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TYNDALL HEADLINE: HIGHLIGHTS FROM AUGUST 16, 2007
Like one of those badly-told jokes that fall flat, the appropriate response to the unanimous choice for lead story on all three networks was Well, I suppose you had to be there. It turned out that the closing prices on Wall Street were no big deal, with the Dow Jones Industrial Average down a mere 15 points. But at mid-afternoon, the time when the evening newscasts map out their rundowns, it looked like the sell-off of stocks had amounted to an actual correction, the technical term when financial assets lose a full 10% of their value. The die was cast then and none of the three switched its lead to the story that turned out to be the Story of the Day--the Richter 8.0 earthquake in southern Peru.
TYNDALL PICKS FOR AUGUST 16, 2007: CLICK ON GRID ELEMENTS TO SEARCH FOR MATCHING ITEMS
MUCH ADO ABOUT 15 DOW POINTS Like one of those badly-told jokes that fall flat, the appropriate response to the unanimous choice for lead story on all three networks was Well, I suppose you had to be there. It turned out that the closing prices on Wall Street were no big deal, with the Dow Jones Industrial Average down a mere 15 points. But at mid-afternoon, the time when the evening newscasts map out their rundowns, it looked like the sell-off of stocks had amounted to an actual correction, the technical term when financial assets lose a full 10% of their value. The die was cast then and none of the three switched its lead to the story that turned out to be the Story of the Day--the Richter 8.0 earthquake in southern Peru.
So the day's financial trading turned out to be newsworthy only because of its minute-by-minute gyrations not because of its end result. NBC anchor Brian Williams used an avian metaphor: "The wings fell off Wall Street earlier today…right before it swooped up." At CBS anchor Katie Couric resorted to medicine, observing that the "day of palpitations" produced a chart that "looked like the EKG of a patient in distress." ABC's Betsy Stark (subscription required) went to the theme park for anchor Charles Gibson: "Today was a rollercoaster with a capital R." Then she added: "You would never know from the closing numbers what a heartstopping day it was." Precisely.
The underlying problem that sparked the initial selloff was that the system of turning mortgages into tradable financial assets means that "bad loans can get spread throughout the entire financial system," CBS' Anthony Mason explained. So the bounce back of prices at the end of the day was interesting, CNBC's Maria Bartiromo told NBC's Williams: "It was the beaten down financials--the banks and the brokers--who came rallying back."
Turbulent times may not be confined to the real estate and financial markets, CBS' Mason warned. Because most households have their wealth invested in one category or the other, "with both now heading south, consumers--who power two thirds of the economy by shopping--may feel poorer and spend less." ABC's Stark saw a second threat, that the bad loans will deter banks from making any at all "and for an economy that runs on credit, that is a recipe for sending it into a standstill." So Stark changed her alphabet and warned about an altogether different "R word"--recession.
LACK OF ACCOMMODATION Both NBC and CBS turned to the plight of the real estate market. CBS' Cynthia Bowers isolated three separate symptoms. First, homeowners with adjustable rate mortgages are confronting massive increases in their housing costs: she profiled the Donovan household of suburban Chicago, facing a monthly payment hike from $1,470 to $2,100 "and it could go higher." Second, the decline in house prices means that many homeowners cannot refinance their mortgages because they often owe more on the house than its market value. Third, would-be homebuyers, even those with good credit, have to pay higher rates of interest to obtain a mortgage, which increases their monthly payments, which lowers the amount they offer to the seller, which drives prices down further. NBC had Diana Olick of its sibling network CNBC explain a fourth problem--so-called jumbo loans, "which in mortgage-speak is anything over $417,000." Jumbos account for almost one-eighth of all new mortgages, concentrated in markets like California, New York, Washington DC and Boston, where housing prices are highest. The interest of investors in jumbos has evaporated so "a cash-strapped Countrywide Financial, the nation's largest mortgage lender, announced it will severely cut the number of jumbo loans it offers."
Given all these problems it was a counterintuitive decision by NBC to assign Don Teague to the building boom in luxury apartment communities for the elderly. Welcome to the Tuscan-themed architecture of the Edgemere in Dallas, $2,400 monthly rent. Teague gave us a tour of its golf greens, its gourmet restaurants, its fitness center and spa for "retiring babyboomers hoping to continue living the good life into their golden years"--if they can get a decent price on their existing home to pony up the $300,000 entry price.
PERU DISASTER The Story of the Day was the earthquake in Peru. ABC sent David Muir to Lima; NBC sent Mark Potter. CBS had Bianca Solorzano go to Passaic NJ where she embraced Lupe Portilla, a Peruvian expatriate, to comfort her because "she was on the phone with her niece when the earthquake hit and the line went dead." By contrast, ABC's Muir went down to the Pacific coastline along the Pan-American Highway to show how the roadway was split in two by the tremor, "asphalt dropping some 30 feet on just one side of the road." He reported that the quake knocked down the wall of the Chincha Prison, allowing 600 inmates to escape. Of the 450 so far known dead, as many as 200 were at worship at a church in PiscoCathedral, when the roof collapsed, NBC's Potter told us. Most homes in the region are "made of adobe brick--no match for such a powerful quake."
HELLISH NBC's Baghdad-based Jane Arraf landed a scoop when she managed to tag along with Iraqi politicians--bringing $1m in relief cash in a pair of suitcases--as they visited the bombed-out rubble of the Yazidi villages in the deserts of Kurdistan. Yesterday, ABC's Miguel Marquez said that the attack was on Sinjar and involved four trucks. Arraf named the targets as Qahataniyah and a next-door village and reported three explosions. The blasts were devastating, either way. Arraf reported that fully 20% of the population was either killed or wounded. "Many Moslems mistakenly consider the Yazidis to be devil worshippers. Their villages were an easy target."
GUILTY OF SUPPORT Jose Padilla, the onetime Chicago gang member, was convicted in Miami of terrorist conspiracy. No network had a correspondent on hand to cover the prosecution, but back in Washington, both NBC's Pete Williams and CBS' Bob Orr set the record straight about what had been widely alleged about Padilla--but was never proven in a court of law. CBS' Orr played the clip of then-Attorney General John Ashcroft announcing "an unfolding terrorist plot to attack the United States" when Padilla was detained in 2002. The federal government asserted that he was an "enemy combatant" and held him without trial in a military brig for more than three years. NBC's Williams reminded us that the government changed its theory about Padilla's plot from a radioactive dirty bomb to blowing up New York City apartment buildings. In the end neither scheme made it to his rap sheet. The guilty verdict was for "providing support" for holy warriors in foreign countries.
DEAN EARMARKED The Atlantic Ocean hurricane season is under way with Dean heading west towards the Caribbean Sea. Already Tropical Storm Erin has made landfall in Texas. Its winds "packed little punch," shrugged ABC's Mike von Fremd (subscription required), "but as a rainmaker the storm is as big as Texas." The flooding it caused in already-sodden Corpus Christi has made the city's tap water unfit to drink. NBC anchor Brian Williams consulted meteorologist Bill Karins of NBC Weather Plus about the storm track for Dean. Karins predicted a blast for Jamaica, the Yucatan Peninsula and Cuba but confessed to a "cone of uncertainty" about any landfall in the United States. Still he called Dean "a classic hurricane--this has all the earmarks of being just like one of those powerful storms we dealt with in 2005."
FIRST FATHER OF THE BRIDE For a closer, both ABC and NBC dreamed of a White House wedding. First Daughter Jenna Bush is engaged to be married to Henry Hager, a onetime intern for his expected father-in-law's soon-to-be-former political operative Karl Rove. "When a President's daughter marries we all gawk. The country is atwitter," NBC's Bob Faw exaggerated. Faw speculated that George Bush's popularity could get the boost that Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon enjoyed from West Wing nuptials: "It never hurts a President to give his daughter away." ABC anchor Charles Gibson recalled his previous job, on Good Morning America, when he confessed he "impolitely" asked Laura Bush about the young Hager. "This is not a serious boyfriend," the First Lady decreed at the time. "I hate to be the one to say it on television." Gibson smiled wryly: "Parents, sometimes, are the last to know."
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 suicide rate among serving soldiers is on the rise…the confirmed death toll at the Minneapolis I-35 bridge is now eleven…jazz drummer Max Roach died, aged 83…thousands attended Graceland to mark the 30th anniversary of the death of Elvis Presley…the Pentagon was billed almost $1m to ship a pair of 19c plumber's washers to Iraq.
So the day's financial trading turned out to be newsworthy only because of its minute-by-minute gyrations not because of its end result. NBC anchor Brian Williams used an avian metaphor: "The wings fell off Wall Street earlier today…right before it swooped up." At CBS anchor Katie Couric resorted to medicine, observing that the "day of palpitations" produced a chart that "looked like the EKG of a patient in distress." ABC's Betsy Stark (subscription required) went to the theme park for anchor Charles Gibson: "Today was a rollercoaster with a capital R." Then she added: "You would never know from the closing numbers what a heartstopping day it was." Precisely.
The underlying problem that sparked the initial selloff was that the system of turning mortgages into tradable financial assets means that "bad loans can get spread throughout the entire financial system," CBS' Anthony Mason explained. So the bounce back of prices at the end of the day was interesting, CNBC's Maria Bartiromo told NBC's Williams: "It was the beaten down financials--the banks and the brokers--who came rallying back."
Turbulent times may not be confined to the real estate and financial markets, CBS' Mason warned. Because most households have their wealth invested in one category or the other, "with both now heading south, consumers--who power two thirds of the economy by shopping--may feel poorer and spend less." ABC's Stark saw a second threat, that the bad loans will deter banks from making any at all "and for an economy that runs on credit, that is a recipe for sending it into a standstill." So Stark changed her alphabet and warned about an altogether different "R word"--recession.
LACK OF ACCOMMODATION Both NBC and CBS turned to the plight of the real estate market. CBS' Cynthia Bowers isolated three separate symptoms. First, homeowners with adjustable rate mortgages are confronting massive increases in their housing costs: she profiled the Donovan household of suburban Chicago, facing a monthly payment hike from $1,470 to $2,100 "and it could go higher." Second, the decline in house prices means that many homeowners cannot refinance their mortgages because they often owe more on the house than its market value. Third, would-be homebuyers, even those with good credit, have to pay higher rates of interest to obtain a mortgage, which increases their monthly payments, which lowers the amount they offer to the seller, which drives prices down further. NBC had Diana Olick of its sibling network CNBC explain a fourth problem--so-called jumbo loans, "which in mortgage-speak is anything over $417,000." Jumbos account for almost one-eighth of all new mortgages, concentrated in markets like California, New York, Washington DC and Boston, where housing prices are highest. The interest of investors in jumbos has evaporated so "a cash-strapped Countrywide Financial, the nation's largest mortgage lender, announced it will severely cut the number of jumbo loans it offers."
Given all these problems it was a counterintuitive decision by NBC to assign Don Teague to the building boom in luxury apartment communities for the elderly. Welcome to the Tuscan-themed architecture of the Edgemere in Dallas, $2,400 monthly rent. Teague gave us a tour of its golf greens, its gourmet restaurants, its fitness center and spa for "retiring babyboomers hoping to continue living the good life into their golden years"--if they can get a decent price on their existing home to pony up the $300,000 entry price.
PERU DISASTER The Story of the Day was the earthquake in Peru. ABC sent David Muir to Lima; NBC sent Mark Potter. CBS had Bianca Solorzano go to Passaic NJ where she embraced Lupe Portilla, a Peruvian expatriate, to comfort her because "she was on the phone with her niece when the earthquake hit and the line went dead." By contrast, ABC's Muir went down to the Pacific coastline along the Pan-American Highway to show how the roadway was split in two by the tremor, "asphalt dropping some 30 feet on just one side of the road." He reported that the quake knocked down the wall of the Chincha Prison, allowing 600 inmates to escape. Of the 450 so far known dead, as many as 200 were at worship at a church in Pisco
HELLISH NBC's Baghdad-based Jane Arraf landed a scoop when she managed to tag along with Iraqi politicians--bringing $1m in relief cash in a pair of suitcases--as they visited the bombed-out rubble of the Yazidi villages in the deserts of Kurdistan. Yesterday, ABC's Miguel Marquez said that the attack was on Sinjar and involved four trucks. Arraf named the targets as Qahataniyah and a next-door village and reported three explosions. The blasts were devastating, either way. Arraf reported that fully 20% of the population was either killed or wounded. "Many Moslems mistakenly consider the Yazidis to be devil worshippers. Their villages were an easy target."
GUILTY OF SUPPORT Jose Padilla, the onetime Chicago gang member, was convicted in Miami of terrorist conspiracy. No network had a correspondent on hand to cover the prosecution, but back in Washington, both NBC's Pete Williams and CBS' Bob Orr set the record straight about what had been widely alleged about Padilla--but was never proven in a court of law. CBS' Orr played the clip of then-Attorney General John Ashcroft announcing "an unfolding terrorist plot to attack the United States" when Padilla was detained in 2002. The federal government asserted that he was an "enemy combatant" and held him without trial in a military brig for more than three years. NBC's Williams reminded us that the government changed its theory about Padilla's plot from a radioactive dirty bomb to blowing up New York City apartment buildings. In the end neither scheme made it to his rap sheet. The guilty verdict was for "providing support" for holy warriors in foreign countries.
DEAN EARMARKED The Atlantic Ocean hurricane season is under way with Dean heading west towards the Caribbean Sea. Already Tropical Storm Erin has made landfall in Texas. Its winds "packed little punch," shrugged ABC's Mike von Fremd (subscription required), "but as a rainmaker the storm is as big as Texas." The flooding it caused in already-sodden Corpus Christi has made the city's tap water unfit to drink. NBC anchor Brian Williams consulted meteorologist Bill Karins of NBC Weather Plus about the storm track for Dean. Karins predicted a blast for Jamaica, the Yucatan Peninsula and Cuba but confessed to a "cone of uncertainty" about any landfall in the United States. Still he called Dean "a classic hurricane--this has all the earmarks of being just like one of those powerful storms we dealt with in 2005."
FIRST FATHER OF THE BRIDE For a closer, both ABC and NBC dreamed of a White House wedding. First Daughter Jenna Bush is engaged to be married to Henry Hager, a onetime intern for his expected father-in-law's soon-to-be-former political operative Karl Rove. "When a President's daughter marries we all gawk. The country is atwitter," NBC's Bob Faw exaggerated. Faw speculated that George Bush's popularity could get the boost that Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon enjoyed from West Wing nuptials: "It never hurts a President to give his daughter away." ABC anchor Charles Gibson recalled his previous job, on Good Morning America, when he confessed he "impolitely" asked Laura Bush about the young Hager. "This is not a serious boyfriend," the First Lady decreed at the time. "I hate to be the one to say it on television." Gibson smiled wryly: "Parents, sometimes, are the last to know."
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 suicide rate among serving soldiers is on the rise…the confirmed death toll at the Minneapolis I-35 bridge is now eleven…jazz drummer Max Roach died, aged 83…thousands attended Graceland to mark the 30th anniversary of the death of Elvis Presley…the Pentagon was billed almost $1m to ship a pair of 19c plumber's washers to Iraq.
