TYNDALL HEADLINE: HIGHLIGHTS FROM JANUARY 10, 2008
For the first time in 2008, the Presidential election campaign did not qualify as Story of the Day. Pride of place belonged instead to the economy and Benjamin Bernanke, Chairman of the Federal Reserve Board, who worried out loud that the slowdown in growth might turn into an actual recession. CBS and ABC both led with the chairman's pledge on further potential cuts in interest rates: "We stand ready to take substantive additional action." NBC stayed on the campaign trail for its lead.
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CAMPAIGN OUSTED BY BERNANKE For the first time in 2008, the Presidential election campaign did not qualify as Story of the Day. Pride of place belonged instead to the economy and Benjamin Bernanke, Chairman of the Federal Reserve Board, who worried out loud that the slowdown in growth might turn into an actual recession. CBS and ABC both led with the chairman's pledge on further potential cuts in interest rates: "We stand ready to take substantive additional action." NBC stayed on the campaign trail for its lead.
Bernanke was unGreenspanlike in his choice of words. "It is unusual for the Fed Chairman to send such a clear signal," noted ABC's Betsy Stark (embargoed link). "Volatile and fragile" were the adjectives Anthony Mason underlined on CBS, reporting on recession for the second day in a row. NBC, as usual, assigned economic coverage to its sibling financial news cable channel: CNBC's Trish Regan did the honors.
ABC's Stark offered no comfort at the prospect of recession: "Fear is contagious no matter how wealthy you are," she insisted. "Low income consumers may fear they will not be able to fill up their gas tanks. Middle income consumers may fear their homes will be worth less than what they paid for them. Upper income consumers may fear a falling stock market will decimate their retirement funds."
CLASS WARFARE On CBS, Chip Reid offered a bridge between economic and campaign coverage, contrasting the "dramatically different" economic platforms of Republican and Democratic Presidential candidates. For the former "the answer to every question about the economy begins with cutting taxes." The latter say "what is needed is help for the middle class" plus "a big boost in the minimum wage."
PALMETTO PROFILES The focus on the campaign trail proper turned to South Carolina. Both NBC's Ron Allen and ABC's Jake Tapper (at the tail of the David Wright videostream) were on hand to preview the state's Republican debate in Myrtle Beach on Fox News Channel. John McCain and Mike Huckabee hold frontrunner status there--McCain, the former prisoner of war, in this "veteran-rich state," ABC's Tapper explained; Huckabee, the former preacher, because of its "Southern Baptist roots," according to NBC's Allen.
ABC also took a look at the Democratic race in South Carolina. David Wright cited its nickname as "the black primary" because African-American voters "play such a decisive role." NBC led off its newscast with Andrea Mitchell's coverage of the endorsement of Barack Obama by John Kerry, the Democrats' nominee in 2004. She called it "a snub to his former running mate John Edwards" although she did point out that Kerry selected Obama four years ago as his Convention keynote speaker, even though the Illinois pol back then was still "just a state senator."
SAY CHEESE The breather in campaign coverage allowed the networks to play catch-up on the diplomatic and military front. Both NBC and ABC had their White House correspondents file from Jerusalem on George Bush's Middle East peace diplomacy as he made his first trip to the Holy Land since taking office in 2001. ABC's Martha Raddatz observed that the President's motorcade from Jerusalem to Ramallah traveled through "the Israeli checkpoints and separation barriers that Palestinians have long endured." Bush himself insisted a two state solution would have to dispense with such a checkerboard: "Swiss cheese is not going to work when it comes to the outline of a state." NBC's David Gregory asked Bush to compare his final year push for peace with Bill Clinton's lame duck effort eight years ago. Bush called his predecessor's diplomacy "a noble attempt."
PENTAGON VIDEO FEED CBS' Mark Strassmann filed from "dicey territory" in a battlefield south of Baghdad where B-1 bombers, F-16 fighter jets and Apache helicopters combined with soldiers from the USArmy's Third Infantry Division in an operation dubbed Marne Thunderball. Strassmann played us terrifying videotape taken from a USArmy helicopter of four men and a dog walking across a field; a Hellfire missile blew three men away; a man and his dog ran off; then a second missile finished the job.
CBS also picked up on the dueling videotape accounts of the naval confrontation in the Straits of Hormuz between Iranian speedboats and USNavy warships. Richard Roth played Teheran's "benign" version. He also pointed out that the audio threat of an explosion on the Pentagon's less reassuring video had been overdubbed at a later date from a separate source.
From the Pentagon, NBC's Jim Miklaszewski filed a progress report to mark the first anniversary of the Commander in Chief's announcement of his so-called surge of military reinforcements to Iraq: "Security has improved dramatically" while on the political front "the Iraqi government has failed to meet any of the benchmarks laid down by President Bush."
The Pentagon story selected by ABC and CBS was a domestic one. The USAF has grounded of 160 F-15 jets--40% of the Air Combat Command's fleet--because of the discovery of a flaw in the manufacture of a structural beam. Both CBS' David Martin and ABC's Jonathan Karl aired Pentagon computer graphics that offered an animated recreation of Major Steve Stilwell's plane breaking apart in midair over Missouri last fall. Neither reporter told us which contractor is responsible for fabricating the flawed part. Stilwell ejected and parachuted to safety with his arm broken.
ELSEWHERE… Video of the unveiling of the $2,500 two cylinder four-seater 50 mpg family car known as the Nano was picked by from Tata Motors in India. NBC's Ian Williams narrated from Bangkok while ABC had anchor Charles Gibson (embargoed link) do the chores from New York…in a counterpoint to all the hi-tech hoopla at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, CBS' Daniel Sieberg worried about so-called e-waste--the polluting heavy metal toxins from equipment that is trashed not recycled. He visited the Computer Resources Center in the San Francisco Bay Area's Alameda County where a sculpture has been made from discarded parts. Check out James Burgett's giant skull.
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: Sir Edmund Hillary, half of the first pair ever to scale Mount Everest, died, aged 88…Gov Bill Richardson (D-NM) ended his run for President…the Marine Corps handed over control of Iraq's al-Anbar Province to local security forces…the FBI is no longer executing some wiretap warrants, cut off because it failed to pay its telephone bills on time.
Bernanke was unGreenspanlike in his choice of words. "It is unusual for the Fed Chairman to send such a clear signal," noted ABC's Betsy Stark (embargoed link). "Volatile and fragile" were the adjectives Anthony Mason underlined on CBS, reporting on recession for the second day in a row. NBC, as usual, assigned economic coverage to its sibling financial news cable channel: CNBC's Trish Regan did the honors.
ABC's Stark offered no comfort at the prospect of recession: "Fear is contagious no matter how wealthy you are," she insisted. "Low income consumers may fear they will not be able to fill up their gas tanks. Middle income consumers may fear their homes will be worth less than what they paid for them. Upper income consumers may fear a falling stock market will decimate their retirement funds."
CLASS WARFARE On CBS, Chip Reid offered a bridge between economic and campaign coverage, contrasting the "dramatically different" economic platforms of Republican and Democratic Presidential candidates. For the former "the answer to every question about the economy begins with cutting taxes." The latter say "what is needed is help for the middle class" plus "a big boost in the minimum wage."
PALMETTO PROFILES The focus on the campaign trail proper turned to South Carolina. Both NBC's Ron Allen and ABC's Jake Tapper (at the tail of the David Wright videostream) were on hand to preview the state's Republican debate in Myrtle Beach on Fox News Channel. John McCain and Mike Huckabee hold frontrunner status there--McCain, the former prisoner of war, in this "veteran-rich state," ABC's Tapper explained; Huckabee, the former preacher, because of its "Southern Baptist roots," according to NBC's Allen.
ABC also took a look at the Democratic race in South Carolina. David Wright cited its nickname as "the black primary" because African-American voters "play such a decisive role." NBC led off its newscast with Andrea Mitchell's coverage of the endorsement of Barack Obama by John Kerry, the Democrats' nominee in 2004. She called it "a snub to his former running mate John Edwards" although she did point out that Kerry selected Obama four years ago as his Convention keynote speaker, even though the Illinois pol back then was still "just a state senator."
SAY CHEESE The breather in campaign coverage allowed the networks to play catch-up on the diplomatic and military front. Both NBC and ABC had their White House correspondents file from Jerusalem on George Bush's Middle East peace diplomacy as he made his first trip to the Holy Land since taking office in 2001. ABC's Martha Raddatz observed that the President's motorcade from Jerusalem to Ramallah traveled through "the Israeli checkpoints and separation barriers that Palestinians have long endured." Bush himself insisted a two state solution would have to dispense with such a checkerboard: "Swiss cheese is not going to work when it comes to the outline of a state." NBC's David Gregory asked Bush to compare his final year push for peace with Bill Clinton's lame duck effort eight years ago. Bush called his predecessor's diplomacy "a noble attempt."
PENTAGON VIDEO FEED CBS' Mark Strassmann filed from "dicey territory" in a battlefield south of Baghdad where B-1 bombers, F-16 fighter jets and Apache helicopters combined with soldiers from the USArmy's Third Infantry Division in an operation dubbed Marne Thunderball. Strassmann played us terrifying videotape taken from a USArmy helicopter of four men and a dog walking across a field; a Hellfire missile blew three men away; a man and his dog ran off; then a second missile finished the job.
CBS also picked up on the dueling videotape accounts of the naval confrontation in the Straits of Hormuz between Iranian speedboats and USNavy warships. Richard Roth played Teheran's "benign" version. He also pointed out that the audio threat of an explosion on the Pentagon's less reassuring video had been overdubbed at a later date from a separate source.
From the Pentagon, NBC's Jim Miklaszewski filed a progress report to mark the first anniversary of the Commander in Chief's announcement of his so-called surge of military reinforcements to Iraq: "Security has improved dramatically" while on the political front "the Iraqi government has failed to meet any of the benchmarks laid down by President Bush."
The Pentagon story selected by ABC and CBS was a domestic one. The USAF has grounded of 160 F-15 jets--40% of the Air Combat Command's fleet--because of the discovery of a flaw in the manufacture of a structural beam. Both CBS' David Martin and ABC's Jonathan Karl aired Pentagon computer graphics that offered an animated recreation of Major Steve Stilwell's plane breaking apart in midair over Missouri last fall. Neither reporter told us which contractor is responsible for fabricating the flawed part. Stilwell ejected and parachuted to safety with his arm broken.
ELSEWHERE… Video of the unveiling of the $2,500 two cylinder four-seater 50 mpg family car known as the Nano was picked by from Tata Motors in India. NBC's Ian Williams narrated from Bangkok while ABC had anchor Charles Gibson (embargoed link) do the chores from New York…in a counterpoint to all the hi-tech hoopla at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, CBS' Daniel Sieberg worried about so-called e-waste--the polluting heavy metal toxins from equipment that is trashed not recycled. He visited the Computer Resources Center in the San Francisco Bay Area's Alameda County where a sculpture has been made from discarded parts. Check out James Burgett's giant skull.
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: Sir Edmund Hillary, half of the first pair ever to scale Mount Everest, died, aged 88…Gov Bill Richardson (D-NM) ended his run for President…the Marine Corps handed over control of Iraq's al-Anbar Province to local security forces…the FBI is no longer executing some wiretap warrants, cut off because it failed to pay its telephone bills on time.