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TYNDALL HEADLINE: HIGHLIGHTS FROM OCTOBER 09, 2008
ABC's Battleground Bus Tour observed equal access as it rolled through Wisconsin. Wednesday, anchor Charles Gibson invited Barack Obama aboard for a two-part Exclusive interview that qualified as Story of the Day. Now Gibson conducts his q-&-a with Republican John McCain. Yet this one was trumped by a staggering selloff on Wall Street. The 678 point decline in the Dow Jones Industrial Average, closing at 8579, led all three newscasts and was the day's top story. It was the seventh straight day of selling in the financial markets, marking the biggest single daily point decline in the DJIA since the crash of 1987 and an overall 40% fire sale in the cost of financial assets since the market's all-time high this time last year.
TYNDALL PICKS FOR OCTOBER 09, 2008: CLICK ON GRID ELEMENTS TO SEARCH FOR MATCHING ITEMS
BEARS RUN RAMPANT ON WALL STREET ABC's Battleground Bus Tour observed equal access as it rolled through Wisconsin. Wednesday, anchor Charles Gibson invited Barack Obama aboard for a two-part Exclusive interview that qualified as Story of the Day. Now Gibson conducts his q-&-a with Republican John McCain. Yet this one was trumped by a staggering selloff on Wall Street. The 678 point decline in the Dow Jones Industrial Average, closing at 8579, led all three newscasts and was the day's top story. It was the seventh straight day of selling in the financial markets, marking the biggest single daily point decline in the DJIA since the crash of 1987 and an overall 40% fire sale in the cost of financial assets since the market's all-time high this time last year.
"It is kind of in between your classic bear market that tends to be sort of torture over an extended period of time and the kind of environment we had in 1987 when we had a crash, which all happened in one day," was the cold comfort provided by Liz Ann Sonders, investment strategist for the brokerage Charles Schwab, when she was interviewed by ABC anchor Charles Gibson (embargoed link). "It is unbelievably trying," she complained.
"Freefall, in a fast and furious plunge," was how CNBC's Maria Bartiromo characterized the selloff on NBC. CBS' Anthony Mason chose a "breathtaking nose dive" to dramatize the market action. ABC's Dan Harris heard "sudden, soul deadening drops" as mutual fund managers sold stocks late in the day "in order to have enough cash to pay investors who are dropping out of the market."
NBC turned to John Yang at the White House to cover the political reaction to the financial crisis. "Everything they have done so far, or everything they have even talked about doing, has…gotten a big thumbs down from the markets." ABC's Harris counted President George Bush's attempts at reassurance. He has "spoken publicly about a dozen times since the bailout plan first surfaced. Most of those times the market has gone down." Nationalization may be next, CBS' Mason suggested: "The Treasury Department is now considering taking ownership stakes in many major US banks to unlock credit markets."
All three financial correspondents pointed to the price of General Motors' stock. The automotive manufacturer is now worth less than its value in 1950. This turns out to be your grandfather's Oldsmobile.
SHERIFF DART DEFIES COURT ORDERS Turning from financial assets to real assets, Sheriff Tom Dart attracted positive publicity on both CBS and NBC. Dart enforces foreclosures in Cook County Ill. He has been given court orders to throw 43,000 families out of their homes in the Chicago area this year. He now announces that he is willing to be held in contempt of court by refusing to evict rentpaying tenants from homes on which their landlord has defaulted. NBC's Kevin Tibbles and CBS' Cynthia Bowers were assigned to profile the people's champion. "Many in Cook County see it as a victory for the little guy," cheered Tibbles.
LEADING ECONOMIC INDICATORS "The flip side of global economic turmoil," ABC's Sharyn Alfonsi (embargoed link) told us, is that demand for crude oil is cratering. She showed us signs at gasoline filling stations where prices are already below $3 per gallon. Compared with this summer's peak, Alfonsi predicted that an average family will save $700 annually on fueling the car. ABC anchor Charles Gibson got off the bus in Racine Wisc to check out Gateway Technical College. Despite the city's unemployment rate, which is close to 10%, it has a shortage of skilled workers. The college's job training program finds work for 95% of its graduates. NBC's Kerry Sanders stopped off in downtown Charlotte NC, where Wachovia Bank had built three skyscrapers and was working on a fourth, before it was forced to sell out to either Wells Fargo or Citigroup. The banking center now faces "pain familiar in other regions of the country, declining property values and a pinched economy."
AYERS DID NOT COME UP IN THE FLOW OF CONVERSATION ABC's Exclusive interview with Republican John McCain was divided, like Wednesday's two-parter with Barack Obama (here and here) into two topics, although unlike Obama, ABC aired it as a single six-minute long segment. First, anchor Charles Gibson asked about McCain's response to the financial crisis; then he asked about his campaign's personal attacks against Obama. Gibson cited a voter complaint that both candidates display little anger in the face of crisis. "Well, I have never been accused of a lack of passion," McCain answered, even though he had just been accused of precisely that. Later, Gibson told McCain that Obama had told him that he was "surprised" that his ties to William Ayers--the washed-up unrepentant terrorist, in McCain's words--had not been raised by McCain face-to-face in Tuesday's town hall debate: "Again, two things I have never been accused of lacking…one is passion and the other is courage. I mean, I can accept a lot of other criticisms. It did not come up in the flow of conversation."
MCCAIN’S PROBLEMS DECONSTRUCTED While ABC anchor Charles Gibson was interviewing John McCain, CBS and NBC turned to the disquieting mood at his campaign rallies. NBC's Kelly O'Donnell heard an audience in Wisconsin "repeatedly vent frustration" over McCain's poor performance in the polls. The "vocally pro-McCain crowd" urged his ticket "to get even tougher" against Barack Obama. CBS' Chip Reid called the crowd "raucous" and "in a state of disbelief that Obama could actually win." Both reporters heard the GOP ticket make insinuations against Obama. Reid quoted running mate Sarah Palin question whether "we are receiving straight answers from our opponent." O'Donnell interpreted McCain's soundbite as imputing Obama's honesty: "We need to trust the next President of the United States and take his word."
CBS' Jeff Greenfield isolated a pair of flaws in McCain's campaign message to account for his struggles. He argued that states such as North Carolina, Virginia and Indiana usually trend Republican "mostly out of cultural values issues, whether it is social conservatism, national security, patriotism" but not this year. "The economy seems to have driven all of them into the background." Greenfield also detected a contradiction within McCain over how to respond to the financial crisis. McCain is a mixture of "free market Ronald Reagan conservative" and Teddy Roosevelt Republican who "believes in government action." His call for Treasury Department intervention into the home mortgage market has angered conservatives and laid bare that contradiction.
Covering Obama from the campaign trail, NBC's Lee Cowan (at the tail of the O'Donnell videostream) cited the Democrat's fundraising advantage as the reason for his lead. According to an analysis of campaign advertising on television by the University of Wisconsin, McCain and Obama spend comparable amounts on negative attack advertising against one another. That represents "nearly all" of McCain's effort whereas Obama is outspending McCain by so much that the negative spots account for only one third of the Democratic effort. How much money does Obama have? In the week before Election Day, Cowan told us, he has purchased primetime from the broadcast networks to air 30-minute campaign infomercials.
CANDIDATES CHECKED ON PORK & HEALTH NBC and CBS also filed campaign features. NBC's In Depth saw Lisa Myers examine the porkbarrel spending records of the four members of the tickets. Barack Obama, Joe Biden and Sarah Palin each have used earmarks to funnel funds to their constituents. John McCain's "words pretty much match his deeds. He has not asked for an earmark in his 26-year career." On CBS, Seth Doane filed a Where They Stand feature to illustrate each party's platform on healthcare, specifically how they would cover employees of small businesses most of whom are now uninsured. Even though McCain and Obama have radically different financing proposals--McCain would offer tax credits to individuals; Obama would set up an employer-financed Health Insurance Exchange fund--Doane concluded that the upshot of both would be the same. Small businesses will not offer healthcare coverage to their workers while "it is likely that larger employers under both candidates' proposals would stay in the healthcare game to attract and retain good employees."
TITILLATION NOT TERRORISM Brian Ross Investigates on ABC brought us a delicious Exclusive from the clandestine world of the wiretappers of the National Security Agency. Ross managed to persuade two Arab linguists--army reservist Adrienne Kinne and sailor David Murfee Faulk--to go on the record about eavesdroppers' abuses at a huge listening post in Georgia. Their mission was to keep their ears open for al-Qaeda chatter yet their surveillance included "journalists, humanitarian workers and soldiers serving in Iraq." When the conversation turned to "pillow talk," as the euphemism goes, the phone sex was shared round the NSA office for laughs.
DUMP YOUR TEENAGER IN NEBRASKA NBC had Janet Shamlian file from Nebraska, the home of the Boys Town orphanage that Hollywood made famous, for a rueful report on that state's Safe Haven Law. A pro-life measure, it was designed to permit overwhelmed and desperate mothers of newborns to abandon their babies, no questions asked, into safe keeping at any hospital emergency room. Since the law was passed a total of 17 children have been handed over with impunity to the care of the state. None has been an infant. Most have been adolescents. "A mother crossed the state line, riding from Iowa to give up her teenaged daughter."
RIMSHOT For CBS' closer, Bill Whitaker filed a jokey gee whiz feature on Pasadena's music prodigy Marc Yu. The nine-year-old is a concert pianist and budding celebrity. He wisecracked on daytime's The Ellen DeGeneres Show: "Three notes went into a bar--E, E flat, D--and the bartender said: 'Get out of here. We do not serve minors.'" And how will he get to Carnegie Hall next year? "I practice a lot."
HERE’S GAFFNEY Adrienne Gaffney has joined our happy band of news junkies who "watched last night night's newscasts...so you do not have to." Here are her observations on the same content Tyndall Report just monitored at Vanity Fair magazine's Culture & Celebrity blog.
"It is kind of in between your classic bear market that tends to be sort of torture over an extended period of time and the kind of environment we had in 1987 when we had a crash, which all happened in one day," was the cold comfort provided by Liz Ann Sonders, investment strategist for the brokerage Charles Schwab, when she was interviewed by ABC anchor Charles Gibson (embargoed link). "It is unbelievably trying," she complained.
"Freefall, in a fast and furious plunge," was how CNBC's Maria Bartiromo characterized the selloff on NBC. CBS' Anthony Mason chose a "breathtaking nose dive" to dramatize the market action. ABC's Dan Harris heard "sudden, soul deadening drops" as mutual fund managers sold stocks late in the day "in order to have enough cash to pay investors who are dropping out of the market."
NBC turned to John Yang at the White House to cover the political reaction to the financial crisis. "Everything they have done so far, or everything they have even talked about doing, has…gotten a big thumbs down from the markets." ABC's Harris counted President George Bush's attempts at reassurance. He has "spoken publicly about a dozen times since the bailout plan first surfaced. Most of those times the market has gone down." Nationalization may be next, CBS' Mason suggested: "The Treasury Department is now considering taking ownership stakes in many major US banks to unlock credit markets."
All three financial correspondents pointed to the price of General Motors' stock. The automotive manufacturer is now worth less than its value in 1950. This turns out to be your grandfather's Oldsmobile.
SHERIFF DART DEFIES COURT ORDERS Turning from financial assets to real assets, Sheriff Tom Dart attracted positive publicity on both CBS and NBC. Dart enforces foreclosures in Cook County Ill. He has been given court orders to throw 43,000 families out of their homes in the Chicago area this year. He now announces that he is willing to be held in contempt of court by refusing to evict rentpaying tenants from homes on which their landlord has defaulted. NBC's Kevin Tibbles and CBS' Cynthia Bowers were assigned to profile the people's champion. "Many in Cook County see it as a victory for the little guy," cheered Tibbles.
LEADING ECONOMIC INDICATORS "The flip side of global economic turmoil," ABC's Sharyn Alfonsi (embargoed link) told us, is that demand for crude oil is cratering. She showed us signs at gasoline filling stations where prices are already below $3 per gallon. Compared with this summer's peak, Alfonsi predicted that an average family will save $700 annually on fueling the car. ABC anchor Charles Gibson got off the bus in Racine Wisc to check out Gateway Technical College. Despite the city's unemployment rate, which is close to 10%, it has a shortage of skilled workers. The college's job training program finds work for 95% of its graduates. NBC's Kerry Sanders stopped off in downtown Charlotte NC, where Wachovia Bank had built three skyscrapers and was working on a fourth, before it was forced to sell out to either Wells Fargo or Citigroup. The banking center now faces "pain familiar in other regions of the country, declining property values and a pinched economy."
AYERS DID NOT COME UP IN THE FLOW OF CONVERSATION ABC's Exclusive interview with Republican John McCain was divided, like Wednesday's two-parter with Barack Obama (here and here) into two topics, although unlike Obama, ABC aired it as a single six-minute long segment. First, anchor Charles Gibson asked about McCain's response to the financial crisis; then he asked about his campaign's personal attacks against Obama. Gibson cited a voter complaint that both candidates display little anger in the face of crisis. "Well, I have never been accused of a lack of passion," McCain answered, even though he had just been accused of precisely that. Later, Gibson told McCain that Obama had told him that he was "surprised" that his ties to William Ayers--the washed-up unrepentant terrorist, in McCain's words--had not been raised by McCain face-to-face in Tuesday's town hall debate: "Again, two things I have never been accused of lacking…one is passion and the other is courage. I mean, I can accept a lot of other criticisms. It did not come up in the flow of conversation."
MCCAIN’S PROBLEMS DECONSTRUCTED While ABC anchor Charles Gibson was interviewing John McCain, CBS and NBC turned to the disquieting mood at his campaign rallies. NBC's Kelly O'Donnell heard an audience in Wisconsin "repeatedly vent frustration" over McCain's poor performance in the polls. The "vocally pro-McCain crowd" urged his ticket "to get even tougher" against Barack Obama. CBS' Chip Reid called the crowd "raucous" and "in a state of disbelief that Obama could actually win." Both reporters heard the GOP ticket make insinuations against Obama. Reid quoted running mate Sarah Palin question whether "we are receiving straight answers from our opponent." O'Donnell interpreted McCain's soundbite as imputing Obama's honesty: "We need to trust the next President of the United States and take his word."
CBS' Jeff Greenfield isolated a pair of flaws in McCain's campaign message to account for his struggles. He argued that states such as North Carolina, Virginia and Indiana usually trend Republican "mostly out of cultural values issues, whether it is social conservatism, national security, patriotism" but not this year. "The economy seems to have driven all of them into the background." Greenfield also detected a contradiction within McCain over how to respond to the financial crisis. McCain is a mixture of "free market Ronald Reagan conservative" and Teddy Roosevelt Republican who "believes in government action." His call for Treasury Department intervention into the home mortgage market has angered conservatives and laid bare that contradiction.
Covering Obama from the campaign trail, NBC's Lee Cowan (at the tail of the O'Donnell videostream) cited the Democrat's fundraising advantage as the reason for his lead. According to an analysis of campaign advertising on television by the University of Wisconsin, McCain and Obama spend comparable amounts on negative attack advertising against one another. That represents "nearly all" of McCain's effort whereas Obama is outspending McCain by so much that the negative spots account for only one third of the Democratic effort. How much money does Obama have? In the week before Election Day, Cowan told us, he has purchased primetime from the broadcast networks to air 30-minute campaign infomercials.
CANDIDATES CHECKED ON PORK & HEALTH NBC and CBS also filed campaign features. NBC's In Depth saw Lisa Myers examine the porkbarrel spending records of the four members of the tickets. Barack Obama, Joe Biden and Sarah Palin each have used earmarks to funnel funds to their constituents. John McCain's "words pretty much match his deeds. He has not asked for an earmark in his 26-year career." On CBS, Seth Doane filed a Where They Stand feature to illustrate each party's platform on healthcare, specifically how they would cover employees of small businesses most of whom are now uninsured. Even though McCain and Obama have radically different financing proposals--McCain would offer tax credits to individuals; Obama would set up an employer-financed Health Insurance Exchange fund--Doane concluded that the upshot of both would be the same. Small businesses will not offer healthcare coverage to their workers while "it is likely that larger employers under both candidates' proposals would stay in the healthcare game to attract and retain good employees."
TITILLATION NOT TERRORISM Brian Ross Investigates on ABC brought us a delicious Exclusive from the clandestine world of the wiretappers of the National Security Agency. Ross managed to persuade two Arab linguists--army reservist Adrienne Kinne and sailor David Murfee Faulk--to go on the record about eavesdroppers' abuses at a huge listening post in Georgia. Their mission was to keep their ears open for al-Qaeda chatter yet their surveillance included "journalists, humanitarian workers and soldiers serving in Iraq." When the conversation turned to "pillow talk," as the euphemism goes, the phone sex was shared round the NSA office for laughs.
DUMP YOUR TEENAGER IN NEBRASKA NBC had Janet Shamlian file from Nebraska, the home of the Boys Town orphanage that Hollywood made famous, for a rueful report on that state's Safe Haven Law. A pro-life measure, it was designed to permit overwhelmed and desperate mothers of newborns to abandon their babies, no questions asked, into safe keeping at any hospital emergency room. Since the law was passed a total of 17 children have been handed over with impunity to the care of the state. None has been an infant. Most have been adolescents. "A mother crossed the state line, riding from Iowa to give up her teenaged daughter."
RIMSHOT For CBS' closer, Bill Whitaker filed a jokey gee whiz feature on Pasadena's music prodigy Marc Yu. The nine-year-old is a concert pianist and budding celebrity. He wisecracked on daytime's The Ellen DeGeneres Show: "Three notes went into a bar--E, E flat, D--and the bartender said: 'Get out of here. We do not serve minors.'" And how will he get to Carnegie Hall next year? "I practice a lot."
HERE’S GAFFNEY Adrienne Gaffney has joined our happy band of news junkies who "watched last night night's newscasts...so you do not have to." Here are her observations on the same content Tyndall Report just monitored at Vanity Fair magazine's Culture & Celebrity blog.
