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TYNDALL HEADLINE: HIGHLIGHTS FROM SEPTEMBER 30, 2008
There were two main follow-up angles to Monday's defeat of the Treasury Department's $700bn plan to bail out finance capitalism from its debt crisis. ABC and CBS led with the fallout in the financial markets, where stock prices rebounded but short-term interest rates skyrocketed. NBC led from Capitol Hill, where negotiators set about amending the plan in order to attract the missing 13 votes in the House of Representatives that accounted for its defeat. Combined, the two angles qualified the financial crisis as the network newscasts' Story of the Day for the eighth weekday in a row.
TYNDALL PICKS FOR SEPTEMBER 30, 2008: CLICK ON GRID ELEMENTS TO SEARCH FOR MATCHING ITEMS
FINANCE FALLOUT LEADS YET AGAIN There were two main follow-up angles to Monday's defeat of the Treasury Department's $700bn plan to bail out finance capitalism from its debt crisis. ABC and CBS led with the fallout in the financial markets, where stock prices rebounded but short-term interest rates skyrocketed. NBC led from Capitol Hill, where negotiators set about amending the plan in order to attract the missing 13 votes in the House of Representatives that accounted for its defeat. Combined, the two angles qualified the financial crisis as the network newscasts' Story of the Day for the eighth weekday in a row.
NBC's Tom Costello saw himself rubbernecking at the "train wreck at the intersection of politics and Wall Street" as he kept track of the trial balloons floating through the halls of Congress. Accounting rules may be changed to keep bad loans secret. Federal insurance may be raised to allow banks to take larger deposits. Democrats want more unemployment benefits. Republicans want more tax cuts for investors "There is a lot of talk here," he declared. The balancing act, explained ABC's Jake Tapper, consisted of "trying to introduce provisions that will attract Republicans without alienating Democrats--and vice versa." CBS' Bob Orr reported that the "credit crisis is keeping pressure on the Congress to act right now even with the election just five weeks away."
ABC's Tapper noted that popular opposition to the $700bn bailout--Tapper suggested that "rescue" might have been a more palatable label--is so intense that volume on the Write Your Representative feature "threatened to bring down the entire House of Representatives' Website. Computer technicians had to limit the number of people who could use the feature just so the whole system does not come crashing down."
LOOK AT LIBOR For the second day in a row, ABC's Betsy Stark and CBS' Anthony Mason filed on the response to the financial crisis of financiers, investors and speculators while NBC, normally the specialist on that beat courtesy of its CNBC link, left it alone. "Talk about whiplash," Stark exclaimed, as the Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 485 points following Monday's 777 point decline. Then she told us that LIBOR, not DJIA, was the indicator to look for: "The largely invisible credit markets were signaling something else." The interest rates bank charge each other overnight make the stock market "a side show." And CBS' Mason concluded with his "bottom line--the stock market is still highly volatile and Wall Street is still edgy because the credit markets are still frozen."
Instead of high finance, NBC got CNBC involved to offer a primer on personal finance. Erin Burnett gave us chapter and verse on federal insurance for our bank deposits. She concluded with patriotic praise for the legacy of the New Deal: "Hopefully that will make the whole country stronger when we realize how lucky it is that we have these rules and these strong institutions and a government that can actually step in at the right time and make a difference…Keep it in the bank!"
SBARRO DESERVES CREDIT The third angle on the financial crisis was to illustrate the impact of the reluctance of banks to extend credit on their customers. NBC had Mark Potter profile the worries of small business--a dry cleaner, a bakery, a milliner, a marketing firm, a car dealership, computer technicians--"facing fundamental changes in the way they do business." On ABC's A Closer Look, Barbara Pinto (embargoed link) pointed out that it was not only small business that is at risk if deprived of loans. She added Sbarro restaurants; Dollar and Thrifty rental cars; Sealy mattresses; and realtors Century 21 and Coldwell Banker.
ABC's 50 States in 50 Days series is supposed to focus on Campaign '08 but the news of the day obliged Neal Karlinsky to focus on the vox pop on the financial bailout when he stopped off in Fargo for North Dakota's turn in the spotlight. Democrat Earl Pomeroy, the state's lone Congressman, voted in favor of the bailout because "his constituents told him Wall Street's troubles were beginning to trickle down."
REPUBLICAN SELF-CRITICISM Yet one more angle on the financial crisis, the political one. NBC's Andrea Mitchell filed a roundup from the campaign trail in which each candidate endorsed the $700bn bailout and an expansion of FDIC insurance. Then she pointed out that the Republican National Committee is out of step with its own John McCain. "Wall Street squanders our money and Washington is forced to bail them out with--you guessed it--our money," went the RNC ad. The RNC called it "Barack Obama's plan."
PALIN’S PERSONAL POLITICS The major campaign coverage of the day came from CBS anchor Katie Couric, who filed an extended nine-minute fourth part of her Exclusive profile of Sarah Palin, the Republican Vice-Presidential nominee and Governor of Alaska. Last week Palin discussed the financial crisis and foreign policy with Couric; Monday she double-teamed with John McCain; now she addressed Couric's personal-political questions.
Yes, Palin is a feminist who believes in equal rights for women. Yes, she read newspapers and magazines before she was nominated, "most of them…all of them…any of them that have been in front of me." Yes, the globe is warming but it "kind of does not matter" whether the warming is caused by humans burning fossil fuels. Yes, she is pro-life--and would so counsel incestuously raped pregnant teenagers--but no woman should be incarcerated for having an abortion. Yes, she approves of contraception but would not personally use the morning-after method. Yes, she subscribes to evolution science even as she sees "the hand of God" in Earth's creation. "As for homosexuality, I am not going to judge Americans and the decisions that they make in their adult personal relationships."
POLL, PURGES & PRISON Each network filed one other election-related report in the run-up to November. On ABC, it was the publication of the network's own latest national opinion poll, in conjunction with Washington Post. It showed Barack Obama with a 50%-46% lead over John McCain among likely voters. George Stephanopoulos isolated registered independents and white women as the two most changeable blocs of voters, whose allegiances have made "dramatic" shifts back and forth since the Republican Convention.
ABC measures George Bush as the most unfavorably rated President in the 70-year history of opinion polling.
CBS' campaign feature was an Exclusive filed by Armen Keteyian on so called voter purges, the system whereby registration rolls are checked for felons, dead people and former residents. Keteyian covered a report by the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University that denounced the purges as "chaotic, riddled with inaccuracies and vulnerable to manipulation." The report fingered abuses in Georgia, Mississippi and Louisiana. In addition, rolls have been illegally purged inside the 90-day deadline period before an election in the swing states of Colorado, Ohio and Nevada.
NBC sent Ian Williams to Hanoi to retrace the Vietnam War travails of the USNavy pilot John McCain. Williams showed us the lake where his plane crashed. He interviewed the nurse who set his broken arms and legs. He showed us the Hanoi Hilton, the prison where he was held for two out of his five years in captivity. McCain has described his "beatings and torture" in the prison, Williams reminded us. He introduced us to the Hilton's director who "remembers it differently." After hours, the two would talk as friends while "McCain helped teach him English."
OIL AT A CRAWL Motorists are still having a hard time finding gasoline in Charlotte and Atlanta. CBS' Mark Strassmann and NBC's Michelle Kosinski were both in Georgia's capital to show us the closed filling stations, high prices and long lines. Strassmann pointed out that the southeast is the nation's only region "without major gas storage capacity" while Kosinski noted that the region has only one refinery. "Virtually all the gasoline in the South has to be piped in from the Gulf crawling through those pipelines at less than 5 mph."
EAT LIKE ANDY On Monday, when the Wall Street sold off, which was the sole company in the S&P 500 index whose stock price did not fall? ABC's Dan Harris showed us the Warholesque soupcan icon for an answer. Campbell's. It inspired Harris to file a closing feature in praise of comfort food. In these anxious economic times, such brands are not only inexpensive, "studies of animals suggest that fatty comfort foods may ease stress."
NBC's Tom Costello saw himself rubbernecking at the "train wreck at the intersection of politics and Wall Street" as he kept track of the trial balloons floating through the halls of Congress. Accounting rules may be changed to keep bad loans secret. Federal insurance may be raised to allow banks to take larger deposits. Democrats want more unemployment benefits. Republicans want more tax cuts for investors "There is a lot of talk here," he declared. The balancing act, explained ABC's Jake Tapper, consisted of "trying to introduce provisions that will attract Republicans without alienating Democrats--and vice versa." CBS' Bob Orr reported that the "credit crisis is keeping pressure on the Congress to act right now even with the election just five weeks away."
ABC's Tapper noted that popular opposition to the $700bn bailout--Tapper suggested that "rescue" might have been a more palatable label--is so intense that volume on the Write Your Representative feature "threatened to bring down the entire House of Representatives' Website. Computer technicians had to limit the number of people who could use the feature just so the whole system does not come crashing down."
LOOK AT LIBOR For the second day in a row, ABC's Betsy Stark and CBS' Anthony Mason filed on the response to the financial crisis of financiers, investors and speculators while NBC, normally the specialist on that beat courtesy of its CNBC link, left it alone. "Talk about whiplash," Stark exclaimed, as the Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 485 points following Monday's 777 point decline. Then she told us that LIBOR, not DJIA, was the indicator to look for: "The largely invisible credit markets were signaling something else." The interest rates bank charge each other overnight make the stock market "a side show." And CBS' Mason concluded with his "bottom line--the stock market is still highly volatile and Wall Street is still edgy because the credit markets are still frozen."
Instead of high finance, NBC got CNBC involved to offer a primer on personal finance. Erin Burnett gave us chapter and verse on federal insurance for our bank deposits. She concluded with patriotic praise for the legacy of the New Deal: "Hopefully that will make the whole country stronger when we realize how lucky it is that we have these rules and these strong institutions and a government that can actually step in at the right time and make a difference…Keep it in the bank!"
SBARRO DESERVES CREDIT The third angle on the financial crisis was to illustrate the impact of the reluctance of banks to extend credit on their customers. NBC had Mark Potter profile the worries of small business--a dry cleaner, a bakery, a milliner, a marketing firm, a car dealership, computer technicians--"facing fundamental changes in the way they do business." On ABC's A Closer Look, Barbara Pinto (embargoed link) pointed out that it was not only small business that is at risk if deprived of loans. She added Sbarro restaurants; Dollar and Thrifty rental cars; Sealy mattresses; and realtors Century 21 and Coldwell Banker.
ABC's 50 States in 50 Days series is supposed to focus on Campaign '08 but the news of the day obliged Neal Karlinsky to focus on the vox pop on the financial bailout when he stopped off in Fargo for North Dakota's turn in the spotlight. Democrat Earl Pomeroy, the state's lone Congressman, voted in favor of the bailout because "his constituents told him Wall Street's troubles were beginning to trickle down."
REPUBLICAN SELF-CRITICISM Yet one more angle on the financial crisis, the political one. NBC's Andrea Mitchell filed a roundup from the campaign trail in which each candidate endorsed the $700bn bailout and an expansion of FDIC insurance. Then she pointed out that the Republican National Committee is out of step with its own John McCain. "Wall Street squanders our money and Washington is forced to bail them out with--you guessed it--our money," went the RNC ad. The RNC called it "Barack Obama's plan."
PALIN’S PERSONAL POLITICS The major campaign coverage of the day came from CBS anchor Katie Couric, who filed an extended nine-minute fourth part of her Exclusive profile of Sarah Palin, the Republican Vice-Presidential nominee and Governor of Alaska. Last week Palin discussed the financial crisis and foreign policy with Couric; Monday she double-teamed with John McCain; now she addressed Couric's personal-political questions.
Yes, Palin is a feminist who believes in equal rights for women. Yes, she read newspapers and magazines before she was nominated, "most of them…all of them…any of them that have been in front of me." Yes, the globe is warming but it "kind of does not matter" whether the warming is caused by humans burning fossil fuels. Yes, she is pro-life--and would so counsel incestuously raped pregnant teenagers--but no woman should be incarcerated for having an abortion. Yes, she approves of contraception but would not personally use the morning-after method. Yes, she subscribes to evolution science even as she sees "the hand of God" in Earth's creation. "As for homosexuality, I am not going to judge Americans and the decisions that they make in their adult personal relationships."
POLL, PURGES & PRISON Each network filed one other election-related report in the run-up to November. On ABC, it was the publication of the network's own latest national opinion poll, in conjunction with Washington Post. It showed Barack Obama with a 50%-46% lead over John McCain among likely voters. George Stephanopoulos isolated registered independents and white women as the two most changeable blocs of voters, whose allegiances have made "dramatic" shifts back and forth since the Republican Convention.
ABC measures George Bush as the most unfavorably rated President in the 70-year history of opinion polling.
CBS' campaign feature was an Exclusive filed by Armen Keteyian on so called voter purges, the system whereby registration rolls are checked for felons, dead people and former residents. Keteyian covered a report by the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University that denounced the purges as "chaotic, riddled with inaccuracies and vulnerable to manipulation." The report fingered abuses in Georgia, Mississippi and Louisiana. In addition, rolls have been illegally purged inside the 90-day deadline period before an election in the swing states of Colorado, Ohio and Nevada.
NBC sent Ian Williams to Hanoi to retrace the Vietnam War travails of the USNavy pilot John McCain. Williams showed us the lake where his plane crashed. He interviewed the nurse who set his broken arms and legs. He showed us the Hanoi Hilton, the prison where he was held for two out of his five years in captivity. McCain has described his "beatings and torture" in the prison, Williams reminded us. He introduced us to the Hilton's director who "remembers it differently." After hours, the two would talk as friends while "McCain helped teach him English."
OIL AT A CRAWL Motorists are still having a hard time finding gasoline in Charlotte and Atlanta. CBS' Mark Strassmann and NBC's Michelle Kosinski were both in Georgia's capital to show us the closed filling stations, high prices and long lines. Strassmann pointed out that the southeast is the nation's only region "without major gas storage capacity" while Kosinski noted that the region has only one refinery. "Virtually all the gasoline in the South has to be piped in from the Gulf crawling through those pipelines at less than 5 mph."
EAT LIKE ANDY On Monday, when the Wall Street sold off, which was the sole company in the S&P 500 index whose stock price did not fall? ABC's Dan Harris showed us the Warholesque soupcan icon for an answer. Campbell's. It inspired Harris to file a closing feature in praise of comfort food. In these anxious economic times, such brands are not only inexpensive, "studies of animals suggest that fatty comfort foods may ease stress."
