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TYNDALL HEADLINE: HIGHLIGHTS FROM AUGUST 7, 2007
A day of light news saw all three networks lead with their stakeout at the Crandall Canyon mine in Utah, where little progress was made after yesterday's coalmine cave-in. The crew of six miners working the seam at the time may or may not be alive: rescue workers have heard no communication from them and found no sign of life. Mineowner Robert Murray offered the key soundbite: "I do not know if these miners are alive or dead. Only the Lord knows that." The coalmine disaster was Story of the Day by default. Only one story on all three newscasts was filed with an overseas dateline.
TYNDALL PICKS FOR AUGUST 7, 2007: CLICK ON GRID ELEMENTS TO SEARCH FOR MATCHING ITEMS
COALMINE RESCUE MAKES SLOW PROGRESS A day of light news saw all three networks lead with their stakeout at the Crandall Canyon mine in Utah, where little progress was made after yesterday's coalmine cave-in. The crew of six miners working the seam at the time may or may not be alive: rescue workers have heard no communication from them and found no sign of life. Mineowner Robert Murray offered the key soundbite: "I do not know if these miners are alive or dead. Only the Lord knows that." The coalmine disaster was Story of the Day by default. Only one story on all three newscasts was filed with an overseas dateline.
"The job of finding these men is proving to be much more difficult than anyone first imagined," ABC's Neal Karlinsky (subscription required) commented. During the first day of work to clear nearly 2,000 feet of collapsed tunnel, NBC's Jennifer London found that 310 feet of progress had been made. CBS' John Blackstone reported an attempt to reach the miners through a parallel tunnel: it "failed because it was too unstable. Rescue workers had to flee." A two-inch wide vertical shaft is being drilled for communication, food and water but the horizontal rescue tunnel, Blackstone predicted, will take three days to complete. In the meantime ABC's Karlinsky described a military sonar system that has been installed to detect signs of life: the missing men are trained to listen for the signal of three controled blasts and then to pound on the roof. It is that pounding that the sonar will scan for.
Mineowner Murray was treated with utmost skepticism when he insisted that his trapped workers were not using the retreat mining technique that intentionally collapses ceilings and that the cave-in was caused by an earthquake. NBC's London called Murray's attitude "adamant" and ABC's Karlinsky quoted him as calling those who contradict his earthquake explanation "flatout wrong." However, the seismologists all three networks consulted offered a contrary opinion: "no evidence of a prior quake"--ABC's Karlinsky; "what shook these mountains was the mine collapsing"--CBS' Blackstone; "the collapse itself caused the quake"--NBC's London.
Coalminers continue to risk their lives because national energy policy depends on coal more than any other source for power. ABC's David Kerley told us that there are now 84,000 miners at work; coal accounts for 50% of all electricity generation; each day 20lbs per person of coal is burned. Kerley outlined the benefits of using coal--it is inexpensive with plentiful domestic supplies--and its downside: it can not only be unsafe for miners, it is also "a dirty energy source. Although many of its pollutants are now being scrubbed out, it is still high in carbon" He quoted Jeff Goodell author of Big Coal: "Clean coal is something like fat-free doughnuts. It is something that we would all like to believe in and sounds good but in fact is just a kind of advertising slogan."
SEASONAL FARE As a summer heatwave baked large portions of the midwest and the southeast, ABC's Anne Thompson quoted a United Nations study blaming humans for causing the global warming that is exacerbating extreme weather conditions worldwide this year. In her hybrid report, Thompson first showed us a compilation of so-called weather porn video highlights--an Arabian Sea cyclone, snow in Buenos Aires, a heatwave in southeastern Europe, floods in China, drought in Africa--before changing the subject to a specific problem caused by heavy rains in domestic coastal communities. Thompson publicized the Natural Resources Defense Council's data on the record number of beach closings last year caused by flood runoff from storm systems.
Both NBC and CBS turned to correspondents in Hotlanta to illustrate the perils of heat. CBS' Kelly Cobiella described the heat in Atlanta as "the kind of hot you can see." Doctors are not only treating symptoms of heat exhaustion but respiratory problems too. NBC's Martin Savidge called it "a double health threat--staggering heat and stagnant air, as the stationary weather system causes not just temperatures but pollution levels to soar." How bad is the smog? "Monday, you could barely see Knoxville."
To round out a typical agenda for the dog days of August, CBS had Michelle Miller cover the same consumer tips for sunscreen use that NBC's Robert Bazell and ABC's John McKenzie (subscription required) warned us about a couple of months ago. Miller told us that the Food & Drug Administration's 18-year-old guidelines for sunscreens focus only on SPF protection against the sun's ultra-violet rays of the B variety, the type of light that causes sunburn. The FDA is silent on protection against UVA, which ages skin. Both UVA and UVB can cause cancer. Miller advised tanners to read the fine print and choose the UVA blocking ingredients parsol 1789, zinc oxide and titanium dioxide.
CALL DADDY FOR HELP The Federal Reserve Board made news by doing nothing. Only ABC assigned a reporter to cover the status quo for short term interest rates at 5.25%--the other two networks mentioned the decision in passing. "What would the Fed say and do, if anything, about the mess in the mortgage market and the credit squeeze now seeping into every corner of the economy?" Betsy Stark (subscription required) wondered. "Not much." The crumb of comfort Stark found was "the carefully worded statement" that the Fed is aware that "conditions have become tighter." In June, Stark pointed out, the credit available for businesses to borrow plummeted from a $1tr annual rate to $200bn.
To illustrate tight real estate lending, CBS' Kelly Wallace profiled 26-year-old Amanda Michalko, a would-be first-time homebuyer, who has been applying unsuccessfully for a mortgage since February. Wallace explained that bankrupt lenders and increasing foreclosures have forced credit standards to tighten. Her unidentified expert sources told her that the Federal Reserve "is more concerned about holding down inflation than easing the credit crisis." Michalko only finalized a loan when her father agreed to co-sign for her. "A year ago, her broker says, Amanda would have gotten one by herself."
SOLDIER FIELD The Democratic Presidential contenders turned their attention to organized labor as the AFL-CIO hosted a candidates' debate in Chicago. No surprise, NBC was the only network to preview the confab--its moderator is Countdown anchor Keith Olbermann of MSNBC and NBC's sibling network is carrying the event. Chip Reid noted that the run-up to the debate had seen both Barack Obama and John Edwards blast frontrunner Hillary Rodham Clinton for accepting funds from inside-the-Beltway lobbyists. Rodham Clinton admitted as much: "Yes, they represent corporations that employ a lot of people." NBC's in-house political analyst Chuck Todd tipped Edwards as going on the offense against "not a friend of labor" Rodham Clinton. Reid reckoned that "perhaps no one has worked as hard for the union vote as John Edwards."
NO MORE COUNTERINSURGENCY The day's only overseas report appeared to be big enough news that, if true, it should have been the Story of the Day. In Baghdad, Gen Raymond Odierno told CBS' Lara Logan that the Sunni resistance to US military occupation has finished and the US is no longer fighting a counterinsurgency war. "The deadly Sunni insurgency that has led the fight against US forces from the start is all but over," was Logan's takeaway headline. "This is not the war the general thought he was coming here to fight."
Time will tell whether Odierno was announcing that a sea change has occurred or whether he was merely adopting new terminology. What Odierno specifically told Logan was that mainstream Sunni insurgents--like the Amiriyah Freedom Fighters of Baghdad--have "decided they want to try to reconcile with this government;" the primary guerrilla forces are now the Shiite militias like the Mahdi Army; the remnants of Sunni guerrillas still active have joined forces controled by al-Qaeda. Logan explained that the Shiite militias "are not fighting to regain lost power like the Sunnis: their fight is for power and influence in the future Iraq." And Odierno thinks that money, weapons and training for the militias originate in Iran.
NO SNOW JOB NBC's White House correspondent David Gregory filed a long, intimate profile of Tony Snow, the White House spokesman with whom he has enjoyed well-publicized sparring over public policy. Gregory's focus was private--the physical and emotional toll colon cancer takes on Snow as he continues his high-stress work with "no let up." We saw an open-shirted Snow sitting under the drip, undergoing the seventh of a regime of eight three-hour chemotherapy sessions--chemotherapy that is causing his hair to fall out, his voice to grow weaker, his body to shed pounds and is just making him tired. Said Snow: "You just try to keep yourself in a position to keep fighting."
CAPTAIN MORGAN Barbara Morgan is going to become the most famous astronaut in America. She has been waiting to go into space for 22 years, at which time she was still an amateur. Morgan was chosen as one of two schoolteachers to conduct lessons in orbit from the Space Shuttle. The other was Christa McAuliffe, who was picked to take off first, but never got to space-teach as she was killed when Challenger exploded. After that, NASA decided that its crews should be composed entirely of trained astronauts, so Morgan left the classroom to go into training. CBS' Kelly Cobiella previewed her first mission last month. Now ABC's Lisa Stark (subscription required) sat down with her as she braces for liftoff on Endeavour. "Space flight is risky. Space exploration is really challenging. It is a hostile environment," Morgan told her. Ever the teacher, Morgan will "spend almost a full day on education, filming lesson plans and holding a live discussion with students," said Stark.
Given the overblown fuss and bother last month (text link) about astronauts orbiting drunk, it was a surprise that Stark did not ask Morgan whether she enjoyed a tipple. NBC's Tom Costello heard Commander Scott Kelly of the Endeavour pledge that booze would have no place on his watch--to suggest otherwise is "utterly ridiculous," in Kelly's words. Costello questioned the entire snockered spacemen rumor. "Investigators have gone through every mission flown by American astronauts in the last ten years and they found nothing," Costello's colleague Jay Barbree stated.
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 United States Postal Service honors military combat casualties with a 41c Purple Heart stamp…the military are not the only Americans getting killed in Iraq; the death toll for civilian contractors who are US citizens now exceeds 1,000…the monsoon rains on the Indian sub-continent have now displaced 19m peasants.
"The job of finding these men is proving to be much more difficult than anyone first imagined," ABC's Neal Karlinsky (subscription required) commented. During the first day of work to clear nearly 2,000 feet of collapsed tunnel, NBC's Jennifer London found that 310 feet of progress had been made. CBS' John Blackstone reported an attempt to reach the miners through a parallel tunnel: it "failed because it was too unstable. Rescue workers had to flee." A two-inch wide vertical shaft is being drilled for communication, food and water but the horizontal rescue tunnel, Blackstone predicted, will take three days to complete. In the meantime ABC's Karlinsky described a military sonar system that has been installed to detect signs of life: the missing men are trained to listen for the signal of three controled blasts and then to pound on the roof. It is that pounding that the sonar will scan for.
Mineowner Murray was treated with utmost skepticism when he insisted that his trapped workers were not using the retreat mining technique that intentionally collapses ceilings and that the cave-in was caused by an earthquake. NBC's London called Murray's attitude "adamant" and ABC's Karlinsky quoted him as calling those who contradict his earthquake explanation "flatout wrong." However, the seismologists all three networks consulted offered a contrary opinion: "no evidence of a prior quake"--ABC's Karlinsky; "what shook these mountains was the mine collapsing"--CBS' Blackstone; "the collapse itself caused the quake"--NBC's London.
Coalminers continue to risk their lives because national energy policy depends on coal more than any other source for power. ABC's David Kerley told us that there are now 84,000 miners at work; coal accounts for 50% of all electricity generation; each day 20lbs per person of coal is burned. Kerley outlined the benefits of using coal--it is inexpensive with plentiful domestic supplies--and its downside: it can not only be unsafe for miners, it is also "a dirty energy source. Although many of its pollutants are now being scrubbed out, it is still high in carbon" He quoted Jeff Goodell author of Big Coal: "Clean coal is something like fat-free doughnuts. It is something that we would all like to believe in and sounds good but in fact is just a kind of advertising slogan."
SEASONAL FARE As a summer heatwave baked large portions of the midwest and the southeast, ABC's Anne Thompson quoted a United Nations study blaming humans for causing the global warming that is exacerbating extreme weather conditions worldwide this year. In her hybrid report, Thompson first showed us a compilation of so-called weather porn video highlights--an Arabian Sea cyclone, snow in Buenos Aires, a heatwave in southeastern Europe, floods in China, drought in Africa--before changing the subject to a specific problem caused by heavy rains in domestic coastal communities. Thompson publicized the Natural Resources Defense Council's data on the record number of beach closings last year caused by flood runoff from storm systems.
Both NBC and CBS turned to correspondents in Hotlanta to illustrate the perils of heat. CBS' Kelly Cobiella described the heat in Atlanta as "the kind of hot you can see." Doctors are not only treating symptoms of heat exhaustion but respiratory problems too. NBC's Martin Savidge called it "a double health threat--staggering heat and stagnant air, as the stationary weather system causes not just temperatures but pollution levels to soar." How bad is the smog? "Monday, you could barely see Knoxville."
To round out a typical agenda for the dog days of August, CBS had Michelle Miller cover the same consumer tips for sunscreen use that NBC's Robert Bazell and ABC's John McKenzie (subscription required) warned us about a couple of months ago. Miller told us that the Food & Drug Administration's 18-year-old guidelines for sunscreens focus only on SPF protection against the sun's ultra-violet rays of the B variety, the type of light that causes sunburn. The FDA is silent on protection against UVA, which ages skin. Both UVA and UVB can cause cancer. Miller advised tanners to read the fine print and choose the UVA blocking ingredients parsol 1789, zinc oxide and titanium dioxide.
CALL DADDY FOR HELP The Federal Reserve Board made news by doing nothing. Only ABC assigned a reporter to cover the status quo for short term interest rates at 5.25%--the other two networks mentioned the decision in passing. "What would the Fed say and do, if anything, about the mess in the mortgage market and the credit squeeze now seeping into every corner of the economy?" Betsy Stark (subscription required) wondered. "Not much." The crumb of comfort Stark found was "the carefully worded statement" that the Fed is aware that "conditions have become tighter." In June, Stark pointed out, the credit available for businesses to borrow plummeted from a $1tr annual rate to $200bn.
To illustrate tight real estate lending, CBS' Kelly Wallace profiled 26-year-old Amanda Michalko, a would-be first-time homebuyer, who has been applying unsuccessfully for a mortgage since February. Wallace explained that bankrupt lenders and increasing foreclosures have forced credit standards to tighten. Her unidentified expert sources told her that the Federal Reserve "is more concerned about holding down inflation than easing the credit crisis." Michalko only finalized a loan when her father agreed to co-sign for her. "A year ago, her broker says, Amanda would have gotten one by herself."
SOLDIER FIELD The Democratic Presidential contenders turned their attention to organized labor as the AFL-CIO hosted a candidates' debate in Chicago. No surprise, NBC was the only network to preview the confab--its moderator is Countdown anchor Keith Olbermann of MSNBC and NBC's sibling network is carrying the event. Chip Reid noted that the run-up to the debate had seen both Barack Obama and John Edwards blast frontrunner Hillary Rodham Clinton for accepting funds from inside-the-Beltway lobbyists. Rodham Clinton admitted as much: "Yes, they represent corporations that employ a lot of people." NBC's in-house political analyst Chuck Todd tipped Edwards as going on the offense against "not a friend of labor" Rodham Clinton. Reid reckoned that "perhaps no one has worked as hard for the union vote as John Edwards."
NO MORE COUNTERINSURGENCY The day's only overseas report appeared to be big enough news that, if true, it should have been the Story of the Day. In Baghdad, Gen Raymond Odierno told CBS' Lara Logan that the Sunni resistance to US military occupation has finished and the US is no longer fighting a counterinsurgency war. "The deadly Sunni insurgency that has led the fight against US forces from the start is all but over," was Logan's takeaway headline. "This is not the war the general thought he was coming here to fight."
Time will tell whether Odierno was announcing that a sea change has occurred or whether he was merely adopting new terminology. What Odierno specifically told Logan was that mainstream Sunni insurgents--like the Amiriyah Freedom Fighters of Baghdad--have "decided they want to try to reconcile with this government;" the primary guerrilla forces are now the Shiite militias like the Mahdi Army; the remnants of Sunni guerrillas still active have joined forces controled by al-Qaeda. Logan explained that the Shiite militias "are not fighting to regain lost power like the Sunnis: their fight is for power and influence in the future Iraq." And Odierno thinks that money, weapons and training for the militias originate in Iran.
NO SNOW JOB NBC's White House correspondent David Gregory filed a long, intimate profile of Tony Snow, the White House spokesman with whom he has enjoyed well-publicized sparring over public policy. Gregory's focus was private--the physical and emotional toll colon cancer takes on Snow as he continues his high-stress work with "no let up." We saw an open-shirted Snow sitting under the drip, undergoing the seventh of a regime of eight three-hour chemotherapy sessions--chemotherapy that is causing his hair to fall out, his voice to grow weaker, his body to shed pounds and is just making him tired. Said Snow: "You just try to keep yourself in a position to keep fighting."
CAPTAIN MORGAN Barbara Morgan is going to become the most famous astronaut in America. She has been waiting to go into space for 22 years, at which time she was still an amateur. Morgan was chosen as one of two schoolteachers to conduct lessons in orbit from the Space Shuttle. The other was Christa McAuliffe, who was picked to take off first, but never got to space-teach as she was killed when Challenger exploded. After that, NASA decided that its crews should be composed entirely of trained astronauts, so Morgan left the classroom to go into training. CBS' Kelly Cobiella previewed her first mission last month. Now ABC's Lisa Stark (subscription required) sat down with her as she braces for liftoff on Endeavour. "Space flight is risky. Space exploration is really challenging. It is a hostile environment," Morgan told her. Ever the teacher, Morgan will "spend almost a full day on education, filming lesson plans and holding a live discussion with students," said Stark.
Given the overblown fuss and bother last month (text link) about astronauts orbiting drunk, it was a surprise that Stark did not ask Morgan whether she enjoyed a tipple. NBC's Tom Costello heard Commander Scott Kelly of the Endeavour pledge that booze would have no place on his watch--to suggest otherwise is "utterly ridiculous," in Kelly's words. Costello questioned the entire snockered spacemen rumor. "Investigators have gone through every mission flown by American astronauts in the last ten years and they found nothing," Costello's colleague Jay Barbree stated.
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 United States Postal Service honors military combat casualties with a 41c Purple Heart stamp…the military are not the only Americans getting killed in Iraq; the death toll for civilian contractors who are US citizens now exceeds 1,000…the monsoon rains on the Indian sub-continent have now displaced 19m peasants.
