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TYNDALL HEADLINE: HIGHLIGHTS FROM MAY 14, 2008
The follow through from Hillary Rodham Clinton's overwhelming triumph over Barack Obama in Tuesday's West Virginia primary dominated the day's news--but not in the way the victorious candidate had planned. Hoping to capitalize on the momentum for her win, Rodham Clinton prerecorded nightly news interviews with both CBS and NBC. Obama saw Rodham Clinton's newsmaking skills and raised her one. He countered with a headline-grabbing live endorsement from former rival John Edwards that was chosen as the lead on CBS and NBC; ABC interrupted its newscast for three minutes of coverage from Obama's rally in progress. In a heavy news environment with campaign coverage split between those two storylines, ABC's lead, the rescue effort in earthquake-stricken southwest China, turned out to be the Story of the Day by a narrow margin.
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AFTERMATH OF WEST VIRGINIA The follow through from Hillary Rodham Clinton's overwhelming triumph over Barack Obama in Tuesday's West Virginia primary dominated the day's news--but not in the way the victorious candidate had planned. Hoping to capitalize on the momentum for her win, Rodham Clinton prerecorded nightly news interviews with both CBS and NBC. Obama saw Rodham Clinton's newsmaking skills and raised her one. He countered with a headline-grabbing live endorsement from former rival John Edwards that was chosen as the lead on CBS and NBC; ABC interrupted its newscast for three minutes of coverage from Obama's rally in progress. In a heavy news environment with campaign coverage split between those two storylines, ABC's lead, the rescue effort in earthquake-stricken southwest China, turned out to be the Story of the Day by a narrow margin.
"Timed for maximum exposure," was the compliment ABC anchor Charles Gibson paid to the Obama campaign for its introduction of Edwards precisely at the evening news hour. "This is a very well-timed announcement," concurred Dean Reynolds on CBS and NBC's Lee Cowan saw Obama's campaign hope "at the very least that this takes some attention from that big loss." ABC's George Stephanopoulos (no link) was more definitive: "They have been very good at pulling out endorsements like this after losses," he said admiringly. "This was designed to completely squash the West Virginia story."
The West Virginia story was indeed a terrible one for Obama. ABC's David Wright (embargoed link) called it "a pitiful performance" that exposed a regional weakness in the Appalachian heartland. Wright drew the map where Obama has failed: Michigan, Ohio, West Virginia, Pennsylvania and the western half of New York State, states which "could hold the key to victory in November." Edwards' endorsement, with his 18 delegates from early primaries, redressed the loss that Obama suffered in West Virginia and it may help with "those white blue collar voters," NBC's Cowan suggested, who are "the core of Edwards' support." Interestingly, CBS' Reynolds pointed out that Edwards arrived to endorse Obama without his wife Elizabeth: "She is not on board," he reported. "This endorsement is not her endorsement. It is her husband's."
RACE QUESTIONS Hillary Rodham Clinton made a three-part case for securing the nomination to both Katie Couric on CBS and Brian Williams on NBC: that she would prevail in most of the remaining primaries through June 3rd; that she would persuade the Democratic National Committee to relent and give credentials to her delegates from Michigan and Florida; and that she would enjoy a reversal of fortune from superdelegates. They are "not bound to support anyone," she argued to Couric. "They can make a decision today and change it tomorrow. Their job, according to the rules of the DNC, is to exercise independent judgment and determine who would be the best President and who would be the better, stronger candidate against John McCain."
Almost all the questions posed by both anchors came from the horse race school of journalism asking about timing and scenarios and tickets and endorsements. Both did ask a substantive question about her claim of strengthening support among "hardworking Americans, white Americans." This is how Williams put it: "Given your long history with civil rights, does it trouble you at all that--you know, what we know from the exit polls and anecdotal and factual information--that race was as much of a factor as it seemed to be?" Couric was slightly less mealymouthed: "Using those words, do you think that was dangerously close to playing the reverse race card?"
Let's just pause before we get to Rodham Clinton's answer. To Williams, surely the problem is not with "race" being a factor but "racism." What Williams seemed to mean but could not quite spell out was the following: "Given your long history with civil rights, does it trouble you that racism was as much of a factor in your support as it seemed to be?" To Couric, what was that "reverse" doing there? There does not seem to be anything "reverse" about boasting of one's support among "hardworking Americans, white Americans." If it was a race card, it was a straightforward one.
In answer to Couric, Rodham Clinton did not even acknowledge the existence of white racism. She attributed the "hardworking Americans, white Americans" phrase to the Associated Press. She insisted that her supporters choose her because "I would be a better fighter and a better champion" without mentioning the notion that they may dislike the color of her opponent's skin. "Obviously race and gender are a part of it because of who the candidates are but people have been voting based on who they thought would be the better President."
In answer to Williams, Rodham Clinton acknowledged that some of her support was motivated by racial animus against Obama but she claimed that its level was not significant, certainly no more significant than sex bias: "Polls have consistently shown that both race and gender are a factor but for such a minority of voters. I think we may be looking at the glass as half empty instead of half full. We have made enormous progress." Then she made this straightfaced claim that provoked no follow-up from Williams: "This campaign has been a historymaking, unprecedented effort to try to change people's opinions and attitudes and I think we have succeeded."
Change their attitudes from what to what?
TIME TO TREAT THE DEAD WITH DIGNITY The weather cleared in the earthquake zone in China's Sichuan Province as 100,000 soldiers were deployed to help with the relief effort. "Helicopters buzzed overhead dropping urgently needed supplies in remote areas where access remains difficult," narrated NBC' Ian Williams. ABC's Neal Karlinsky showed us footage of soldiers rushed to repair cracks in one of the 400-or-so dams that were damaged by the quake, "just another worry hanging over people here."
John Ray (in the middle of the Williams videostream) of ITN, NBC's British newsgathering partner, hiked into Beichuan over a road that had been "mangled and chewed up. Huge boulders tossed from the mountain stopped everything in their tracks." He found a town, population once 20,000, "that has become a tomb…pretty much utterly destroyed. It is, you might say now, just a ghost town." In Juyan, ABC's Stephanie Sy (no link) showed us "structures that did not even stand a chance. They are more than a hundred years old and made of clay bricks." The modern buildings of Dujiangyan fared little better. Sy found "at least a dozen massive apartment blocks completely decimated."
CBS' Celia Hatton noted Prime Minister Wen Jiabao's inspection of the destruction "in a high profile attempt to show that the government is in touch with the people's suffering" and NBC's Williams remarked that China's TV news was offering "unprecedented 24/7 coverage of the disaster. It is openness, addressing the full horror of the quake, that surprised many people at home and abroad." Mused CBS' Hatton: "China is rarely seen as a place with too few people but as survivors' calls for help grow louder an army of rescuers is stretched to the brink."
ABC's Sy offered a brief portrait of a new widow, devastated at the discovery of her husband's body. "They place his body carelessly on the street next to another corpse lying on a slab of cardboard. It is crude work but with many more victims to recover that is little time to treat the dead with dignity." The death toll is now estimated at 15,000 with a further 26,000 unaccounted for.
NOT SUITABLE FOR TOURISM Only ABC had a correspondent update us on the simultaneous catastrophe in China's neighbor Myanmar. Joohee Cho filed A Closer Look on her clandestine week "traveling through the Irrawaddy Delta, ruined houses, dead bodies and mud everywhere, a human nightmare that the military junta does not want the rest of the world to see." She claimed that she bluffed her way past checkpoints as she headed into the disaster zone "saying we were tourists" although it beggars belief that the town of Labutta would be a plausible tourist destination. "When we reached the worst hit areas, the dead bodies, we smelled them first and we put on masks. Many of them were children, more than we could count." On occasions the parents died and the child survived: "I wonder what will happen to him. There are no orphanages in Myanmar."
THIN ICE Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne announced that the globe is warming so rapidly that the polar bears of Alaska are officially classified as a threatened species. "The polar bear is on thin ice," NBC's Anne Thompson could not resist reporting. How did Daniel Sieberg report it on CBS? "The long-term future of this Arctic icon is on thin ice." He explained how polar bears depend on the ice cap: "It is their lifeline, their highway, essential for hunting seals and traveling." As Thompson put it, the bears "use the ice to catch the seals they feed on." So what will the Interior Department do to conserve the melting ecosystem on which the polar bears depend? It will not restrict emissions of greenhouse gases. Environmentalists responded by labeling the listing "an empty victory," according to Thompson…"this action lacks any bite," was Sieberg's paraphrase.
HEARINGS ON THE HILL A busy day on Capitol Hill saw each network focus on a different set of hearings. NBC's Pete Williams chose a Senate panel on Alzheimer's Disease at which Sandra Day O'Connor, the former Supreme Court Justice and wife of a dementia patient, lobbied for research funding. CBS' Chip Reid chose a House committee looking into pharmaceutical immunity from lawsuits once medicines have been approved by the Food & Drug Administration. Actor Dennis Quaid, whose newborn twins had nearly died after a dispensing error, followed up on his protests on CBS' 60 Minutes with testimony that the protection should be removed. On ABC, Lisa Stark (embargoed link) looked into hearings convened by Sen Christopher Dodd (D-CT) into helping school cafeterias protect children with allergies to foods such as nuts and dairy. It turns out that Dodd's own six-year-old daughter is severely allergic.
FOOD SUBSTITUTION Inflation data for the month of April found that food prices are increasing at their fastest rate in 18 years. CBS' Anthony Mason checked out the Fairway supermarkets of New York City. He found shoppers were neither spending more nor buying less--but substituting instead, chicken for steak, for example. Trish Regan of CNBC, NBC's sibling financial news cable channel, checked out how restaurants: she found few price increases with some substitution of lower cost ingredients and many smaller portions. As part of CBS' Eye on the Road series, Jeff Glor looked at the impact on Denver's Meals on Wheels home food delivery program. It delivers 1,800 hot lunches a day and has 300 more on a waiting list it cannot afford to feed.
POWER OF 2 UNDERCUTS BUSH Personal finance was the topic of part three of ABC's weeklong series of self-help tips The Power of 2 on a pair of simple changes an individual, cumulatively, can make a huge societal difference. Betsy Stark took on the macro-economic problem of indebtedness. She recommended that we all stop buying things with credit cards and that we each save $25 a week. Stark undercut President George Bush's plan to revive growth in the economy by fiscal stimulus. Instead of having us spend our rebate checks, Stark proposed that we save them.
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 formation of a supernova has been photographed by NASA's Chandra probe…the brush fires in central Florida may have been set by an arsonist…the Smart Car, even though tiny, passed the insurance industry's crash tests…NBC-Universal's sibling unit in the General Electric conglomerate that manufactures household appliances will be sold.
"Timed for maximum exposure," was the compliment ABC anchor Charles Gibson paid to the Obama campaign for its introduction of Edwards precisely at the evening news hour. "This is a very well-timed announcement," concurred Dean Reynolds on CBS and NBC's Lee Cowan saw Obama's campaign hope "at the very least that this takes some attention from that big loss." ABC's George Stephanopoulos (no link) was more definitive: "They have been very good at pulling out endorsements like this after losses," he said admiringly. "This was designed to completely squash the West Virginia story."
The West Virginia story was indeed a terrible one for Obama. ABC's David Wright (embargoed link) called it "a pitiful performance" that exposed a regional weakness in the Appalachian heartland. Wright drew the map where Obama has failed: Michigan, Ohio, West Virginia, Pennsylvania and the western half of New York State, states which "could hold the key to victory in November." Edwards' endorsement, with his 18 delegates from early primaries, redressed the loss that Obama suffered in West Virginia and it may help with "those white blue collar voters," NBC's Cowan suggested, who are "the core of Edwards' support." Interestingly, CBS' Reynolds pointed out that Edwards arrived to endorse Obama without his wife Elizabeth: "She is not on board," he reported. "This endorsement is not her endorsement. It is her husband's."
RACE QUESTIONS Hillary Rodham Clinton made a three-part case for securing the nomination to both Katie Couric on CBS and Brian Williams on NBC: that she would prevail in most of the remaining primaries through June 3rd; that she would persuade the Democratic National Committee to relent and give credentials to her delegates from Michigan and Florida; and that she would enjoy a reversal of fortune from superdelegates. They are "not bound to support anyone," she argued to Couric. "They can make a decision today and change it tomorrow. Their job, according to the rules of the DNC, is to exercise independent judgment and determine who would be the best President and who would be the better, stronger candidate against John McCain."
Almost all the questions posed by both anchors came from the horse race school of journalism asking about timing and scenarios and tickets and endorsements. Both did ask a substantive question about her claim of strengthening support among "hardworking Americans, white Americans." This is how Williams put it: "Given your long history with civil rights, does it trouble you at all that--you know, what we know from the exit polls and anecdotal and factual information--that race was as much of a factor as it seemed to be?" Couric was slightly less mealymouthed: "Using those words, do you think that was dangerously close to playing the reverse race card?"
Let's just pause before we get to Rodham Clinton's answer. To Williams, surely the problem is not with "race" being a factor but "racism." What Williams seemed to mean but could not quite spell out was the following: "Given your long history with civil rights, does it trouble you that racism was as much of a factor in your support as it seemed to be?" To Couric, what was that "reverse" doing there? There does not seem to be anything "reverse" about boasting of one's support among "hardworking Americans, white Americans." If it was a race card, it was a straightforward one.
In answer to Couric, Rodham Clinton did not even acknowledge the existence of white racism. She attributed the "hardworking Americans, white Americans" phrase to the Associated Press. She insisted that her supporters choose her because "I would be a better fighter and a better champion" without mentioning the notion that they may dislike the color of her opponent's skin. "Obviously race and gender are a part of it because of who the candidates are but people have been voting based on who they thought would be the better President."
In answer to Williams, Rodham Clinton acknowledged that some of her support was motivated by racial animus against Obama but she claimed that its level was not significant, certainly no more significant than sex bias: "Polls have consistently shown that both race and gender are a factor but for such a minority of voters. I think we may be looking at the glass as half empty instead of half full. We have made enormous progress." Then she made this straightfaced claim that provoked no follow-up from Williams: "This campaign has been a historymaking, unprecedented effort to try to change people's opinions and attitudes and I think we have succeeded."
Change their attitudes from what to what?
TIME TO TREAT THE DEAD WITH DIGNITY The weather cleared in the earthquake zone in China's Sichuan Province as 100,000 soldiers were deployed to help with the relief effort. "Helicopters buzzed overhead dropping urgently needed supplies in remote areas where access remains difficult," narrated NBC' Ian Williams. ABC's Neal Karlinsky showed us footage of soldiers rushed to repair cracks in one of the 400-or-so dams that were damaged by the quake, "just another worry hanging over people here."
John Ray (in the middle of the Williams videostream) of ITN, NBC's British newsgathering partner, hiked into Beichuan over a road that had been "mangled and chewed up. Huge boulders tossed from the mountain stopped everything in their tracks." He found a town, population once 20,000, "that has become a tomb…pretty much utterly destroyed. It is, you might say now, just a ghost town." In Juyan, ABC's Stephanie Sy (no link) showed us "structures that did not even stand a chance. They are more than a hundred years old and made of clay bricks." The modern buildings of Dujiangyan fared little better. Sy found "at least a dozen massive apartment blocks completely decimated."
CBS' Celia Hatton noted Prime Minister Wen Jiabao's inspection of the destruction "in a high profile attempt to show that the government is in touch with the people's suffering" and NBC's Williams remarked that China's TV news was offering "unprecedented 24/7 coverage of the disaster. It is openness, addressing the full horror of the quake, that surprised many people at home and abroad." Mused CBS' Hatton: "China is rarely seen as a place with too few people but as survivors' calls for help grow louder an army of rescuers is stretched to the brink."
ABC's Sy offered a brief portrait of a new widow, devastated at the discovery of her husband's body. "They place his body carelessly on the street next to another corpse lying on a slab of cardboard. It is crude work but with many more victims to recover that is little time to treat the dead with dignity." The death toll is now estimated at 15,000 with a further 26,000 unaccounted for.
NOT SUITABLE FOR TOURISM Only ABC had a correspondent update us on the simultaneous catastrophe in China's neighbor Myanmar. Joohee Cho filed A Closer Look on her clandestine week "traveling through the Irrawaddy Delta, ruined houses, dead bodies and mud everywhere, a human nightmare that the military junta does not want the rest of the world to see." She claimed that she bluffed her way past checkpoints as she headed into the disaster zone "saying we were tourists" although it beggars belief that the town of Labutta would be a plausible tourist destination. "When we reached the worst hit areas, the dead bodies, we smelled them first and we put on masks. Many of them were children, more than we could count." On occasions the parents died and the child survived: "I wonder what will happen to him. There are no orphanages in Myanmar."
THIN ICE Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne announced that the globe is warming so rapidly that the polar bears of Alaska are officially classified as a threatened species. "The polar bear is on thin ice," NBC's Anne Thompson could not resist reporting. How did Daniel Sieberg report it on CBS? "The long-term future of this Arctic icon is on thin ice." He explained how polar bears depend on the ice cap: "It is their lifeline, their highway, essential for hunting seals and traveling." As Thompson put it, the bears "use the ice to catch the seals they feed on." So what will the Interior Department do to conserve the melting ecosystem on which the polar bears depend? It will not restrict emissions of greenhouse gases. Environmentalists responded by labeling the listing "an empty victory," according to Thompson…"this action lacks any bite," was Sieberg's paraphrase.
HEARINGS ON THE HILL A busy day on Capitol Hill saw each network focus on a different set of hearings. NBC's Pete Williams chose a Senate panel on Alzheimer's Disease at which Sandra Day O'Connor, the former Supreme Court Justice and wife of a dementia patient, lobbied for research funding. CBS' Chip Reid chose a House committee looking into pharmaceutical immunity from lawsuits once medicines have been approved by the Food & Drug Administration. Actor Dennis Quaid, whose newborn twins had nearly died after a dispensing error, followed up on his protests on CBS' 60 Minutes with testimony that the protection should be removed. On ABC, Lisa Stark (embargoed link) looked into hearings convened by Sen Christopher Dodd (D-CT) into helping school cafeterias protect children with allergies to foods such as nuts and dairy. It turns out that Dodd's own six-year-old daughter is severely allergic.
FOOD SUBSTITUTION Inflation data for the month of April found that food prices are increasing at their fastest rate in 18 years. CBS' Anthony Mason checked out the Fairway supermarkets of New York City. He found shoppers were neither spending more nor buying less--but substituting instead, chicken for steak, for example. Trish Regan of CNBC, NBC's sibling financial news cable channel, checked out how restaurants: she found few price increases with some substitution of lower cost ingredients and many smaller portions. As part of CBS' Eye on the Road series, Jeff Glor looked at the impact on Denver's Meals on Wheels home food delivery program. It delivers 1,800 hot lunches a day and has 300 more on a waiting list it cannot afford to feed.
POWER OF 2 UNDERCUTS BUSH Personal finance was the topic of part three of ABC's weeklong series of self-help tips The Power of 2 on a pair of simple changes an individual, cumulatively, can make a huge societal difference. Betsy Stark took on the macro-economic problem of indebtedness. She recommended that we all stop buying things with credit cards and that we each save $25 a week. Stark undercut President George Bush's plan to revive growth in the economy by fiscal stimulus. Instead of having us spend our rebate checks, Stark proposed that we save them.
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 formation of a supernova has been photographed by NASA's Chandra probe…the brush fires in central Florida may have been set by an arsonist…the Smart Car, even though tiny, passed the insurance industry's crash tests…NBC-Universal's sibling unit in the General Electric conglomerate that manufactures household appliances will be sold.
