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TYNDALL HEADLINE: HIGHLIGHTS FROM APRIL 15, 2008
Pope Benedict XVI may have the reputation of laboring under a charisma deficit compared with his celebrity predecessor. Yet he is no less newsworthy than John Paul II--at least compared with the second half of that papacy. The arrival of His Holiness at Andrews AFB was the lead item on all three newscasts, qualifying it as the unanimous Story of the Day and accounting for 28% (16 min out of 57) of their total newshole. This was quite the equal of the most intense single day of coverage for the last three of John Paul II's five visits to the United States (20 min in Denver in 1993; 16 min in New York City in 1995; 12 min in St Louis in 1999). Of course, the peak of JPII's newsworthiness in the United States occurred during his earlier trips in 1979 and 1987, when the presence of the pro-Solidarity Polish Pope was as much a geostrategic Cold War story as a religious one.
TYNDALL PICKS FOR APRIL 15, 2008: CLICK ON GRID ELEMENTS TO SEARCH FOR MATCHING ITEMS
BENEDICT XVI MATCHES LATTERDAY JOHN PAUL II Pope Benedict XVI may have the reputation of laboring under a charisma deficit compared with his celebrity predecessor. Yet he is no less newsworthy than John Paul II--at least compared with the second half of that papacy. The arrival of His Holiness at Andrews AFB was the lead item on all three newscasts, qualifying it as the unanimous Story of the Day and accounting for 28% (16 min out of 57) of their total newshole. This was quite the equal of the most intense single day of coverage for the last three of John Paul II's five visits to the United States (20 min in Denver in 1993; 16 min in New York City in 1995; 12 min in St Louis in 1999). Of course, the peak of JPII's newsworthiness in the United States occurred during his earlier trips in 1979 and 1987, when the presence of the pro-Solidarity Polish Pope was as much a geostrategic Cold War story as a religious one.
The Holy Father made news with the traveling Vatican press corps while in midair. He addressed the pedophile priests sex scandal that has rocked the Roman Catholic Church in America with contrition: "We are deeply ashamed," was the soundbite run on all three newscasts. CBS' Byron Pitts cited estimates that the scandal had cost the church $2bn and 4m parishioners nationwide. Lawsuits have bankrupted five dioceses: Portland Ore, Spokane Wash, San Diego Cal, Tucson Ariz, Davenport Iowa. Pitts found "an aging priesthood and a shrinking one" as some 3,200 out of the nation's 19,000 parishes lack a pastor in residency. Nevertheless his unnamed expert sources told Pitts that the Pope "considers the American Catholic Church, the third largest in the world, to be in relatively good shape."
NBC's Natalie Morales concentrated on the papal itinerary, previewing the pontiff's diplomacy at the White House and the United Nations, where his speech "is likely to stress human rights and religious freedom for all faiths." ABC claimed the inside diplomatic track as Cokie Roberts, daughter of the United States' onetime Ambassador to the Vatican, was invited to ride out to Andrews AFB in the First Limousine with George Bush. The President anticipated negotiations on the topics of immigration and Christian-Islamic dialogue. On Iraq, "the President thinks that he is not going to get scolded" because he believes the Pope understands "a precipitous withdrawal would be harmful to Christians" there.
Both CBS and NBC looked for insights into Benedict's personality and ideology. Anne Thompson talked to theologians at Notre Dame for NBC's In Depth in which she rehashed the trouble he found himself in two years ago for quoting a medieval insult against Islam for its "evil and inhuman teachings." Thompson called that "an out-of-context soundbite" before she reassured us that he has a reputation as "a scholar and teacher, warm, kind and determined to build a stronger Catholic Church." CBC anchor Katie Couric consulted Thomas Williams, her network's Vatican analyst, who happens to be a priest--talk about a conflict of interest!--who delivered similar pabulum: "He is really a very nice guy. He is very quiet. He is very intelligent, as everybody knows, but he is also a really good listener, a man who loves dialogue. He loves a good deep conversation."
With the Society of Jesus at his disposal, the finest propagandists known to Christendom, you would think that the Bishop of Rome could come up with a better nickname for his plane. ABC's Dan Harris (embargoed link) told us twice that it is dubbed Shepherd One. How lame is that, you Jesuits? How about Air Infallible?
MORMON MOTHERS MEET MEDIA Last week's top religion story continued to attract coverage, providing an ironic counterpoint to the pedophile priests of the Roman church. Most of the fundamentalist Mormon mothers of the Yearning for Zion ranch were separated from their children by Texas child welfare authorities and sent back to their sect. They invited the news media to listen to their protestations of innocence of abuse and their outrage at having their children taken from them. All three networks gained access to the "sprawling and usually secretive compound," as ABC's Neal Karlinsky called it. CBS' Hari Sreenivasan counted 51 mothers who volunteered to return to the compound without their children, while only six decided to leave the ranch to seek refuge in a women's shelter. "Only mothers with young children were allowed to stay with their kids," noted NBC's Don Teague.
ABC's Karlinsky called the separation of mothers from children "one more crushing blow" as the women "claimed not to understand why the state was so worried about their children." Inquired Karlinsky: "Do you share a husband with many other wives?" "I cannot answer that at this time." "Why not?" "It is sacred to me." "I take that to mean you do share a husband with other wives." "It may or may not."
After NBC's Teague pointed out that child welfare authorities "still have not identified the 16-year-old girl whose call for help led to the raid," his network's anchor Brian Williams asked for a briefing from NBC's justice correspondent Pete Williams. He said that welfare agencies "are required" to take children out of "the home" if they believe there is evidence of abuse. He added that it is "normal practice" to separate children from their parents. He warned that Texas' decision to remove all the children "may be a problem." Williams did not address whether the entire compound, with 416 children and teenagers, constituted a single home under the law. Nor did he explain why a pregnant 16-year-old's telephone complaint that she was being beaten up by her common law polygamous husband constituted evidence that any children were in danger of abuse from their own parents.
GAS TAX SUMMER VACATION The networks split on their campaign coverage. NBC's Kelly O'Donnell and ABC's Ron Claiborne (embargoed link) were both assigned to cover Republican John McCain's speech on the economy, in which he proposed a three-month suspension of the 18c per gallon federal gasoline excise tax as a fiscal stimulus for the slowing economy. CBS' Dean Reynolds stayed with the Democrats in Pennsylvania, where Barack Obama's bitter-and-clinging comments about small town life "are still getting attention, still proving difficult to explain, still being used as a weapon by his rival." Reynolds played a Hillary Rodham Clinton attack ad that "sounds like a Republican could have written it" before suggesting a pair of happy endings for Obama: first, Rodham Clinton "somehow overplays her hand" and alienates Democratic primary voters next week; second, the Pope's trip will "push those negative headlines off the front page--which would be an almost divine intervention."
CONSOLIDAIR As predicted Monday, Delta Airlines and NorthWest Airlines announced that they planned to merge to form the world's largest fleet. NBC's Tom Costello covered their insistence that "there are no plans to close hubs or lay off frontline employees." ABC's Lisa Stark (embargoed link) warned that "it is far too early" for the airlines to celebrate as the Justice Department must approve the deal and Congress is planning hearings. Stark noted both United and Continental issued statements that they are considering consolidation in response. Both Costello's inside-industry sources and Stark's concurred that ticket prices must rise as a result.
THE TAXMAN COMETH "It feels like bad news for the economy in every direction," warned CNBC's Michelle Caruso-Cabrera on NBC as she reeled off statistics on the "huge increase" in inflation in March. The wholesale Producer Price Index rose by 1.1% in a single month with oil and food costs taking the blame: "Normally when the US economy is slowing prices tend to fall," Caruso-Cabrera complained, but "in fact, the only thing going down is home prices." Southern California statistics showed a 24% fall in the value of residential property in a single year.
The other two networks covered the economy with features, not news reports. ABC's Kitchen Table series had Betsy Stark profile a married couple in small town Pennsylvania who have to work four jobs each week to make ends meet. By the way, Barack Obama, they are not bitter & clinging--their motto is "the next good thing is always just around the corner." CBS' Hitting Home examined a proposal to prevent an estimated 600,000 home mortgage foreclosures by allowing bankruptcy judges to adjust monthly loan repayments downwards. Ben Tracy reported on the accusation by the plan's sponsor, Sen Richard Durbin (D-IL), that mortgage bankers lead the opposition to the idea. "We think that Sen Durbin is off base on that comment," argued David Kittle of the Mortgage Bankers Association. Yet Tracy pointed out that Kittle does, too, oppose the rule change, since to do so "would encourage homeowners to declare bankruptcy to lower their payments, forcing banks to raise rates on all homeowners." So Kittle presumably means "off base" in that K Street sense of "accurate."
April 15th is IRS income tax filing deadline so CBS had Bob Orr put together a Follow the Money feature on what the fiscal lobbyist group Third Way calculates an average household's annual bill of $13,112 federal taxes is spent on: $2761 on the Pentagon, $2663 on Social Security, $1085 on interest payments, $62 on law enforcement, $12 on the National Parks--and $49 on the Internal Revenue Service itself.
FOR CLOSERS… Terpsichore happened to round off the newscast at both NBC and CBS. CBS' Kelly Wallace brought us Pamela Quinn, a professional dancer who was stricken with Parkinson's Disease at the age of forty. She helps herself and her fellow patients ward off the daunting rigidity of her affliction by setting everyday life and movement to music, a "dance through life, literally"…the Hyde Square Task Force helps teenagers In Boston's Jamaica Plain neighborhood, Amy Robach told us for NBC's Making a Difference. Ritmo en Accion teaches tango and salsa and even some hip-hop and so far every member of the troupe has graduated from high school and been accepted into college…ABC ended with a cat that has not been seen in Chicago since the C19th, according to Chris Bury. A wild cougar, five feet long, 150 lbs, infiltrated the city streets, probably from the Wisconsin wilderness. Bury even had footage of it dashing out from under a porch. Poor cougar was cornered by cops in an alley and killed.
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: a jetliner crashed on takeoff in the Congolese city of Goma, killing 135 altogether in the plane and on the ground…a carbomb in the northeastern Iraqi city of Baqubah killed 60…Sen Arlen Specter (R-PA) must feel like he was tempting fate when he wrote Never Give In his profile of his convalescence from cancer that NBC's Brian Williams publicized last month; Specter now announces that his cancer has returned…suspicions that Bisphenol A, a chemical used to make plastic bottles, may be toxic have been reinforced by research…shoddy rivets may have caused the RMS Titanic to sink even faster than expected.
The Holy Father made news with the traveling Vatican press corps while in midair. He addressed the pedophile priests sex scandal that has rocked the Roman Catholic Church in America with contrition: "We are deeply ashamed," was the soundbite run on all three newscasts. CBS' Byron Pitts cited estimates that the scandal had cost the church $2bn and 4m parishioners nationwide. Lawsuits have bankrupted five dioceses: Portland Ore, Spokane Wash, San Diego Cal, Tucson Ariz, Davenport Iowa. Pitts found "an aging priesthood and a shrinking one" as some 3,200 out of the nation's 19,000 parishes lack a pastor in residency. Nevertheless his unnamed expert sources told Pitts that the Pope "considers the American Catholic Church, the third largest in the world, to be in relatively good shape."
NBC's Natalie Morales concentrated on the papal itinerary, previewing the pontiff's diplomacy at the White House and the United Nations, where his speech "is likely to stress human rights and religious freedom for all faiths." ABC claimed the inside diplomatic track as Cokie Roberts, daughter of the United States' onetime Ambassador to the Vatican, was invited to ride out to Andrews AFB in the First Limousine with George Bush. The President anticipated negotiations on the topics of immigration and Christian-Islamic dialogue. On Iraq, "the President thinks that he is not going to get scolded" because he believes the Pope understands "a precipitous withdrawal would be harmful to Christians" there.
Both CBS and NBC looked for insights into Benedict's personality and ideology. Anne Thompson talked to theologians at Notre Dame for NBC's In Depth in which she rehashed the trouble he found himself in two years ago for quoting a medieval insult against Islam for its "evil and inhuman teachings." Thompson called that "an out-of-context soundbite" before she reassured us that he has a reputation as "a scholar and teacher, warm, kind and determined to build a stronger Catholic Church." CBC anchor Katie Couric consulted Thomas Williams, her network's Vatican analyst, who happens to be a priest--talk about a conflict of interest!--who delivered similar pabulum: "He is really a very nice guy. He is very quiet. He is very intelligent, as everybody knows, but he is also a really good listener, a man who loves dialogue. He loves a good deep conversation."
With the Society of Jesus at his disposal, the finest propagandists known to Christendom, you would think that the Bishop of Rome could come up with a better nickname for his plane. ABC's Dan Harris (embargoed link) told us twice that it is dubbed Shepherd One. How lame is that, you Jesuits? How about Air Infallible?
MORMON MOTHERS MEET MEDIA Last week's top religion story continued to attract coverage, providing an ironic counterpoint to the pedophile priests of the Roman church. Most of the fundamentalist Mormon mothers of the Yearning for Zion ranch were separated from their children by Texas child welfare authorities and sent back to their sect. They invited the news media to listen to their protestations of innocence of abuse and their outrage at having their children taken from them. All three networks gained access to the "sprawling and usually secretive compound," as ABC's Neal Karlinsky called it. CBS' Hari Sreenivasan counted 51 mothers who volunteered to return to the compound without their children, while only six decided to leave the ranch to seek refuge in a women's shelter. "Only mothers with young children were allowed to stay with their kids," noted NBC's Don Teague.
ABC's Karlinsky called the separation of mothers from children "one more crushing blow" as the women "claimed not to understand why the state was so worried about their children." Inquired Karlinsky: "Do you share a husband with many other wives?" "I cannot answer that at this time." "Why not?" "It is sacred to me." "I take that to mean you do share a husband with other wives." "It may or may not."
After NBC's Teague pointed out that child welfare authorities "still have not identified the 16-year-old girl whose call for help led to the raid," his network's anchor Brian Williams asked for a briefing from NBC's justice correspondent Pete Williams. He said that welfare agencies "are required" to take children out of "the home" if they believe there is evidence of abuse. He added that it is "normal practice" to separate children from their parents. He warned that Texas' decision to remove all the children "may be a problem." Williams did not address whether the entire compound, with 416 children and teenagers, constituted a single home under the law. Nor did he explain why a pregnant 16-year-old's telephone complaint that she was being beaten up by her common law polygamous husband constituted evidence that any children were in danger of abuse from their own parents.
GAS TAX SUMMER VACATION The networks split on their campaign coverage. NBC's Kelly O'Donnell and ABC's Ron Claiborne (embargoed link) were both assigned to cover Republican John McCain's speech on the economy, in which he proposed a three-month suspension of the 18c per gallon federal gasoline excise tax as a fiscal stimulus for the slowing economy. CBS' Dean Reynolds stayed with the Democrats in Pennsylvania, where Barack Obama's bitter-and-clinging comments about small town life "are still getting attention, still proving difficult to explain, still being used as a weapon by his rival." Reynolds played a Hillary Rodham Clinton attack ad that "sounds like a Republican could have written it" before suggesting a pair of happy endings for Obama: first, Rodham Clinton "somehow overplays her hand" and alienates Democratic primary voters next week; second, the Pope's trip will "push those negative headlines off the front page--which would be an almost divine intervention."
CONSOLIDAIR As predicted Monday, Delta Airlines and NorthWest Airlines announced that they planned to merge to form the world's largest fleet. NBC's Tom Costello covered their insistence that "there are no plans to close hubs or lay off frontline employees." ABC's Lisa Stark (embargoed link) warned that "it is far too early" for the airlines to celebrate as the Justice Department must approve the deal and Congress is planning hearings. Stark noted both United and Continental issued statements that they are considering consolidation in response. Both Costello's inside-industry sources and Stark's concurred that ticket prices must rise as a result.
THE TAXMAN COMETH "It feels like bad news for the economy in every direction," warned CNBC's Michelle Caruso-Cabrera on NBC as she reeled off statistics on the "huge increase" in inflation in March. The wholesale Producer Price Index rose by 1.1% in a single month with oil and food costs taking the blame: "Normally when the US economy is slowing prices tend to fall," Caruso-Cabrera complained, but "in fact, the only thing going down is home prices." Southern California statistics showed a 24% fall in the value of residential property in a single year.
The other two networks covered the economy with features, not news reports. ABC's Kitchen Table series had Betsy Stark profile a married couple in small town Pennsylvania who have to work four jobs each week to make ends meet. By the way, Barack Obama, they are not bitter & clinging--their motto is "the next good thing is always just around the corner." CBS' Hitting Home examined a proposal to prevent an estimated 600,000 home mortgage foreclosures by allowing bankruptcy judges to adjust monthly loan repayments downwards. Ben Tracy reported on the accusation by the plan's sponsor, Sen Richard Durbin (D-IL), that mortgage bankers lead the opposition to the idea. "We think that Sen Durbin is off base on that comment," argued David Kittle of the Mortgage Bankers Association. Yet Tracy pointed out that Kittle does, too, oppose the rule change, since to do so "would encourage homeowners to declare bankruptcy to lower their payments, forcing banks to raise rates on all homeowners." So Kittle presumably means "off base" in that K Street sense of "accurate."
April 15th is IRS income tax filing deadline so CBS had Bob Orr put together a Follow the Money feature on what the fiscal lobbyist group Third Way calculates an average household's annual bill of $13,112 federal taxes is spent on: $2761 on the Pentagon, $2663 on Social Security, $1085 on interest payments, $62 on law enforcement, $12 on the National Parks--and $49 on the Internal Revenue Service itself.
FOR CLOSERS… Terpsichore happened to round off the newscast at both NBC and CBS. CBS' Kelly Wallace brought us Pamela Quinn, a professional dancer who was stricken with Parkinson's Disease at the age of forty. She helps herself and her fellow patients ward off the daunting rigidity of her affliction by setting everyday life and movement to music, a "dance through life, literally"…the Hyde Square Task Force helps teenagers In Boston's Jamaica Plain neighborhood, Amy Robach told us for NBC's Making a Difference. Ritmo en Accion teaches tango and salsa and even some hip-hop and so far every member of the troupe has graduated from high school and been accepted into college…ABC ended with a cat that has not been seen in Chicago since the C19th, according to Chris Bury. A wild cougar, five feet long, 150 lbs, infiltrated the city streets, probably from the Wisconsin wilderness. Bury even had footage of it dashing out from under a porch. Poor cougar was cornered by cops in an alley and killed.
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: a jetliner crashed on takeoff in the Congolese city of Goma, killing 135 altogether in the plane and on the ground…a carbomb in the northeastern Iraqi city of Baqubah killed 60…Sen Arlen Specter (R-PA) must feel like he was tempting fate when he wrote Never Give In his profile of his convalescence from cancer that NBC's Brian Williams publicized last month; Specter now announces that his cancer has returned…suspicions that Bisphenol A, a chemical used to make plastic bottles, may be toxic have been reinforced by research…shoddy rivets may have caused the RMS Titanic to sink even faster than expected.
