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TYNDALL HEADLINE: HIGHLIGHTS FROM JULY 25, 2007
The Wounded Warrior Commission released its recommendations for improvements in the healthcare provision for disabled combat casualties. CBS and ABC both led with the presentation of the report, Serve, Support, Simplify, at the White House, where ABC's former anchor Bob Woodruff was formally recognized by President George Bush. Woodruff was wounded while covering the war in Iraq and was treated by the very military healthcare systems whose required improvements he was covering. NBC's lead was a follow-up to its revelations of the oddball confiscations from airline passengers that inspired a security alert for TSA screeners.
TYNDALL PICKS FOR JULY 25, 2007: CLICK ON GRID ELEMENTS TO SEARCH FOR MATCHING ITEMS
WOODRUFF ON WOUNDED WARRIORS The Wounded Warrior Commission released its recommendations for improvements in the healthcare provision for disabled combat casualties. CBS and ABC both led with the presentation of the report, Serve, Support, Simplify, at the White House, where ABC's former anchor Bob Woodruff was formally recognized by President George Bush. Woodruff was wounded while covering the war in Iraq and was treated by the very military healthcare systems whose required improvements he was covering. NBC's lead was a follow-up to its revelations of the oddball confiscations from airline passengers that inspired a security alert for TSA screeners.
The current wars in Afghanistan and Iraq have exposed the military healthcare system as "understaffed, underfunded and under pressure from an unexpected flow of severely injured troops," ABC's Woodruff stated, while CBS' Jim Axelrod explained why: "With hi-tech advances in battlefield triage, more seriously-wounded vets are surviving than ever before." And NBC's Jim Miklaszewski zeroed in on the panel's calls for an aggressive focus on PTSD and TBI--post-traumatic stress disorder and traumatic brain injuries--"caused by the blasts from roadside bombs, injuries critics claim have been widely neglected." ABC's Woodruff ticked off other key recommendations--personalized recovery plans, a Family Leave Act extension to cover military kin, a centralized information Website--yet remained skeptical. He called the report "just the latest in a long list of similar reports that have not fixed the problem," counting eleven commissions in the last half century.
To give us a human interest angle on the issue, CBS' David Martin filed an American Heroes feature on Marissa, the wife of Sgt Jarod Behee. She rejected plans by the Veterans Administration to put her grievously brain damaged husband into a nursing home and found Casa Colina, a privately-owned rehabilitation center in Pomona Cal, instead. The therapy improved his condition enough that he can now walk and work. Now the "squeaky wheel," as Martin called her, has told her story online and her Website is the inspiration for other wives of disabled veterans seeking to improve on what the VA has to offer.
OBAMA’S GUEST LIST Yesterday, ABC's Jake Tapper covered the exchange of taunts between Barack Obama and Hillary Rodham Clinton over diplomatic outreach to hostile nations. Now NBC's Andrea Mitchell follows up on the spat. Obama was labeled "irresponsible and naïve" by Rodham Clinton for countenancing one-on-one no-preconditions summitry with Raul Castro, Hugo Chavez, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Bashar al-Assad and Kim Jong Il. So Obama countered with this soundbite that Mitchell claimed was an exclusive for NBC: "What is irresponsible and naïve is to have authorized a war without asking how we were going to get out."
DAMP SQUIB OR JOLT INTO ACTION Brian Ross, ABC's investigative correspondent, either found his potential expose defused by the State Department--or it made big enough waves to force the State Department to relent. Ross' took A Closer Look at the two-year-old $22m project to build a new embassy in Beirut. He obtained a diplomatic cable written at the end of May to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice by Amb Jeffrey Feltman. In the cable Feltman told Rice that his staff "unanimously opposes construction" because the neighborhood is controled by Hezbollah. Hezbollah, Ross asserted, had already bombed US diplomatic premises in Beirut twice during the decade of the '80s.
Ross reported that "just a few hours ago" the announcement was made that the embassy project had been killed. The State Department insisted that its timing had nothing to do with Ross' report since the decision had been made--but not communicated to Feltman in Beirut--"earlier this month." Ross pointed out that he asked the State Department about the project's status two days ago, but was not told then that it had already been axed.
NOT BUYING IT The dismal state of the housing market was mentioned yesterday by CBS' Anthony Mason and CNBC's Erin Burnett as a factor in the decline in stock market prices. Now Mason and Burnett's CNBC colleague Diana Olick take a look at real estate per se as monthly sales of existing homes slowed to their lowest rate in more than four years. "It is the fourth straight month of declining sales," Mason warned, even as delinquent payments increase among homeowners with good credit ratings and foreclosures spike, especially in southern California, among borrowers with adjustable rate mortgages. CNBC's Olick explained that a new factor in declining purchases is that would-be buyers are finding it harder to obtain a mortgage. New home sales are expected to be no more robust than those of existing homes she added: "Housing, it seems, has yet to hit bottom."
So CBS had Mason reappear later in the newscast to kick off a three-part series Real Estate, Real Solutions. Despite the current slump in the housing market, a decade-long run-up has still accounted for an 85% increase in property prices. The upshot is that expensive homes force many first-timers to purchase beyond their means with no-money-down adjustable-rate loans. Mason's advice is to apply the 33% rule--if all housing costs, including the mortgage, insurance and taxes, account for more than one third of one's income, do not buy.
WACKY NOT WEIGHTY All three networks followed up on Lisa Myers' report for NBC yesterday on the security lookout for exploding cheese. Screeners are not really in fear of Brie bombs and Roquefort rockets…the suspicion is that innocent objects that mimic unassembled components of a possible bomb have been carried by passengers past airport screeners to test if they provoke suspicion. Now the Transportation Security Administration has circulated a memo speculating that wire coils, tube pipes, batteries, clay, freezer icepacks, cellphone chargers, electrical switches, duct tape--and blocks of cheese--may all be "dress rehearsals for a possible attack," as ABC's Lisa Stark (subscription required) put it. The theory is a little thin. NBC's Pete Williams told us that the memo rests on just four incidents in the past nine months and of the four "the TSA now says it believes some of them…have innocent explanations." CBS' Bob Orr called the ragtag collection "bizarre" and "strange." This is hardly weighty enough to warrant the lead status on a network newscast, but NBC went ahead anyway.
FAT CELLS If the public health hazard of obesity is reaching epidemic proportions in the United States, how does the condition spread from person to person? NBC and CBS both covered research by Nicholas Christakis of Harvard University that examined clusters of fat people. "Obesity spreads in social networks through the entire society," NBC's Robert Bazell explained, not just those who share similar genes. So heavy people tend to have heavy spouses, heavy friends and heavy acquaintances. As CBS' in-house physician Jon LaPook characterized the study's findings, "we look at our friends for an idea of normal body size."
THE BEAUTIFUL GAME For a second day, sports made news. Yesterday's headlines (text link) concerned NBA betting and alleged animal cruelty by an NFL star. Now attention turns overseas. CBS' Richard Roth (no link) focused on France, where Michael Rasmussen, the leader of the cycling Tour was thrown off the peloton and stripped of his yellow jersey for "violating what were called internal rules," as Roth vaguely put it. ABC and NBC turned to the success of the national soccer team of Iraq as it qualified for the final of the continentwide Asia Cup by beating South Korea. "It did not matter that Iraq's soccer coach was Brazilian or how many Shias, Sunnis or Kurds were on the team. It did not matter what religion the fans were. This was Iraq's team," NBC's Jane Arraf exclaimed. ABC's Terry McCarthy (subscription required) described the celebrations: "The streets of Baghdad erupted…There are precious few things that unite Iraqis but this is one of them. This country is soccer crazy." Then a pair of suicide carbombers drove into the exuberant fans, killing 50 and leaving some 130 wounded. "In Iraq the line between joy and pain is very thin," McCarthy mourned.
Fans in San Francisco do not seem to find Barry Bonds' baseball records tainted by his suspected doping. As he nears the all-time career home run record, ABC's Neal Karlinsky joined the denizens of McCovey Cove, an inlet just behind the bleachers at the Giants' ballpark, who wait for their slugger to hit one over the wall and into Cooperstown. Chomping on a water-level hot dog, the kayaking Karlinsky found them so aggressive in their grabs for a dinger that he likened Bonds' Navy to "sharks on a guppy."
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 White House may be accused of contempt of Congress for its refusal to testify about possible political interference in the replacement of those nine US Attorneys…the Monterey Bay fishery off the California coast is being depleted by an infestation of giant fish-eating squid…a hangar at Tinker Air Force Base in Oklahoma was engulfed in foam.
The current wars in Afghanistan and Iraq have exposed the military healthcare system as "understaffed, underfunded and under pressure from an unexpected flow of severely injured troops," ABC's Woodruff stated, while CBS' Jim Axelrod explained why: "With hi-tech advances in battlefield triage, more seriously-wounded vets are surviving than ever before." And NBC's Jim Miklaszewski zeroed in on the panel's calls for an aggressive focus on PTSD and TBI--post-traumatic stress disorder and traumatic brain injuries--"caused by the blasts from roadside bombs, injuries critics claim have been widely neglected." ABC's Woodruff ticked off other key recommendations--personalized recovery plans, a Family Leave Act extension to cover military kin, a centralized information Website--yet remained skeptical. He called the report "just the latest in a long list of similar reports that have not fixed the problem," counting eleven commissions in the last half century.
To give us a human interest angle on the issue, CBS' David Martin filed an American Heroes feature on Marissa, the wife of Sgt Jarod Behee. She rejected plans by the Veterans Administration to put her grievously brain damaged husband into a nursing home and found Casa Colina, a privately-owned rehabilitation center in Pomona Cal, instead. The therapy improved his condition enough that he can now walk and work. Now the "squeaky wheel," as Martin called her, has told her story online and her Website is the inspiration for other wives of disabled veterans seeking to improve on what the VA has to offer.
OBAMA’S GUEST LIST Yesterday, ABC's Jake Tapper covered the exchange of taunts between Barack Obama and Hillary Rodham Clinton over diplomatic outreach to hostile nations. Now NBC's Andrea Mitchell follows up on the spat. Obama was labeled "irresponsible and naïve" by Rodham Clinton for countenancing one-on-one no-preconditions summitry with Raul Castro, Hugo Chavez, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Bashar al-Assad and Kim Jong Il. So Obama countered with this soundbite that Mitchell claimed was an exclusive for NBC: "What is irresponsible and naïve is to have authorized a war without asking how we were going to get out."
DAMP SQUIB OR JOLT INTO ACTION Brian Ross, ABC's investigative correspondent, either found his potential expose defused by the State Department--or it made big enough waves to force the State Department to relent. Ross' took A Closer Look at the two-year-old $22m project to build a new embassy in Beirut. He obtained a diplomatic cable written at the end of May to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice by Amb Jeffrey Feltman. In the cable Feltman told Rice that his staff "unanimously opposes construction" because the neighborhood is controled by Hezbollah. Hezbollah, Ross asserted, had already bombed US diplomatic premises in Beirut twice during the decade of the '80s.
Ross reported that "just a few hours ago" the announcement was made that the embassy project had been killed. The State Department insisted that its timing had nothing to do with Ross' report since the decision had been made--but not communicated to Feltman in Beirut--"earlier this month." Ross pointed out that he asked the State Department about the project's status two days ago, but was not told then that it had already been axed.
NOT BUYING IT The dismal state of the housing market was mentioned yesterday by CBS' Anthony Mason and CNBC's Erin Burnett as a factor in the decline in stock market prices. Now Mason and Burnett's CNBC colleague Diana Olick take a look at real estate per se as monthly sales of existing homes slowed to their lowest rate in more than four years. "It is the fourth straight month of declining sales," Mason warned, even as delinquent payments increase among homeowners with good credit ratings and foreclosures spike, especially in southern California, among borrowers with adjustable rate mortgages. CNBC's Olick explained that a new factor in declining purchases is that would-be buyers are finding it harder to obtain a mortgage. New home sales are expected to be no more robust than those of existing homes she added: "Housing, it seems, has yet to hit bottom."
So CBS had Mason reappear later in the newscast to kick off a three-part series Real Estate, Real Solutions. Despite the current slump in the housing market, a decade-long run-up has still accounted for an 85% increase in property prices. The upshot is that expensive homes force many first-timers to purchase beyond their means with no-money-down adjustable-rate loans. Mason's advice is to apply the 33% rule--if all housing costs, including the mortgage, insurance and taxes, account for more than one third of one's income, do not buy.
WACKY NOT WEIGHTY All three networks followed up on Lisa Myers' report for NBC yesterday on the security lookout for exploding cheese. Screeners are not really in fear of Brie bombs and Roquefort rockets…the suspicion is that innocent objects that mimic unassembled components of a possible bomb have been carried by passengers past airport screeners to test if they provoke suspicion. Now the Transportation Security Administration has circulated a memo speculating that wire coils, tube pipes, batteries, clay, freezer icepacks, cellphone chargers, electrical switches, duct tape--and blocks of cheese--may all be "dress rehearsals for a possible attack," as ABC's Lisa Stark (subscription required) put it. The theory is a little thin. NBC's Pete Williams told us that the memo rests on just four incidents in the past nine months and of the four "the TSA now says it believes some of them…have innocent explanations." CBS' Bob Orr called the ragtag collection "bizarre" and "strange." This is hardly weighty enough to warrant the lead status on a network newscast, but NBC went ahead anyway.
FAT CELLS If the public health hazard of obesity is reaching epidemic proportions in the United States, how does the condition spread from person to person? NBC and CBS both covered research by Nicholas Christakis of Harvard University that examined clusters of fat people. "Obesity spreads in social networks through the entire society," NBC's Robert Bazell explained, not just those who share similar genes. So heavy people tend to have heavy spouses, heavy friends and heavy acquaintances. As CBS' in-house physician Jon LaPook characterized the study's findings, "we look at our friends for an idea of normal body size."
THE BEAUTIFUL GAME For a second day, sports made news. Yesterday's headlines (text link) concerned NBA betting and alleged animal cruelty by an NFL star. Now attention turns overseas. CBS' Richard Roth (no link) focused on France, where Michael Rasmussen, the leader of the cycling Tour was thrown off the peloton and stripped of his yellow jersey for "violating what were called internal rules," as Roth vaguely put it. ABC and NBC turned to the success of the national soccer team of Iraq as it qualified for the final of the continentwide Asia Cup by beating South Korea. "It did not matter that Iraq's soccer coach was Brazilian or how many Shias, Sunnis or Kurds were on the team. It did not matter what religion the fans were. This was Iraq's team," NBC's Jane Arraf exclaimed. ABC's Terry McCarthy (subscription required) described the celebrations: "The streets of Baghdad erupted…There are precious few things that unite Iraqis but this is one of them. This country is soccer crazy." Then a pair of suicide carbombers drove into the exuberant fans, killing 50 and leaving some 130 wounded. "In Iraq the line between joy and pain is very thin," McCarthy mourned.
Fans in San Francisco do not seem to find Barry Bonds' baseball records tainted by his suspected doping. As he nears the all-time career home run record, ABC's Neal Karlinsky joined the denizens of McCovey Cove, an inlet just behind the bleachers at the Giants' ballpark, who wait for their slugger to hit one over the wall and into Cooperstown. Chomping on a water-level hot dog, the kayaking Karlinsky found them so aggressive in their grabs for a dinger that he likened Bonds' Navy to "sharks on a guppy."
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 White House may be accused of contempt of Congress for its refusal to testify about possible political interference in the replacement of those nine US Attorneys…the Monterey Bay fishery off the California coast is being depleted by an infestation of giant fish-eating squid…a hangar at Tinker Air Force Base in Oklahoma was engulfed in foam.
