all-night Senate debate on a required troop withdrawal from Iraq yesterday. NBC and CBS covered its conclusion--the eight-vote failure to overcome a filibuster. So responsibility for decisions about troop levels remains as is, on the desk of President George Bush. "When the sun rose the moment served only to define the entire Congress as powerless to keep the Democrats' campaign promise to force an end to the war," concluded CBS' Sharyl Attkisson. The Democrats knew they did not have the votes when they started, noted NBC's Chip Reid: "Why did they have the debate at all?" The answer he heard from Republicans was that it was "a major waste of time--somewhere between a slumber party and a political stunt." From Democrats: "It draws attention to the fact that it is Republicans who are blocking a change of course in Iraq."
DESERT COMFORT When NBC anchor Brian Williams was a war correspondent covering the US-led invasion of Iraq, military analyst Wayne Downing was at his right hand, "a dear friend…and great patriot." Williams' obituary ticked off Downing's career as Green Beret, Silver Star medalist, commander of commandos, four-star general, White House anti-terrorism czar. Downing received the surrender of dictator Manuel Noriega when the United States invaded Panama, and was in charge of the sabotage of Iraq's arsenal of Scud missiles during the first Gulf War. Williams recalled being holed up in a downed Chinook helicopter in a sandstorm in the Iraqi desert for three days in 2003: "We were comforted only by the fact that we were flying with the general."
THINK TANK NETWORKING The plight of Haleh Esfandiari has been off the networks' radar for a couple of months. NBC's Andrea Mitchell is the one who is trying to keep the case of the imprisoned Iranian-American from an inside-the-Beltway think tank in the news. Mitchell covered Esfandiari twice--here and here--when she was arrested for espionage in Teheran in May. Now, she alone has reported on a network newscast about the documentary on Iranian TV that contains her purported confession. Ali Arouzi, NBC's producer in Teheran explained that "from the perspective of the Iranian government…what she has been doing is extremely subversive." And what exactly was that? Israelis and others came to her Woodrow Wilson Center for lectures, Esfandiari stated in the documentary: "Policymakers listened to their lectures and a network was formed." According to Iran, that networking, Mitchell elaborated, amounts to "a confession to overthrow the regime."
SKID MARKS All three networks covered the airline disaster in Sao Paulo--although none of them had a correspondent filing from Brazil. CBS had Byron Pitts narrate the crash footage from New York while ABC and NBC used their Washington DC bureaus. An Airbus 320 jetliner operated by TAM Airlines crash-landed into a gasoline station on a major highway at the end of the runway at Congonhas Airport. Some 200 people were killed--every one of the 186 on the plane and others on the ground.
CBS' Pitts emphasized the driving rain at the time: "According to eyewitnesses the weather was terrible" probably forcing the pilot to attempt a "touch and go"--an effort to abort a landing, take off again and circle round. ABC's Lisa Stark concentrated on the airport's short runway, at 6,300 feet. In this country, Stark explained, the Federal Aviation Administration requires all airports to build a 1,000-foot safety zone to prevent so-called excursions beyond the length of the tarmac. Airports like New York City's LaGuardia, whose 7,000-foot runway leaves no room for such a zone, are required to build arrestor beds of crushable concrete to bring speeding planes to a stop. NBC's Tom Costello called attention to the concrete construction of the fatal runway. It is "without the cement grooves to bleed off rainwater." As a consequence, Costello suggested, the jet may have hydroplaned when the pilot tried to land it.
JUNK FOOD & ITCHY FEET Hats off to the public relations flacks at Kellogg's (text link). Last month, when that one cereals brand announced that it would no longer advertise its high-sugar, high-salt brands on children's television, all three networks responded with free publicity. Now eleven other food conglomerates--accounting for a "whopping two thirds" of all TV food advertising targeted at pre-teens, according to CBS' Kelly Wallace--have joined Kellogg's in its pledge. Those eleven have to share the spotlight with their rivals. They are not even considered newsworthy enough to warrant a reporter from NBC. And both CBS and ABC point out the loopholes in their self-denying ordinance. Stated Dan Harris in ABC's A Closer Look, "they can still run ads in primetime on, say, American Idol, which is designed for all audiences but is very popular with kids." CBS' Wallace mentioned that General Mills' ads for Chocolate Lucky Charms--14 grams of sugar per serving--will be pulled but Cocoa Puffs--12 grams--will still get on air. Furthermore this marketing restraint applies to TV ads but not to product packaging.
At the other end of the marketing demographic, NBC's In Depth offered a corrective to skeptics--including NBC's own Josh Mankiewicz this January--who suspected that Restless Leg Syndrome is a disorder invented by Big Pharma in order to create a market for GlaxoSmithKline's heavily-advertised Requip brand of pills. According to genetic research in The New England Journal of Medicine, NBC's in-house physician Nancy Snyderman told us, RLS is at least 50% authentic. Of the 20m in this country who complain of its symptoms, researchers have found that half share "the gene responsible." Snyderman did not tell us what proportion of those who carry the RLS gene turn out to have quiet feet in bed anyway.
GOING TO THE DOGS It all depends on one's mood. For a closing dog story, who wants sentimental? Who wants sickening? NBC's Mike Taibbi opted for sentiment, showing us his 14-year-old pug Scoop, ailing with bad kidneys, to illustrate his feature on the $13bn business of veterinary medicine for house pets. The latest entry is animal pharma, "everything from Puppy Prozac…to drugs for pet obesity, infertility, even carsickness."
For the sickening, CBS' Bill Whitaker picked up on the arrest of NFL quarterback Michael Vick for running pitbull fights. Using blood sport videotape, Whitaker told us that this "seamy, disturbing, yet fast growing underworld" is spreading from its origins in the rural South and "now can be found in every state, attracting urban professionals, gangbangers, even teenagers--40,000 fans by some estimates." Wayne Pacelle, Whitaker's source from the Humane Society, told him that prizefights can last as long as three hours, with the loser typically dying from "blood loss or shock."
You decide. At Tyndall Report, sickening wins our vote.
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 late-breaking explosion of an understreet steam pipe in midtown Manhattan occurred too late to be covered by a correspondent but was mentioned by all three networks…the death toll of police officers slain in the line of duty is increasing…Federal Reserve Chairman Benjamin Bernanke warned that the slump in the real estate housing market will slow overall economic growth…media mogul Rupert Murdoch appears to have succeeded in his takeover bid for Wall Street Journal publisher Dow Jones.
