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TYNDALL HEADLINE: HIGHLIGHTS FROM AUGUST 3, 2007
The worst case scenario did not materialize in Minneapolis. Many of the missing motorists who were feared dead in Wednesday's interstate highway bridge collapse were found alive. And several of the crashed cars under the debris on the Mississippi River bed turned out to be empty. Since the death toll from the disaster may now prove to be smaller than a dozen the story turned from a human tragedy to an infrastructure investigation. All three networks led once again with the bridge--but the Story of the Day accounted for less than half of yesterday's newshole (20 min v 45) as the anchors returned to their New York City studios after a single day on the scene.
TYNDALL PICKS FOR AUGUST 3, 2007: CLICK ON GRID ELEMENTS TO SEARCH FOR MATCHING ITEMS
DISASTER IN MINNEAPOLIS MODERATES The worst case scenario did not materialize in Minneapolis. Many of the missing motorists who were feared dead in Wednesday's interstate highway bridge collapse were found alive. And several of the crashed cars under the debris on the Mississippi River bed turned out to be empty. Since the death toll from the disaster may now prove to be smaller than a dozen the story turned from a human tragedy to an infrastructure investigation. All three networks led once again with the bridge--but the Story of the Day accounted for less than half of yesterday's newshole (20 min v 45) as the anchors returned to their New York City studios after a single day on the scene.
On the human side, ABC's Dan Harris offered thumbnail portraits--a former college baseball star, a vegetable salesman father of a newborn, a financial services worker, a cosmetology student--of the motorists who are known to have died. Lee Cowan showed us NBC News Animation computer graphics to illustrate how searchers are mapping the river bottom with side-scan sonar. "The bridge is still moving, unstable at best," he reported, explaining the slow progress. In all some 60 cars may be under water.
CBS' Byron Pitts found Fatigue Evaluation and Redundancy Analysis, a 2006 engineering report that isolated 52 potential weak spots in the I-35 bridge: it recommended reinforcement with steel plates and the removal of suspect welds. "State officials wanted other options," said ABC's Lisa Stark (subscription required), "and decided to go with closer inspection of the areas instead." Back in New York, NBC's retired transportation correspondent Robert Hager returned to the studio for a show-and-tell, contrasting the civil engineering of the failed bridge's truss design with a suspension system. Truss steel beams support the roadway from below; suspension has the deck hang from towers--so a truss failure can be more catastrophic since the entire bridge collapses rather than a portion. At the same time, ABC's Harris noted, the truss design does without overhead support beams that can fall on cars and crush them.
STUDENTS TO THE RESCUE ABC and NBC both rounded out their Minneapolis coverage with the conventional inspirational weekending closer. NBC's Making a Difference featured the same school bus hero that all three networks honored yesterday (text link). Ron Mott accompanied 20-year-old counselor Jeremy Hernandez round his neighborhood as he was congratulated by all--"adulation, the hugs, signs of a job well done"--for making sure his campers were safe. Money troubles forced Hernandez to drop out of college last year and return to work at the community center that runs the camp. Maybe the national exposure really will make a difference and get parlayed into a scholarship.
Charles Gibson named newlyweds Christine and Nathan Lund as ABC's Persons of the Week: he is a dental student and she a nurse; when the bridge fell down they grabbed their stethoscopes and raced to the water's edge, offering first aid, performing triage and flagging down pick-up trucks to transport the injured to hospital. They had to take a boat across the Mississippi to get to the carnage.
UPDATE: sure enough, on August 7th, according to NBC's Ann Curry, the Dunwoody College of Technology offered Hernandez an all-expenses scholarship to complete his course.
BUILDING BRIDGES Then the networks followed up with the wider view: are all our bridges about to come tumbling down? CBS' Nancy Cordes showed us inspectors "hanging off bridges, floating beneath them and peering at them through binoculars…the most sophisticated piece of equipment that is typically used to inspect bridges is the naked eye." ABC and NBC both scrutinized the federal Department of Transportation's listing of the structural integrity of bridges to find examples that are more-heavily-trafficked than I-35 but are in even worse shape. NBC's Lisa Myers played a clip from the titles of The Sopranos to focus on the Pulaski Skyway between Newark and Jersey City. For ABC's A Closer Look, Ned Potter selected the Bay Bridge between Oakland and San Francisco, which carries 277,000 cars each day. From Capitol Hill, CBS' Sharyl Attkisson took the infrastructure focus one step broader--including not just bridges and highways but water systems too. She estimated that only $50bn out of the annual federal budget of $2.7tr goes to infrastructure spending. Her experts told her that "just for upkeep" that total should be an annual $210bn.
MONEY MATTERS A late sell-off on Wall Street saw the Dow Jones Industrial Average end the week at slightly lower levels than last week. NBC anchor Brian Williams had Jim Cramer of CNBC's Mad Money debrief him on the prospects for the financial markets: in just one week "worries have increased." Highest anxiety stemmed from the bankruptcy of a major mortgage company--so ABC assigned Betsy Stark (subscription required) to concentrate on housing: "Panicked lenders are cracking down," demanding high credit ratings and documented income, she declared. "The days of no-money-down and instant approval are over." Stark concluded with the "sobering thought" that $600bn in adjustable rate mortgages are due to be reset with higher monthly payments over the next 18 months.
The money story on CBS had a Sex and the City theme as Kelly Wallace showed us a sitcom clip to illustrate a reverse gender gap in wages among twentysomething urbanites: females in that demographic earn more than their citydwelling male peers. Wallace wondered whether that girlpower edge would continue "when they grow gray." But Wallace's initial premise was flawed since the lead characters of Sex and the City fall outside the cohort in question. Even during their first season in 1998, all four were older than 30.
TOO UNAMBIGUOUS NBC caught up on campaign news. When Democratic candidate Barack Obama made a major speech at the Woodrow Wilson Center on Wednesday on his willingness to violate Pakistani sovereignty to use force against al-Qaeda, ABC's Jake Tapper (subscription required) and CBS' Sharyl Attkisson covered the fallout. Now Andrea Mitchell traced the unfolding controversy as Obama told the Associated Press that such an attack would not include a tactical nuclear weapon. Then in the middle of his soundbite he backtracked: "Let me scratch all that. There has been no discussion of nuclear weapons. That is not on the table." Mitchell pointed out that the traditional formulation of the foreign policy establishment has been to be "deliberately vague…to keep adversaries guessing." So rival Hillary Rodham Clinton jumped on Obama's lack of nuclear ambiguity as proof of his inexperience for office.
George Stephanopoulos, anchor of ABC's This Week covered the Republican side of Campaign 2008. He was in Iowa where he will host a nine-way debate on Sunday. He commented on an ABC News poll that shows that only 19% of likely GOP caucus-goers are satisfied with their options. He perceived an "enthusiasm gap" between Republicans and Democrats statewide. None of the frontrunners have been "consistently conservative enough."
SLOW PROGRESS ABC claimed an Exclusive from Baghdad as Terry McCarthy (subscription required) sat down for a one-on-one with Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki--fresh off "a rare moment of celebration" as he welcomed home the Asia Cup winning national soccer team. Normally al-Maliki's job consists of "carbombs, squabbling politicians and impatient US officials.' McCarthy reminded al-Maliki of his prediction to ABC anchor Charles Gibson eight months ago that Iraqi security forces would be able to take over from US troops by June. Now he says: "Neither we nor the US can provide a timetable." McCarthy got the impression that al-Maliki "seems to feel very little urgency about anything."
And if the United States' bridge-crumbling infrastructure looks weak, consider the lack of progress in the reconstruction of Iraq. CBS' Allen Pizzey showed us the painfully slow efforts to provide potable water. He took us to one Baghdad neighborhood where it took ten months for the USNavy to refurbish a pumping station: "security permitting" it will supply 20% of the neighborhood, leaving the other 80% to "walk miles to bring home a bucket of water." Pizzey showed us a plant that produces ice in the 100F heat. They "claim they use clean water" yet his cameras caught workers taking a cold shower in the water first before they froze it. Providing essential services is a cornerstone of counterinsurgency doctrine, Pizzey pointed out, yet the entire four-year $1.5bn water effort "all adds up to the proverbial drop in the bucket."
NOR ANY DROP Water problems of an entirely different sort were featured on NBC as Bangkok-based Ian Williams narrated disastrous pictures from Bangladesh and India. The monsoon "so often a relief is fast becoming a curse" as three weeks of non-stop rains have driven peasants from their villages, inundated the sacred Hindu city of Ayodhya and overflowed the city sewers in Mumbai. The United Nations called it "the worst flooding in living memory" with some 20m rendered homeless.
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: President George Bush sought new regulations governing National Security Agency eavesdropping even as he enacted a series of counterterrorism provisions that were recommended three years ago in the report of the 9/11 Commission…Ford Motors announced a mass recall of cruise control switches as a fire safety precaution…the unemployment rate rose to 4.6% in July.
On the human side, ABC's Dan Harris offered thumbnail portraits--a former college baseball star, a vegetable salesman father of a newborn, a financial services worker, a cosmetology student--of the motorists who are known to have died. Lee Cowan showed us NBC News Animation computer graphics to illustrate how searchers are mapping the river bottom with side-scan sonar. "The bridge is still moving, unstable at best," he reported, explaining the slow progress. In all some 60 cars may be under water.
CBS' Byron Pitts found Fatigue Evaluation and Redundancy Analysis, a 2006 engineering report that isolated 52 potential weak spots in the I-35 bridge: it recommended reinforcement with steel plates and the removal of suspect welds. "State officials wanted other options," said ABC's Lisa Stark (subscription required), "and decided to go with closer inspection of the areas instead." Back in New York, NBC's retired transportation correspondent Robert Hager returned to the studio for a show-and-tell, contrasting the civil engineering of the failed bridge's truss design with a suspension system. Truss steel beams support the roadway from below; suspension has the deck hang from towers--so a truss failure can be more catastrophic since the entire bridge collapses rather than a portion. At the same time, ABC's Harris noted, the truss design does without overhead support beams that can fall on cars and crush them.
STUDENTS TO THE RESCUE ABC and NBC both rounded out their Minneapolis coverage with the conventional inspirational weekending closer. NBC's Making a Difference featured the same school bus hero that all three networks honored yesterday (text link). Ron Mott accompanied 20-year-old counselor Jeremy Hernandez round his neighborhood as he was congratulated by all--"adulation, the hugs, signs of a job well done"--for making sure his campers were safe. Money troubles forced Hernandez to drop out of college last year and return to work at the community center that runs the camp. Maybe the national exposure really will make a difference and get parlayed into a scholarship.
Charles Gibson named newlyweds Christine and Nathan Lund as ABC's Persons of the Week: he is a dental student and she a nurse; when the bridge fell down they grabbed their stethoscopes and raced to the water's edge, offering first aid, performing triage and flagging down pick-up trucks to transport the injured to hospital. They had to take a boat across the Mississippi to get to the carnage.
UPDATE: sure enough, on August 7th, according to NBC's Ann Curry, the Dunwoody College of Technology offered Hernandez an all-expenses scholarship to complete his course.
BUILDING BRIDGES Then the networks followed up with the wider view: are all our bridges about to come tumbling down? CBS' Nancy Cordes showed us inspectors "hanging off bridges, floating beneath them and peering at them through binoculars…the most sophisticated piece of equipment that is typically used to inspect bridges is the naked eye." ABC and NBC both scrutinized the federal Department of Transportation's listing of the structural integrity of bridges to find examples that are more-heavily-trafficked than I-35 but are in even worse shape. NBC's Lisa Myers played a clip from the titles of The Sopranos to focus on the Pulaski Skyway between Newark and Jersey City. For ABC's A Closer Look, Ned Potter selected the Bay Bridge between Oakland and San Francisco, which carries 277,000 cars each day. From Capitol Hill, CBS' Sharyl Attkisson took the infrastructure focus one step broader--including not just bridges and highways but water systems too. She estimated that only $50bn out of the annual federal budget of $2.7tr goes to infrastructure spending. Her experts told her that "just for upkeep" that total should be an annual $210bn.
MONEY MATTERS A late sell-off on Wall Street saw the Dow Jones Industrial Average end the week at slightly lower levels than last week. NBC anchor Brian Williams had Jim Cramer of CNBC's Mad Money debrief him on the prospects for the financial markets: in just one week "worries have increased." Highest anxiety stemmed from the bankruptcy of a major mortgage company--so ABC assigned Betsy Stark (subscription required) to concentrate on housing: "Panicked lenders are cracking down," demanding high credit ratings and documented income, she declared. "The days of no-money-down and instant approval are over." Stark concluded with the "sobering thought" that $600bn in adjustable rate mortgages are due to be reset with higher monthly payments over the next 18 months.
The money story on CBS had a Sex and the City theme as Kelly Wallace showed us a sitcom clip to illustrate a reverse gender gap in wages among twentysomething urbanites: females in that demographic earn more than their citydwelling male peers. Wallace wondered whether that girlpower edge would continue "when they grow gray." But Wallace's initial premise was flawed since the lead characters of Sex and the City fall outside the cohort in question. Even during their first season in 1998, all four were older than 30.
TOO UNAMBIGUOUS NBC caught up on campaign news. When Democratic candidate Barack Obama made a major speech at the Woodrow Wilson Center on Wednesday on his willingness to violate Pakistani sovereignty to use force against al-Qaeda, ABC's Jake Tapper (subscription required) and CBS' Sharyl Attkisson covered the fallout. Now Andrea Mitchell traced the unfolding controversy as Obama told the Associated Press that such an attack would not include a tactical nuclear weapon. Then in the middle of his soundbite he backtracked: "Let me scratch all that. There has been no discussion of nuclear weapons. That is not on the table." Mitchell pointed out that the traditional formulation of the foreign policy establishment has been to be "deliberately vague…to keep adversaries guessing." So rival Hillary Rodham Clinton jumped on Obama's lack of nuclear ambiguity as proof of his inexperience for office.
George Stephanopoulos, anchor of ABC's This Week covered the Republican side of Campaign 2008. He was in Iowa where he will host a nine-way debate on Sunday. He commented on an ABC News poll that shows that only 19% of likely GOP caucus-goers are satisfied with their options. He perceived an "enthusiasm gap" between Republicans and Democrats statewide. None of the frontrunners have been "consistently conservative enough."
SLOW PROGRESS ABC claimed an Exclusive from Baghdad as Terry McCarthy (subscription required) sat down for a one-on-one with Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki--fresh off "a rare moment of celebration" as he welcomed home the Asia Cup winning national soccer team. Normally al-Maliki's job consists of "carbombs, squabbling politicians and impatient US officials.' McCarthy reminded al-Maliki of his prediction to ABC anchor Charles Gibson eight months ago that Iraqi security forces would be able to take over from US troops by June. Now he says: "Neither we nor the US can provide a timetable." McCarthy got the impression that al-Maliki "seems to feel very little urgency about anything."
And if the United States' bridge-crumbling infrastructure looks weak, consider the lack of progress in the reconstruction of Iraq. CBS' Allen Pizzey showed us the painfully slow efforts to provide potable water. He took us to one Baghdad neighborhood where it took ten months for the USNavy to refurbish a pumping station: "security permitting" it will supply 20% of the neighborhood, leaving the other 80% to "walk miles to bring home a bucket of water." Pizzey showed us a plant that produces ice in the 100F heat. They "claim they use clean water" yet his cameras caught workers taking a cold shower in the water first before they froze it. Providing essential services is a cornerstone of counterinsurgency doctrine, Pizzey pointed out, yet the entire four-year $1.5bn water effort "all adds up to the proverbial drop in the bucket."
NOR ANY DROP Water problems of an entirely different sort were featured on NBC as Bangkok-based Ian Williams narrated disastrous pictures from Bangladesh and India. The monsoon "so often a relief is fast becoming a curse" as three weeks of non-stop rains have driven peasants from their villages, inundated the sacred Hindu city of Ayodhya and overflowed the city sewers in Mumbai. The United Nations called it "the worst flooding in living memory" with some 20m rendered homeless.
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: President George Bush sought new regulations governing National Security Agency eavesdropping even as he enacted a series of counterterrorism provisions that were recommended three years ago in the report of the 9/11 Commission…Ford Motors announced a mass recall of cruise control switches as a fire safety precaution…the unemployment rate rose to 4.6% in July.
