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TYNDALL HEADLINE: HIGHLIGHTS FROM MAY 30, 2008
What a drab choice confronted the networks. Only two stories were deemed newsworthy enough to warrant coverage by a reporter on all three newscasts and both of them left much to be desired. CBS selected a story that was shocking and dynamic--but also parochial. The collapse of a construction crane on New York City's Upper East Side was appropriate for local news but hardly had national import. ABC and NBC both led with campaign coverage--the prospect of Democratic Party committee members meeting to debate rules and bylaws for credentials for delegates. By a close call the Democrats were Story of the Day. Fortunately to liven things, up there was an unusual sprinkling of global reporting to round out the week--with updates from China, Brazil, South Africa and Pakistan.
TYNDALL PICKS FOR MAY 30, 2008: CLICK ON GRID ELEMENTS TO SEARCH FOR MATCHING ITEMS
ARCANE COMMITTEE ROOM WHEELER DEALING What a drab choice confronted the networks. Only two stories were deemed newsworthy enough to warrant coverage by a reporter on all three newscasts and both of them left much to be desired. CBS selected a story that was shocking and dynamic--but also parochial. The collapse of a construction crane on New York City's Upper East Side was appropriate for local news but hardly had national import. ABC and NBC both led with campaign coverage--the prospect of Democratic Party committee members meeting to debate rules and bylaws for credentials for delegates. By a close call the Democrats were Story of the Day. Fortunately to liven things, up there was an unusual sprinkling of global reporting to round out the week--with updates from China, Brazil, South Africa and Pakistan.
Florida and Michigan were the two items on the Democrats' agenda. Both states broke party rules by holding primaries earlier than permitted. Both primaries were won by Hillary Rodham Clinton. Both victories availed her naught since she earned no delegates as a result. All three networks offered a preview of what formula would be devised to maintain sanctions against the two misbehaving states but at the same time to acknowledge Rodham Clinton's genuine base of support there. NBC's Chuck Todd predicted a "new magic number" after Florida and Michigan win partial representation: it will require 2118 delegates to clinch the nomination, not 2026.
Rodham Clinton "will likely net some delegates from the ruling but not enough," ABC's Jake Tapper expected, meaning that Barack Obama will likely hold on to become the nominee next week. CBS' Jeff Greenfield speculated that if the committee leaves Rodham Clinton's supporters feeling that she has been "disrespected" they have sufficient numbers at the Denver Convention "to do platform fights, rules fights, nominate another candidate to Vice President, throw things into disarray." Yet when NBC's Andrea Mitchell heard threats of a fight at the Convention she quoted Speaker Nancy Pelosi calling that "a scorched earth approach--and I do not recommend it."
Amid that dry-as-dust committee stuff, some jolts of inflammatory rhetoric enlivened campaign coverage. ABC's Tapper quoted candidate Rodham Clinton's outrageous comparison of the rules regarding Florida and Michigan with Zimbabwe, "where dictators rig elections that often end in violence." NBC's Mitchell picked Rodham Clinton backer Geraldine Ferraro's hyperbolic complaint in the Boston Globe: "If you are white you cannot open your mouth without being accused of being racist." And all three networks ran a soundbite by Michael Pfleger, a white Roman Catholic priest from the South Side of Chicago, teasing Rodham Clinton during a guest sermon at the Trinity United Church, Obama's almost all-black congregation. He cruelly lampooned the former First Lady with self-pitying sobs: "I am white. I am entitled. There is a black man stealing my show." Both ABC's Kate Snow (embargoed link) and CBS' Dean Reynolds reported that Pfleger subsequently apologized to Rodham Clinton.
CRANE FALL KILLS TWO The images of wreckage from the construction accident in Manhattan were certainly eyecatching. CBS' Kelly Wallace and NBC's Lester Holt used amateur cellphone videotape from the New York Post's Website to illustrate their accounts of the crane cab's collapse. As it fell, it sheared off the balconies from a next-door 23-story apartment building. Ryan Owens (embargoed link) on ABC used his network's Virtual View computer animation to recreate the break-up that killed two construction workers. In an attempt to nationalize the story, all three reporters mentioned recent fatal crane collapses in Miami, Missouri and in New York City. Owens reported that "the number of these massive cranes has tripled in the past decade" while many cities, including New York, have reduced the number of building inspectors.
TEENAGE GIRLS MAY STAY OFF RANCH The rebuke of Texas child welfare authorities by the state's Supreme Court over its raid of the Yearning for Zion ranch was a late breaking even that led Thursday's newscast. CBS had Hari Sreenivasan file a full follow-up while Don Teague on NBC offered a brief stand-up. ABC mentioned the upshot in passing that the fundamentalist Mormon children will return home on Monday. Teague stated that "all of the children" will be released from foster care; Sreenivasan quoted the expectation of unidentified lawyers that Child Protective Services will "keep custody of a handful of girls they believe were younger than the legal age of 16 when they married or became pregnant."
CANADIAN CHEMO Across the country, CBS' Sharyl Attkisson claimed, there are 100 oncologists who are buying discount chemotherapy drugs from a pharmacy in Texas that is the distribution arm for a Canadian firm. In Canada, an ovarian cancer drug such as Topotecan, Attkisson explained, costs $2930 a dose; in the United States the dose costs $4200.
So far so good. After that, Attkisson's Follow the Money report was notable for the information it lacked.
She told us that the FBI is investigating which price the pharmacy's customers are using to bill Medicare and Medicaid for the treatments. So far a single physician, Kee Shum of New York City, has been ordered to pay back $275,000 in excess billing yet even he is not admitting any wrongdoing. "There are still lots of loose ends," Attkisson conceded. Her unnamed sources--she just called them "US officials"--would not tell her whether any of the other 99 physicians is being investigated "or if the Canadian pharmacy violated any laws." Attkisson did not even tell us the name of the Canadian firm. As for the safety of the chemo medicines, "there is no way to know if patients have been hurt."
WHO CARES ABOUT THE GWOT? "The tide of war is turning…suffered significant setbacks…on the brink of defeat"--those were the top line quotes used by CBS' David Martin from CIA Director Michael Hayden about the dire straits facing al-Qaeda. Not only is the terrorist network all washed up in Iraq, according to the CIA, and decimated by arrest and assassination in Saudi Arabia, it is also "facing an ideological rebellion in its own ranks." A former member of al-Qaeda's inner circle known as Dr Fadl "has publicly denounced the group's violent tactics." It shows how little remaining newsmaking clout the once-vaunted War on Terrorism has left that only CBS assigns a reporter to cover this assessment. ABC mentioned it in passing; NBC not at all.
ABC can be forgiven for skipping the al-Qaeda story since it settled on an outrageous tidbit from Pakistan instead. Brian Ross landed a telephone q-&-a with AQ Khan, the physicist currently under house arrest for proliferating nuclear weapons technology to Iran, North Korea and Libya. Ross reminded us that Khan confessed four years ago to selling the know-how "almost singlehandedly" as part of a private rogue network without the permission or knowledge of President Pervez Musharraf. At the time Musharraf had to prove he was out of the loop--otherwise the United States would have had to impose sanctions on Pakistan.
Khan protested to Ross that Musharraf reneged on a deal: back then Khan agreed to take the blame in exchange for a subsequent pardon. None has been granted. So now Ross asked if it is true that he ran a private network: "I deny it. I deny it. I deny it." Ross suggested that Khan talk to US investigators. "Why should they ask me any questions? It is none of their bloody business." Does Khan's interview change the official views of the governments of Pakistan or the United States? "He is still seen as a lone operator making millions selling nuclear equipment and know-how."
LET THEM BE The Brazilian government acted as newsgatherer for a story on the Amazon rainforest. Its helicopter was flying over the jungle in Acre State near the Peruvian border when it was fired on with bows and arrows by tribesmen, their bodies painted red. No previous record was known of this village or the tribe that lives there. The helicopter left them alone and the government wants oil and gas and timber interests to do the same. It released the videotape via Survival International in the hope that publicizing their existence may deter development, "expose them to protect them," as ABC's Bill Blakemore (embargoed link) put it. The pictures were made available to all three networks: NBC anchor Brian Williams used stills; CBS anchor Katie Couric intercut video voiceover with an anthropologist's soundbites; ABC turned it into a reported story by New-York-based Blakemore.
HIGHER GROUND The earthquake in the mountains of Sichuan Province may cause a second catastrophe. ABC's Stephanie Sy (embargoed link) reported on so-called quake lakes Wednesday; now Mark Mullen files from the city of Mianyang for NBC's In Depth. The earthquake triggered landslides in narrow valleys that formed dams, blocking the flow of rivers. Rising waters behind the dams have turned into three dozen or so giant lakes, which will flood downstream cities if they burst. Sy showed us civil engineering efforts to remove the rocks and restore the water flow. Mullen went uphill to a tent village 2000 feet above the city where residents wait to see if the brand new Tangjiashan Lake, "something that did not even exist a month ago," will burst its banks and inundate their homes.
A BIG CAT PERSON It is a tradition of animal features to find the conservation zoologist who so identifies with the species he is trying to protect that he lives like one of them. Meet Kevin Richardson, ABC's Person of the Week, who "sometimes behaves like a pussy cat, other times king of the jungle." Jim Sciutto traveled to a game reserve near Johannesburg to monitor the plight of the African lion: "Hunting and shrinking habitat have reduced the lion population from around 200,000 in the 80s to just 16,000 today." Richardson, Sciutto promised, has a documentary in the works to publicize his cats' cause.
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 TACA Airlines jetliner crashed in Tegucigalpa, killing five…the high cost of fuel prompted protesting fishermen to idle their fleet in Spain…Israel's blockade of the Gaza Strip prevented seven Palestinian students from using their Fulbright scholarships.
Florida and Michigan were the two items on the Democrats' agenda. Both states broke party rules by holding primaries earlier than permitted. Both primaries were won by Hillary Rodham Clinton. Both victories availed her naught since she earned no delegates as a result. All three networks offered a preview of what formula would be devised to maintain sanctions against the two misbehaving states but at the same time to acknowledge Rodham Clinton's genuine base of support there. NBC's Chuck Todd predicted a "new magic number" after Florida and Michigan win partial representation: it will require 2118 delegates to clinch the nomination, not 2026.
Rodham Clinton "will likely net some delegates from the ruling but not enough," ABC's Jake Tapper expected, meaning that Barack Obama will likely hold on to become the nominee next week. CBS' Jeff Greenfield speculated that if the committee leaves Rodham Clinton's supporters feeling that she has been "disrespected" they have sufficient numbers at the Denver Convention "to do platform fights, rules fights, nominate another candidate to Vice President, throw things into disarray." Yet when NBC's Andrea Mitchell heard threats of a fight at the Convention she quoted Speaker Nancy Pelosi calling that "a scorched earth approach--and I do not recommend it."
Amid that dry-as-dust committee stuff, some jolts of inflammatory rhetoric enlivened campaign coverage. ABC's Tapper quoted candidate Rodham Clinton's outrageous comparison of the rules regarding Florida and Michigan with Zimbabwe, "where dictators rig elections that often end in violence." NBC's Mitchell picked Rodham Clinton backer Geraldine Ferraro's hyperbolic complaint in the Boston Globe: "If you are white you cannot open your mouth without being accused of being racist." And all three networks ran a soundbite by Michael Pfleger, a white Roman Catholic priest from the South Side of Chicago, teasing Rodham Clinton during a guest sermon at the Trinity United Church, Obama's almost all-black congregation. He cruelly lampooned the former First Lady with self-pitying sobs: "I am white. I am entitled. There is a black man stealing my show." Both ABC's Kate Snow (embargoed link) and CBS' Dean Reynolds reported that Pfleger subsequently apologized to Rodham Clinton.
CRANE FALL KILLS TWO The images of wreckage from the construction accident in Manhattan were certainly eyecatching. CBS' Kelly Wallace and NBC's Lester Holt used amateur cellphone videotape from the New York Post's Website to illustrate their accounts of the crane cab's collapse. As it fell, it sheared off the balconies from a next-door 23-story apartment building. Ryan Owens (embargoed link) on ABC used his network's Virtual View computer animation to recreate the break-up that killed two construction workers. In an attempt to nationalize the story, all three reporters mentioned recent fatal crane collapses in Miami, Missouri and in New York City. Owens reported that "the number of these massive cranes has tripled in the past decade" while many cities, including New York, have reduced the number of building inspectors.
TEENAGE GIRLS MAY STAY OFF RANCH The rebuke of Texas child welfare authorities by the state's Supreme Court over its raid of the Yearning for Zion ranch was a late breaking even that led Thursday's newscast. CBS had Hari Sreenivasan file a full follow-up while Don Teague on NBC offered a brief stand-up. ABC mentioned the upshot in passing that the fundamentalist Mormon children will return home on Monday. Teague stated that "all of the children" will be released from foster care; Sreenivasan quoted the expectation of unidentified lawyers that Child Protective Services will "keep custody of a handful of girls they believe were younger than the legal age of 16 when they married or became pregnant."
CANADIAN CHEMO Across the country, CBS' Sharyl Attkisson claimed, there are 100 oncologists who are buying discount chemotherapy drugs from a pharmacy in Texas that is the distribution arm for a Canadian firm. In Canada, an ovarian cancer drug such as Topotecan, Attkisson explained, costs $2930 a dose; in the United States the dose costs $4200.
So far so good. After that, Attkisson's Follow the Money report was notable for the information it lacked.
She told us that the FBI is investigating which price the pharmacy's customers are using to bill Medicare and Medicaid for the treatments. So far a single physician, Kee Shum of New York City, has been ordered to pay back $275,000 in excess billing yet even he is not admitting any wrongdoing. "There are still lots of loose ends," Attkisson conceded. Her unnamed sources--she just called them "US officials"--would not tell her whether any of the other 99 physicians is being investigated "or if the Canadian pharmacy violated any laws." Attkisson did not even tell us the name of the Canadian firm. As for the safety of the chemo medicines, "there is no way to know if patients have been hurt."
WHO CARES ABOUT THE GWOT? "The tide of war is turning…suffered significant setbacks…on the brink of defeat"--those were the top line quotes used by CBS' David Martin from CIA Director Michael Hayden about the dire straits facing al-Qaeda. Not only is the terrorist network all washed up in Iraq, according to the CIA, and decimated by arrest and assassination in Saudi Arabia, it is also "facing an ideological rebellion in its own ranks." A former member of al-Qaeda's inner circle known as Dr Fadl "has publicly denounced the group's violent tactics." It shows how little remaining newsmaking clout the once-vaunted War on Terrorism has left that only CBS assigns a reporter to cover this assessment. ABC mentioned it in passing; NBC not at all.
ABC can be forgiven for skipping the al-Qaeda story since it settled on an outrageous tidbit from Pakistan instead. Brian Ross landed a telephone q-&-a with AQ Khan, the physicist currently under house arrest for proliferating nuclear weapons technology to Iran, North Korea and Libya. Ross reminded us that Khan confessed four years ago to selling the know-how "almost singlehandedly" as part of a private rogue network without the permission or knowledge of President Pervez Musharraf. At the time Musharraf had to prove he was out of the loop--otherwise the United States would have had to impose sanctions on Pakistan.
Khan protested to Ross that Musharraf reneged on a deal: back then Khan agreed to take the blame in exchange for a subsequent pardon. None has been granted. So now Ross asked if it is true that he ran a private network: "I deny it. I deny it. I deny it." Ross suggested that Khan talk to US investigators. "Why should they ask me any questions? It is none of their bloody business." Does Khan's interview change the official views of the governments of Pakistan or the United States? "He is still seen as a lone operator making millions selling nuclear equipment and know-how."
LET THEM BE The Brazilian government acted as newsgatherer for a story on the Amazon rainforest. Its helicopter was flying over the jungle in Acre State near the Peruvian border when it was fired on with bows and arrows by tribesmen, their bodies painted red. No previous record was known of this village or the tribe that lives there. The helicopter left them alone and the government wants oil and gas and timber interests to do the same. It released the videotape via Survival International in the hope that publicizing their existence may deter development, "expose them to protect them," as ABC's Bill Blakemore (embargoed link) put it. The pictures were made available to all three networks: NBC anchor Brian Williams used stills; CBS anchor Katie Couric intercut video voiceover with an anthropologist's soundbites; ABC turned it into a reported story by New-York-based Blakemore.
HIGHER GROUND The earthquake in the mountains of Sichuan Province may cause a second catastrophe. ABC's Stephanie Sy (embargoed link) reported on so-called quake lakes Wednesday; now Mark Mullen files from the city of Mianyang for NBC's In Depth. The earthquake triggered landslides in narrow valleys that formed dams, blocking the flow of rivers. Rising waters behind the dams have turned into three dozen or so giant lakes, which will flood downstream cities if they burst. Sy showed us civil engineering efforts to remove the rocks and restore the water flow. Mullen went uphill to a tent village 2000 feet above the city where residents wait to see if the brand new Tangjiashan Lake, "something that did not even exist a month ago," will burst its banks and inundate their homes.
A BIG CAT PERSON It is a tradition of animal features to find the conservation zoologist who so identifies with the species he is trying to protect that he lives like one of them. Meet Kevin Richardson, ABC's Person of the Week, who "sometimes behaves like a pussy cat, other times king of the jungle." Jim Sciutto traveled to a game reserve near Johannesburg to monitor the plight of the African lion: "Hunting and shrinking habitat have reduced the lion population from around 200,000 in the 80s to just 16,000 today." Richardson, Sciutto promised, has a documentary in the works to publicize his cats' cause.
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 TACA Airlines jetliner crashed in Tegucigalpa, killing five…the high cost of fuel prompted protesting fishermen to idle their fleet in Spain…Israel's blockade of the Gaza Strip prevented seven Palestinian students from using their Fulbright scholarships.
