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TYNDALL HEADLINE: HIGHLIGHTS FROM AUGUST 14, 2008
We can expect Beijing to be the default Story of the Day for the next two weeks. Whenever there is a split decision in the news agenda, NBC's self-promoting effort, with anchor Brian Williams in attendance, to publicize its sports division's coverage of the Olympic Games will propel Beijing into the top spot. Swimmer Michael Phelps grabbed the day's headlines as he won his fifth gold medal of the current meet. Needless to say, even Phelps was not newsworthy enough to lead off a newscast but the three networks split. NBC chose worsening inflation data; ABC landed the inside story on the emergency on Barack Obama's campaign plane last month. CBS, with substitute anchor Harry Smith, sent mixed messages by choosing the crisis in Georgia as its lead.
TYNDALL PICKS FOR AUGUST 14, 2008: CLICK ON GRID ELEMENTS TO SEARCH FOR MATCHING ITEMS
MICHAEL PHELPS CLOSES IN ON GOLD MINE We can expect Beijing to be the default Story of the Day for the next two weeks. Whenever there is a split decision in the news agenda, NBC's self-promoting effort, with anchor Brian Williams in attendance, to publicize its sports division's coverage of the Olympic Games will propel Beijing into the top spot. Swimmer Michael Phelps grabbed the day's headlines as he won his fifth gold medal of the current meet. Needless to say, even Phelps was not newsworthy enough to lead off a newscast but the three networks split. NBC chose worsening inflation data; ABC landed the inside story on the emergency on Barack Obama's campaign plane last month. CBS, with substitute anchor Harry Smith, sent mixed messages by choosing the crisis in Georgia as its lead.
CBS' message on Georgia was mixed since it treated the unresolved conflict in the Caucasus as important enough to warrant a pair of lead-off reports--but not important enough to dispatch a correspondent to the scene, unlike its two rival newscasts. Mark Phillips narrated from London, followed by Lara Logan filing from CBS' bureau in Washington DC. Phillips showed continued violence, as gunfire was directed towards a Turkish TV crew. NBC's Jim Maceda showed a Georgian TV reporter getting shot in the arm.
The highway from Tbilisi to Gori remains blockaded by Russian troops even as ABC's Clarissa Ward heard "no reports of violence between Russian and Georgian forces. Instead most of the violence came from Russian-supported militias." She was told by the Russian military that its activity consisted merely of "controled detonations of abandoned weaponry." NBC's Maceda found the Russians "seemingly in no hurry to pull back" while Robert Moore, his British newsgathering partner from ITN, told us that "it is difficult to convey the sheer scale of the Russian military presence" in South Ossetia, Georgia's pro-Russian secession-minded province.
With the United Nations estimating that as many as 100,000 civilians have been displaced by the week of fighting, the US military began humanitarian air relief. Defense Secretary Robert Gates warned Moscow of a potential adverse effect on relations between the United States and Russia in response to the incursion--at the same time he reassured them that escalation was not in the cards, according to CBS' Logan: "Gates was adamant that sending US troops is not an option," even though the Pentagon already has "elite special operations forces" on the ground in Georgia.
OBAMA’S EMERGENCY LANDING The news from the campaign trail proper concerned the negotiations between Barack Obama and Hillary Rodham Clinton about the order of business at the Democratic National Convention in Denver. Both ABC's Kate Snow and CBS' Dean Reynolds covered the decision to allow Rodham Clinton to be put into nomination for a formal roll call vote. Reynolds unidentified "sources" told him that it will be all for show. She "is expected to formally release her delegates and encourage them to follow her lead and vote for Obama."
Brian Ross' coverage of the Obama campaign for ABC was a follow-up to its plane's unscheduled landing at the airport in St Louis in the first week of July. At the time, the Federal Aviation Administration stopped short of calling it an emergency. Now Ross produces air traffic control audiotapes to show that the pilot had formally designated it as such and had requested fire and crash rescue equipment to be on stand-by on the runway. Ross reported that an evacuation slide had inflated inside the jet's tail, disabling the plane's steering cables. It was not until the plane descended from 32,000 feet to 10,000 feet that the pressure on the cables was relieved and the pilot regained control
CBS assigned technology correspondent Daniel Sieberg to compare and contrast the online efforts of the two candidates. His verdict: John McCain's Website "it still playing catch-up to Obama's use of cyberspace." Item: Obama's site targets 18 separate demographic and interest groups; McCain's six. Item: Obama's offers a facility for supporters to organize events; McCain issues talking points. Item: Obama has seven times as many social network friends as McCain does. Item: according to designer Doug Jaeger of happycorp.com, Obama's site is "clean;" McCain's is "cluttered." Sieberg's sole consolation for the Republican is that "there is no guarantee that online enthusiasm will translate into votes."
99C NOT WORTH WHAT IT ONCE WAS The worst inflation news in 17 years was covered by CBS and NBC but not mentioned by ABC. Energy, food, airline and apparel prices are all rising, combining to an annual 5.6% rate according to the consumer price index. CNBC's Scott Cohn reported for NBC that it is getting so bad that even the 99c chain of retail stores will have prices over $1. CBS' Anthony Mason observed that the Federal Reserve would normally raise interest rates under these circumstances but record foreclosures in the housing market are "holding it back." Also on CBS, Nancy Cordes envisioned yet higher transAtlantic air fares as 90% of that traffic is likely to be carved up between just three alliances of carriers: United-Lufthansa, Delta-NorthWest-KLM-Air France, and the now announced pact between British Airways and American Airlines. "With high oil prices and a weak dollar crippling the US carriers, they may have to hitch their wagons to their stronger European counterparts just to stay aloft."
SEE WEIR LOB A ROCK INTO THE GLUP ABC continued its weeklong series on the Oil Crunch from Canada. After David Muir's trip to a Gulf of Mexico oil platform and Betsy Stark's visit to a Port Arthur refinery and anchor Charles Gibson's carbon-neutral sitdown (here and here) with the boss at ExxonMobil, Bill Weir toured the oil sands of Alberta. Bitumen is strip mined from fields six miles in diameter by monster trucks that are three stories high "with side mirrors the size of refrigerators." Virgin forests are being destroyed to retrieve pitch that is "gooey and sloppy in the summer sun." Processing the tar produces triple the volume of greenhouse gases compared with conventional crude. Generating each barrel of oil uses four barrels of water whose waste is dumped in toxic reservoirs. "Poisoning the earth, air and water," Weir concluded.
BOB APPETIT The National Archives made public World War II files on the Office of Strategic Services, the predecessor organization to the CIA. NBC's Pete Williams ran down some famous names, Justice Arthur Goldberg, major league catcher Moe Berg, actor Sterling Hayden…and the French Chef. ABC anchor Charles Gibson (embargoed link), naturally, focused solely on the latter, since spy Julia Child was his longtime colleague at Good Morning America: "Those of us who had the privilege to know her and who love her still, miss her greatly."
I WANNA SWIM LIKE MIKE Of the three features on champion swimmer Michael Phelps inspired by his Olympic exploits, unfortunately only the least interesting--filed by NBC's Chris Jansing--is available online. Jansing told us of the Phelps Effect, the increasing popularity of lap swimming at pools nationwide. Not available is ABC's David Muir contacting Mark Spitz, the 1972 Olympic champion whose record may be about to be eclipsed by Phelps: "There is only one other guy in this whole world that knows what he is going through and that is me," Spitz stated proudly, before offering a gracious conclusion. "It is time for somebody else." Also unavailable on CBS is Barry Petersen's anatomy lesson to explain why Phelps is uniquely built to swim fast. He has the torso and wingspan of a man four inches taller; he has short legs and hyperflexible ankles allowing him to flip huge feet; and his metabolism produces less fatigue-inducing lactic acid than most other athletes.
Rounding out NBC's Beijing coverage, Carl Quintanilla offered a conventional up-close-and-personal profile of a member of the USA team. Shot putter Reese Hoffa has two mothers because he was sent to an orphanage when he was four years old after he and his brother burned their house down. His adoptive mother and his birth mother now both cheer him on. Mark Mullen's feature has a harder edge. It followed China's Project 119, the intensive sports camps for children founded in 2001 to produce Beijing medals across the sports spectrum. "Schoolwork takes a back seat to hours of rigorous practice under the watchful eye of their coaches. Family takes a back seat as well…classmates live full time at school seeing their parents only a few days a year."
CBS' message on Georgia was mixed since it treated the unresolved conflict in the Caucasus as important enough to warrant a pair of lead-off reports--but not important enough to dispatch a correspondent to the scene, unlike its two rival newscasts. Mark Phillips narrated from London, followed by Lara Logan filing from CBS' bureau in Washington DC. Phillips showed continued violence, as gunfire was directed towards a Turkish TV crew. NBC's Jim Maceda showed a Georgian TV reporter getting shot in the arm.
The highway from Tbilisi to Gori remains blockaded by Russian troops even as ABC's Clarissa Ward heard "no reports of violence between Russian and Georgian forces. Instead most of the violence came from Russian-supported militias." She was told by the Russian military that its activity consisted merely of "controled detonations of abandoned weaponry." NBC's Maceda found the Russians "seemingly in no hurry to pull back" while Robert Moore, his British newsgathering partner from ITN, told us that "it is difficult to convey the sheer scale of the Russian military presence" in South Ossetia, Georgia's pro-Russian secession-minded province.
With the United Nations estimating that as many as 100,000 civilians have been displaced by the week of fighting, the US military began humanitarian air relief. Defense Secretary Robert Gates warned Moscow of a potential adverse effect on relations between the United States and Russia in response to the incursion--at the same time he reassured them that escalation was not in the cards, according to CBS' Logan: "Gates was adamant that sending US troops is not an option," even though the Pentagon already has "elite special operations forces" on the ground in Georgia.
OBAMA’S EMERGENCY LANDING The news from the campaign trail proper concerned the negotiations between Barack Obama and Hillary Rodham Clinton about the order of business at the Democratic National Convention in Denver. Both ABC's Kate Snow and CBS' Dean Reynolds covered the decision to allow Rodham Clinton to be put into nomination for a formal roll call vote. Reynolds unidentified "sources" told him that it will be all for show. She "is expected to formally release her delegates and encourage them to follow her lead and vote for Obama."
Brian Ross' coverage of the Obama campaign for ABC was a follow-up to its plane's unscheduled landing at the airport in St Louis in the first week of July. At the time, the Federal Aviation Administration stopped short of calling it an emergency. Now Ross produces air traffic control audiotapes to show that the pilot had formally designated it as such and had requested fire and crash rescue equipment to be on stand-by on the runway. Ross reported that an evacuation slide had inflated inside the jet's tail, disabling the plane's steering cables. It was not until the plane descended from 32,000 feet to 10,000 feet that the pressure on the cables was relieved and the pilot regained control
CBS assigned technology correspondent Daniel Sieberg to compare and contrast the online efforts of the two candidates. His verdict: John McCain's Website "it still playing catch-up to Obama's use of cyberspace." Item: Obama's site targets 18 separate demographic and interest groups; McCain's six. Item: Obama's offers a facility for supporters to organize events; McCain issues talking points. Item: Obama has seven times as many social network friends as McCain does. Item: according to designer Doug Jaeger of happycorp.com, Obama's site is "clean;" McCain's is "cluttered." Sieberg's sole consolation for the Republican is that "there is no guarantee that online enthusiasm will translate into votes."
99C NOT WORTH WHAT IT ONCE WAS The worst inflation news in 17 years was covered by CBS and NBC but not mentioned by ABC. Energy, food, airline and apparel prices are all rising, combining to an annual 5.6% rate according to the consumer price index. CNBC's Scott Cohn reported for NBC that it is getting so bad that even the 99c chain of retail stores will have prices over $1. CBS' Anthony Mason observed that the Federal Reserve would normally raise interest rates under these circumstances but record foreclosures in the housing market are "holding it back." Also on CBS, Nancy Cordes envisioned yet higher transAtlantic air fares as 90% of that traffic is likely to be carved up between just three alliances of carriers: United-Lufthansa, Delta-NorthWest-KLM-Air France, and the now announced pact between British Airways and American Airlines. "With high oil prices and a weak dollar crippling the US carriers, they may have to hitch their wagons to their stronger European counterparts just to stay aloft."
SEE WEIR LOB A ROCK INTO THE GLUP ABC continued its weeklong series on the Oil Crunch from Canada. After David Muir's trip to a Gulf of Mexico oil platform and Betsy Stark's visit to a Port Arthur refinery and anchor Charles Gibson's carbon-neutral sitdown (here and here) with the boss at ExxonMobil, Bill Weir toured the oil sands of Alberta. Bitumen is strip mined from fields six miles in diameter by monster trucks that are three stories high "with side mirrors the size of refrigerators." Virgin forests are being destroyed to retrieve pitch that is "gooey and sloppy in the summer sun." Processing the tar produces triple the volume of greenhouse gases compared with conventional crude. Generating each barrel of oil uses four barrels of water whose waste is dumped in toxic reservoirs. "Poisoning the earth, air and water," Weir concluded.
BOB APPETIT The National Archives made public World War II files on the Office of Strategic Services, the predecessor organization to the CIA. NBC's Pete Williams ran down some famous names, Justice Arthur Goldberg, major league catcher Moe Berg, actor Sterling Hayden…and the French Chef. ABC anchor Charles Gibson (embargoed link), naturally, focused solely on the latter, since spy Julia Child was his longtime colleague at Good Morning America: "Those of us who had the privilege to know her and who love her still, miss her greatly."
I WANNA SWIM LIKE MIKE Of the three features on champion swimmer Michael Phelps inspired by his Olympic exploits, unfortunately only the least interesting--filed by NBC's Chris Jansing--is available online. Jansing told us of the Phelps Effect, the increasing popularity of lap swimming at pools nationwide. Not available is ABC's David Muir contacting Mark Spitz, the 1972 Olympic champion whose record may be about to be eclipsed by Phelps: "There is only one other guy in this whole world that knows what he is going through and that is me," Spitz stated proudly, before offering a gracious conclusion. "It is time for somebody else." Also unavailable on CBS is Barry Petersen's anatomy lesson to explain why Phelps is uniquely built to swim fast. He has the torso and wingspan of a man four inches taller; he has short legs and hyperflexible ankles allowing him to flip huge feet; and his metabolism produces less fatigue-inducing lactic acid than most other athletes.
Rounding out NBC's Beijing coverage, Carl Quintanilla offered a conventional up-close-and-personal profile of a member of the USA team. Shot putter Reese Hoffa has two mothers because he was sent to an orphanage when he was four years old after he and his brother burned their house down. His adoptive mother and his birth mother now both cheer him on. Mark Mullen's feature has a harder edge. It followed China's Project 119, the intensive sports camps for children founded in 2001 to produce Beijing medals across the sports spectrum. "Schoolwork takes a back seat to hours of rigorous practice under the watchful eye of their coaches. Family takes a back seat as well…classmates live full time at school seeing their parents only a few days a year."
