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TYNDALL HEADLINE: HIGHLIGHTS FROM JUNE 24, 2008
A confused news agenda saw CBS singlehandedly make Zimbabwe the Story of the Day. Anchor Katie Couric conducted a telephone interview with Morgan Tsvangirai, the opposition politician who pulled out of the presidential election in the face of organized violence by government forces. Couric's five minutes of coverage on Zimbabwe were enough to exceed the time allotted to any other single piece of news, even though she did not choose Zimbabwe as the day's lead. CBS kicked off with forest fires in northern California. NBC chose statistics from the Centers for Disease Control on the incidence of diabetes. ABC, with substitute anchor Elizabeth Vargas, selected the continuing decline in the value of residential real estate.
TYNDALL PICKS FOR JUNE 24, 2008: CLICK ON GRID ELEMENTS TO SEARCH FOR MATCHING ITEMS
ZIMBABWE UNDER CBS' SPOTLIGHT A confused news agenda saw CBS singlehandedly make Zimbabwe the Story of the Day. Anchor Katie Couric conducted a telephone interview with Morgan Tsvangirai, the opposition politician who pulled out of the presidential election in the face of organized violence by government forces. Couric's five minutes of coverage on Zimbabwe were enough to exceed the time allotted to any other single piece of news, even though she did not choose Zimbabwe as the day's lead. CBS kicked off with forest fires in northern California. NBC chose statistics from the Centers for Disease Control on the incidence of diabetes. ABC, with substitute anchor Elizabeth Vargas, selected the continuing decline in the value of residential real estate.
Tsvangirai talked to CBS' Couric from the diplomatic sanctuary of The Netherlands' embassy in Harare: "I have been arrested. I have been stopped at roadblocks. I have been treated like a common criminal, a common criminal and not as a leading contender in this country," he protested. Tsvangirai explained that he had withdrawn from Friday's run-off election, after finishing ahead of incumbent Robert Mugabe in the first round in March, in order to spare his supporters from violence and intimidation: "I cannot go to the state house over dead bodies and women's limbs having been chopped by axes and hacksaws. That is not the kind of political future we would like to create in the new Zimbabwe."
ONE WAR, TWO WARS, THREE WARS? ABC substitute anchor Elizabeth Vargas pointed out that Afghanistan is now four times more deadly for US military personnel than Iraq when she introduced Jim Sciutto's report on the 101st Airborne Division's campaign against Pakistan-trained Taliban guerrillas in Logar Province. So far in June, the networks have started to follow those casualty ratios, treating Afghanistan (39 min) as almost twice as newsworthy as Iraq (21 min). Gen Jeffrey Scholesser took Sciutto on a helicopter ride along the mountainous Pakistan-Afghanistan border to make his pitch for help to the Pentagon: "I would like to have more troops for sure." NBC's Lisa Myers picked up on a Pentagon angle of the Afghan war as a $300m contract to supply ammunition to the Kabul military came under scrutiny at Congressional hearings. The ammo, provided by AEY of Miami Beach, was allegedly outdated and defective, imported from China. AEY was run by Efrain Diveroli, who describes himself as a "super nice guy" on his MySpace.com page. Diveroli is now under arrest. He is just 21 years old.
CBS' coverage from the Pentagon came from David Martin. He reported on the quarrel between Defense Secretary Robert Gates and Vice President Dick Cheney over going to war with Iran. According to CBS' in-house Middle East analyst Michael Oren, Israel has asked the Pentagon to use Stealth bombers and cruise missiles to attack Teheran's suspected nuclear facilities before George Bush leaves office next January. Cheney is in favor; Gates is opposed. An air strike "could touch off a third war in the region," Martin pointed out.
GLOBAL FEATURES On a heavy day for foreign-related coverage, a trio of overseas features had a globalization angle. For ABC's A Closer Look Sharyn Alfonsi told us that the high cost of fuel was increasing the shipping expense of freight for imports. As a consequence some manufacturing jobs that had been outsourced to China were returning home, to be in closer trucking distance to domestic markets. On NBC's In Depth, Maria Schiavocampo acknowledged that increased spending on the Border Patrol had made some contribution to slowing the influx of illegal immigrants at the Tijuana crossing but she also pointed out that a weakening economy has dried up the demand for Mexican labor. Michelle Kosinski filed a What Works feature for NBC on a booming export business to resource-poor China, a country that lacks forests and metals and oil. Recyclers are cashing in, selling piles of waste paper trash and flattened aluminum cans and crushed plastic bottles.
OBAMA’S FRUITCAKE There was only a single report from the campaign trail. ABC's Jake Tapper offered publicity to James Dobson, the Christian conservative radio talkshow host who runs Focus on the Family, for his criticism of Barack Obama's understanding of the separation of church and state. Obama, in a 2006 speech, insisted that faith-based policies have to be advanced using secular arguments. Dobson characterized Obama as asserting that it is "anti-democratic to believe or fight for moral principles in the Bible that are not supported by people of all faiths." Dobson called Obama's theology "confused" and his interpretation of the Constitution "a fruitcake." Tapper noted that opinion polls show that Obama is currently no more successful at attracting support from white born-again voters than John Kerry had been in 2004.
DROUGHT AND DIABETES CBS led with fire and NBC with disease. After Mississippi River floods were the Story of the Day each day last week, it is now time for fire to provide weather porn video. CBS' Sandra Hughes and ABC's Laura Marquez (embargoed link) both filed from northern California where the drought-plagued forest was torched by dry lightning storms. The diabetes story, too, was covered by a correspondent on two of the three newscasts. NBC's Robert Bazell and ABC's Lisa Stark (embargoed link) covered CDC estimates that 24m nationwide are afflicted with the disease, an increase of three million in just the last two years. Disproportionately, patients tend to be poor or people of color, noted Bazell, "so all too often, those with the disease do not have access to the medical care that is critical to keeping the diabetes under control."
ECONOWATCH What to worry about in economic news? NBC selected rising prices and ABC chose falling ones. Betsy Stark (embargoed link) led off ABC's newscast with statistics from Case-Shiller that the average price of a home in the nation's top 20 metropolitan areas has now fallen to 2004 levels, 15% below what it was this time last year. Trish Regan of CNBC reported on Dow Chemical on NBC. The supplier of raw materials for "for just about everything from laundry detergent to diapers to lipstick" has increased its prices for the second time in five weeks: in May the hike was 20%; now it is 25%.
Consumers are so worried about the rising price of gasoline, NBC's Ron Mott reported, that all sorts of businesses--auto dealerships, golf equipment, baseball stadiums, grocery stores, hotels, brothels--are offering free fuel as a sales incentive. CBS, meanwhile, filed a couple of hard times features. Anthony Mason looked at homeowners facing foreclosure who owe more on their mortgage than the property is worth. Some can negotiate "short sales" with the bank, he explained, whereby the bank accepts the sale price as its payment in full to save itself the expense of taking possession of the property. A realtor in New Jersey told Mason that fully 80% of his deals nowadays are short sales. As part of Seth Doane's The Other America feature on CBS, we were introduced to the Remenar family of suburban Detroit. Laid-off automotive designer Mike Remenar is reduced to working a newspaper delivery round and using food stamps. "Do you consider yourselves middle class?" "Not any more. We were." "What do you consider yourselves now?" "Lower class."
FLOWER POWER Meerkat Manor enjoyed the praise of John Donvan on ABC. The nature documentary on a colony of African rodents on Animal Planet is all the rage. Donvan theorized that the critters' big eyes and social interactions make it irresistible for human TV viewers to anthropomorphize them. Thus the program is treated as part reality show, part soap opera. And viewers genuinely mourned, posting YouTube tributes, when Flower the meerkat was killed by a snake.
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 bomb in Baghdad's Sadr City neighborhood killed nine people, including Americans performing community outreach…the sound of an Israeli policeman committing suicide spooked Nicolas Sarkozy, the President of France, while on a state visit at Tel Aviv Airport…the Mississippi River floods have not subsided yet, with a levee breach at St Charles Mo…sugar farming will be discontinued in Florida's Everglades in a deal to return it to its wild state…the Transportation Security Administration keeps coins that airline travelers leave behind when passing through airport terminal metal detectors…golfer Tiger Woods underwent surgery to repair the knee he tore up while winning the USOpen.
Tsvangirai talked to CBS' Couric from the diplomatic sanctuary of The Netherlands' embassy in Harare: "I have been arrested. I have been stopped at roadblocks. I have been treated like a common criminal, a common criminal and not as a leading contender in this country," he protested. Tsvangirai explained that he had withdrawn from Friday's run-off election, after finishing ahead of incumbent Robert Mugabe in the first round in March, in order to spare his supporters from violence and intimidation: "I cannot go to the state house over dead bodies and women's limbs having been chopped by axes and hacksaws. That is not the kind of political future we would like to create in the new Zimbabwe."
ONE WAR, TWO WARS, THREE WARS? ABC substitute anchor Elizabeth Vargas pointed out that Afghanistan is now four times more deadly for US military personnel than Iraq when she introduced Jim Sciutto's report on the 101st Airborne Division's campaign against Pakistan-trained Taliban guerrillas in Logar Province. So far in June, the networks have started to follow those casualty ratios, treating Afghanistan (39 min) as almost twice as newsworthy as Iraq (21 min). Gen Jeffrey Scholesser took Sciutto on a helicopter ride along the mountainous Pakistan-Afghanistan border to make his pitch for help to the Pentagon: "I would like to have more troops for sure." NBC's Lisa Myers picked up on a Pentagon angle of the Afghan war as a $300m contract to supply ammunition to the Kabul military came under scrutiny at Congressional hearings. The ammo, provided by AEY of Miami Beach, was allegedly outdated and defective, imported from China. AEY was run by Efrain Diveroli, who describes himself as a "super nice guy" on his MySpace.com page. Diveroli is now under arrest. He is just 21 years old.
CBS' coverage from the Pentagon came from David Martin. He reported on the quarrel between Defense Secretary Robert Gates and Vice President Dick Cheney over going to war with Iran. According to CBS' in-house Middle East analyst Michael Oren, Israel has asked the Pentagon to use Stealth bombers and cruise missiles to attack Teheran's suspected nuclear facilities before George Bush leaves office next January. Cheney is in favor; Gates is opposed. An air strike "could touch off a third war in the region," Martin pointed out.
GLOBAL FEATURES On a heavy day for foreign-related coverage, a trio of overseas features had a globalization angle. For ABC's A Closer Look Sharyn Alfonsi told us that the high cost of fuel was increasing the shipping expense of freight for imports. As a consequence some manufacturing jobs that had been outsourced to China were returning home, to be in closer trucking distance to domestic markets. On NBC's In Depth, Maria Schiavocampo acknowledged that increased spending on the Border Patrol had made some contribution to slowing the influx of illegal immigrants at the Tijuana crossing but she also pointed out that a weakening economy has dried up the demand for Mexican labor. Michelle Kosinski filed a What Works feature for NBC on a booming export business to resource-poor China, a country that lacks forests and metals and oil. Recyclers are cashing in, selling piles of waste paper trash and flattened aluminum cans and crushed plastic bottles.
OBAMA’S FRUITCAKE There was only a single report from the campaign trail. ABC's Jake Tapper offered publicity to James Dobson, the Christian conservative radio talkshow host who runs Focus on the Family, for his criticism of Barack Obama's understanding of the separation of church and state. Obama, in a 2006 speech, insisted that faith-based policies have to be advanced using secular arguments. Dobson characterized Obama as asserting that it is "anti-democratic to believe or fight for moral principles in the Bible that are not supported by people of all faiths." Dobson called Obama's theology "confused" and his interpretation of the Constitution "a fruitcake." Tapper noted that opinion polls show that Obama is currently no more successful at attracting support from white born-again voters than John Kerry had been in 2004.
DROUGHT AND DIABETES CBS led with fire and NBC with disease. After Mississippi River floods were the Story of the Day each day last week, it is now time for fire to provide weather porn video. CBS' Sandra Hughes and ABC's Laura Marquez (embargoed link) both filed from northern California where the drought-plagued forest was torched by dry lightning storms. The diabetes story, too, was covered by a correspondent on two of the three newscasts. NBC's Robert Bazell and ABC's Lisa Stark (embargoed link) covered CDC estimates that 24m nationwide are afflicted with the disease, an increase of three million in just the last two years. Disproportionately, patients tend to be poor or people of color, noted Bazell, "so all too often, those with the disease do not have access to the medical care that is critical to keeping the diabetes under control."
ECONOWATCH What to worry about in economic news? NBC selected rising prices and ABC chose falling ones. Betsy Stark (embargoed link) led off ABC's newscast with statistics from Case-Shiller that the average price of a home in the nation's top 20 metropolitan areas has now fallen to 2004 levels, 15% below what it was this time last year. Trish Regan of CNBC reported on Dow Chemical on NBC. The supplier of raw materials for "for just about everything from laundry detergent to diapers to lipstick" has increased its prices for the second time in five weeks: in May the hike was 20%; now it is 25%.
Consumers are so worried about the rising price of gasoline, NBC's Ron Mott reported, that all sorts of businesses--auto dealerships, golf equipment, baseball stadiums, grocery stores, hotels, brothels--are offering free fuel as a sales incentive. CBS, meanwhile, filed a couple of hard times features. Anthony Mason looked at homeowners facing foreclosure who owe more on their mortgage than the property is worth. Some can negotiate "short sales" with the bank, he explained, whereby the bank accepts the sale price as its payment in full to save itself the expense of taking possession of the property. A realtor in New Jersey told Mason that fully 80% of his deals nowadays are short sales. As part of Seth Doane's The Other America feature on CBS, we were introduced to the Remenar family of suburban Detroit. Laid-off automotive designer Mike Remenar is reduced to working a newspaper delivery round and using food stamps. "Do you consider yourselves middle class?" "Not any more. We were." "What do you consider yourselves now?" "Lower class."
FLOWER POWER Meerkat Manor enjoyed the praise of John Donvan on ABC. The nature documentary on a colony of African rodents on Animal Planet is all the rage. Donvan theorized that the critters' big eyes and social interactions make it irresistible for human TV viewers to anthropomorphize them. Thus the program is treated as part reality show, part soap opera. And viewers genuinely mourned, posting YouTube tributes, when Flower the meerkat was killed by a snake.
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 bomb in Baghdad's Sadr City neighborhood killed nine people, including Americans performing community outreach…the sound of an Israeli policeman committing suicide spooked Nicolas Sarkozy, the President of France, while on a state visit at Tel Aviv Airport…the Mississippi River floods have not subsided yet, with a levee breach at St Charles Mo…sugar farming will be discontinued in Florida's Everglades in a deal to return it to its wild state…the Transportation Security Administration keeps coins that airline travelers leave behind when passing through airport terminal metal detectors…golfer Tiger Woods underwent surgery to repair the knee he tore up while winning the USOpen.
