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TYNDALL HEADLINE: HIGHLIGHTS FROM OCTOBER 14, 2008
The relentless drumbeat of financial headlines relaxed just a tiny bit. The crisis was still Story of the Day as the Treasury Department made its formal announcement that it had partially nationalized several major banks with a $250bn infusion of capital. The nation's money now plays a major role in JP Morgan, Bank of America, Citigroup and Wells Fargo plus the two surviving investment banks--Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley--that recently decided to switch and take deposits. Yet only NBC led with the deal. ABC chose the plummeting price of gasoline at the pump, now averaging $3.15/gallon nationwide, down from $4.11 as recently as July. CBS led with Campaign '08 self-promotion, as it published its own national public opinion poll, conducted with The New York Times, that has Barack Obama widening his lead over John McCain.
TYNDALL PICKS FOR OCTOBER 14, 2008: CLICK ON GRID ELEMENTS TO SEARCH FOR MATCHING ITEMS
BIG BANKS SIGN ON DOTTED LINE The relentless drumbeat of financial headlines relaxed just a tiny bit. The crisis was still Story of the Day as the Treasury Department made its formal announcement that it had partially nationalized several major banks with a $250bn infusion of capital. The nation's money now plays a major role in JP Morgan, Bank of America, Citigroup and Wells Fargo plus the two surviving investment banks--Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley--that recently decided to switch and take deposits. Yet only NBC led with the deal. ABC chose the plummeting price of gasoline at the pump, now averaging $3.15/gallon nationwide, down from $4.11 as recently as July. CBS led with Campaign '08 self-promotion, as it published its own national public opinion poll, conducted with The New York Times, that has Barack Obama widening his lead over John McCain.
The Treasury Department's involvement in the banking system is not confined to part ownership. It will also guarantee some business deposits and some interbank loans and will allow businesses to borrow money from the Federal Reserve Board. In return the banks promised to pay the Treasury a 5% dividend on the capital for the next five years. CBS' Anthony Mason observed an "air of resignation" with which President George Bush and Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson "threw out the free market playbook." NBC's Tom Costello called it "the boldest government action in the banking system since the Great Depression." Is the tide turning on the financial crisis? "Many think it is," ABC's Betsy Stark suggested, yet "the economy has taken a pounding and a recession is in the cards."
Gasoline is costing less than in July because "consumers put the brakes on their driving; world economies stumbled; demand fell," explained ABC's Sharyn Alfonsi, trying to put a bright face on terrible times. Some airlines have even started reducing their fuel surcharge to make travel cheaper. Then Alfonsi's cheer closed with this caveat: "Next month OPEC ministers will meet. They could decide to cut production and the would send prices back up."
MCCAIN’S TURN TO TURN THE ECONOMY AROUND On the campaign trail, NBC's Kelly O'Donnell and CBS' Chip Reid covered the $52bn economic plan unveiled by Republican Presidential candidate John McCain. It would lower taxes for those with capital gains, who are few and far between, and for the unemployed, whose ranks are growing. Tax relief on unemployment benefits is supported by Democrat Barack Obama too, NBC's O'Donnell pointed out. However, CBS' Reid noted, the "lion's share" of the tax breaks was targeted at the elderly. "McCain hopes it will help him in the battleground states of Pennsylvania and Florida."
Obama had proposed his economic plan on Monday so ABC's Brianna Golodryga (embargoed link) put the two side by side. Both McCain and Obama propose more lenient tax laws on retirement assets; both seek tax breaks for corporations, McCain on their capital, Obama on their hiring. Their solutions for the bear market in residential real estate differ: Obama would impose a 90-day moratorium on foreclosure evictions; McCain would order the Treasury Department to spend $300bn to subsidize mortgage refinancing.
Golodryga repeated the conventional wisdom of economists: "Whoever wins this election will have an awfully tough time turning this economy around."
BRADLEY DEBUNKED It was CBS News' turn, with its partner The New York Times, to publish a meaningless national opinion poll. At this late stage of the General Election contest, media organizations that feel like tracking the horse race should provide Electoral College projections not popular vote estimates.
Anyway, CBS told us that Barack Obama has 53% support among likely voters as opposed to John McCain's 39%. Dean Reynolds noted "a major shift among independent voters" and pointed to three key factors: McCain's overly negative campaigning; disapproval of the selection of Sarah Palin as GOP running mate; and Obama's performance in the debates. On ABC, John Berman took A Closer Look at the so-called Bradley Effect, named after the African-American Gubernatorial candidate in California in 1982, whose opinion poll lead did not manifest itself as an election night victory. The theory states that enough respondents lie about their antipathy towards black candidates that polls overstate their popularity. Berman turned to Gary Langer, ABC's in-house polling director, who pointed the finger at his own profession's errors rather than the racist mendacity of voters: "When a pre-election poll goes bad usually the reason is that it made a bad estimate of who was going to show up to vote--not that its respondents lied."
MCCAIN LIKES CHASTITY; OBAMA LIKES EDUCATION CNN's Sanjay Gupta turned up on CBS where he is an occasional contributor to file a Where They Stand feature on the two candidates' platforms on HIV/AIDS. Gupta could find no difference between John McCain and Barack Obama in their endorsement of PEPFAR, President George Bush's $10bn annual aid program to fight the disease in Africa and elsewhere in the Third World. As for their domestic differences, they were mostly to be found in their starkly divergent views on healthcare delivery generally, differences outlined by Seth Doane's Where They Stand last week, which Gupta reiterated. Concerning HIV/AIDS itself, Obama supports prevention through sex education and "promoting HIV testing in minority communities." McCain emphasizes programs that preach sexual abstinence.
MICKEY MOUSE CANNOT VOTE ACORN's voter registration drive, covered in an Investigation by CBS' Armen Keteyian on Friday, came in for Jake Tapper's scrutiny on ABC. Tapper, like Keteyian, listed a laughable litany of self-disqualifying applications to join the rolls: one group of forms named the starting offense of the Dallas Cowboys; a set of 73 forms was filled out by a single Ohioan in exchange for "cigarettes and cash;" Mickey Mouse wants to be able to vote in Florida. Yet Tapper was slightly less quick than Keteyian to repeat charges of fraud against the community activists. He quoted candidate Barack Obama assertion that because these were "phony names" no one would be eligible to vote as a result of the application. Furthermore when ACORN turns in a batch of applications, the organizers themselves use a cover sheet to notify local election officials of suspicious or false items.
WHERE THERE IS SMOKE "California is facing a triple threat," ABC's Lisa Fletcher (embargoed link) warned, "dry brush, steep terrain and winds that will knock you over. The winds are king when it comes to wildfires in southern California this time of year." So all three networks returned to the wildfire story they covered Monday. CBS' Bill Whitaker pointed to blazes, whipped by the Santa Ana winds in San Bernardino County and the San Fernando Valley and Camp Pendleton, the Marine Corps base in San Diego County. NBC's George Lewis showed us the satellite picture from NASA of the "huge plume of smoke" rising into space.
DOWN HOME EMOTIONS ABC's sentimental closer came from Aledo Tex where the local high school elected 18-year-old Kristin Pass to be queen of its homecoming football game. Pass is newsworthy, Ryan Owens told us, because she happens to be a Down syndrome patient. "The ceremony at the stadium was perfect," the queen's mother told him, "except for one thing--they did not have enough tissues to hand out to the crowd." Families of Down syndrome patients are flocking to the campaign trail, noted NBC's Savannah Guthrie, to attend Sarah Palin's rallies. The Republican Vice-Presidential candidate gave birth to a son with the syndrome six months ago. Palin offered a rare q-&-a soundbite to Guthrie on the topic. Guthrie did not ask for a policy position on the federal role in supporting care for disabled children. Instead she asked: "Is it emotional for you to see these faces?" "Very emotional, very emotional, yes."
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.
CALLING ALL REPUBLICANS The third Presidential debate is being held in primetime Wednesday on the Long Island campus of Hofstra University. Bob Schieffer, former anchor of CBS Evening News and current host of Sunday morning's Face the Nation will moderate on the economy and other domestic social issues. Please log in to Rate the Debate using the Citizens' Media Scorecard. Assess Schieffer's journalism--his choice of topics and his questioning style. The online panel is all volunteer so anybody who logs in at the site run by Free Press, a media activist organization, gets to participate. Unfortunately Free Press' outreach in previous debates has skewed heavily towards Democratic partisans. Please pass this link on to any and all the Republicans in your address book. Here are the results for the first debate on foreign policy moderated by PBS' Jim Lehrer; the town hall format debate moderated by NBC's Tom Brokaw; and the Vice-Presidential debate moderated by PBS' Gwen Ifill.
The Treasury Department's involvement in the banking system is not confined to part ownership. It will also guarantee some business deposits and some interbank loans and will allow businesses to borrow money from the Federal Reserve Board. In return the banks promised to pay the Treasury a 5% dividend on the capital for the next five years. CBS' Anthony Mason observed an "air of resignation" with which President George Bush and Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson "threw out the free market playbook." NBC's Tom Costello called it "the boldest government action in the banking system since the Great Depression." Is the tide turning on the financial crisis? "Many think it is," ABC's Betsy Stark suggested, yet "the economy has taken a pounding and a recession is in the cards."
Gasoline is costing less than in July because "consumers put the brakes on their driving; world economies stumbled; demand fell," explained ABC's Sharyn Alfonsi, trying to put a bright face on terrible times. Some airlines have even started reducing their fuel surcharge to make travel cheaper. Then Alfonsi's cheer closed with this caveat: "Next month OPEC ministers will meet. They could decide to cut production and the would send prices back up."
MCCAIN’S TURN TO TURN THE ECONOMY AROUND On the campaign trail, NBC's Kelly O'Donnell and CBS' Chip Reid covered the $52bn economic plan unveiled by Republican Presidential candidate John McCain. It would lower taxes for those with capital gains, who are few and far between, and for the unemployed, whose ranks are growing. Tax relief on unemployment benefits is supported by Democrat Barack Obama too, NBC's O'Donnell pointed out. However, CBS' Reid noted, the "lion's share" of the tax breaks was targeted at the elderly. "McCain hopes it will help him in the battleground states of Pennsylvania and Florida."
Obama had proposed his economic plan on Monday so ABC's Brianna Golodryga (embargoed link) put the two side by side. Both McCain and Obama propose more lenient tax laws on retirement assets; both seek tax breaks for corporations, McCain on their capital, Obama on their hiring. Their solutions for the bear market in residential real estate differ: Obama would impose a 90-day moratorium on foreclosure evictions; McCain would order the Treasury Department to spend $300bn to subsidize mortgage refinancing.
Golodryga repeated the conventional wisdom of economists: "Whoever wins this election will have an awfully tough time turning this economy around."
BRADLEY DEBUNKED It was CBS News' turn, with its partner The New York Times, to publish a meaningless national opinion poll. At this late stage of the General Election contest, media organizations that feel like tracking the horse race should provide Electoral College projections not popular vote estimates.
Anyway, CBS told us that Barack Obama has 53% support among likely voters as opposed to John McCain's 39%. Dean Reynolds noted "a major shift among independent voters" and pointed to three key factors: McCain's overly negative campaigning; disapproval of the selection of Sarah Palin as GOP running mate; and Obama's performance in the debates. On ABC, John Berman took A Closer Look at the so-called Bradley Effect, named after the African-American Gubernatorial candidate in California in 1982, whose opinion poll lead did not manifest itself as an election night victory. The theory states that enough respondents lie about their antipathy towards black candidates that polls overstate their popularity. Berman turned to Gary Langer, ABC's in-house polling director, who pointed the finger at his own profession's errors rather than the racist mendacity of voters: "When a pre-election poll goes bad usually the reason is that it made a bad estimate of who was going to show up to vote--not that its respondents lied."
MCCAIN LIKES CHASTITY; OBAMA LIKES EDUCATION CNN's Sanjay Gupta turned up on CBS where he is an occasional contributor to file a Where They Stand feature on the two candidates' platforms on HIV/AIDS. Gupta could find no difference between John McCain and Barack Obama in their endorsement of PEPFAR, President George Bush's $10bn annual aid program to fight the disease in Africa and elsewhere in the Third World. As for their domestic differences, they were mostly to be found in their starkly divergent views on healthcare delivery generally, differences outlined by Seth Doane's Where They Stand last week, which Gupta reiterated. Concerning HIV/AIDS itself, Obama supports prevention through sex education and "promoting HIV testing in minority communities." McCain emphasizes programs that preach sexual abstinence.
MICKEY MOUSE CANNOT VOTE ACORN's voter registration drive, covered in an Investigation by CBS' Armen Keteyian on Friday, came in for Jake Tapper's scrutiny on ABC. Tapper, like Keteyian, listed a laughable litany of self-disqualifying applications to join the rolls: one group of forms named the starting offense of the Dallas Cowboys; a set of 73 forms was filled out by a single Ohioan in exchange for "cigarettes and cash;" Mickey Mouse wants to be able to vote in Florida. Yet Tapper was slightly less quick than Keteyian to repeat charges of fraud against the community activists. He quoted candidate Barack Obama assertion that because these were "phony names" no one would be eligible to vote as a result of the application. Furthermore when ACORN turns in a batch of applications, the organizers themselves use a cover sheet to notify local election officials of suspicious or false items.
WHERE THERE IS SMOKE "California is facing a triple threat," ABC's Lisa Fletcher (embargoed link) warned, "dry brush, steep terrain and winds that will knock you over. The winds are king when it comes to wildfires in southern California this time of year." So all three networks returned to the wildfire story they covered Monday. CBS' Bill Whitaker pointed to blazes, whipped by the Santa Ana winds in San Bernardino County and the San Fernando Valley and Camp Pendleton, the Marine Corps base in San Diego County. NBC's George Lewis showed us the satellite picture from NASA of the "huge plume of smoke" rising into space.
DOWN HOME EMOTIONS ABC's sentimental closer came from Aledo Tex where the local high school elected 18-year-old Kristin Pass to be queen of its homecoming football game. Pass is newsworthy, Ryan Owens told us, because she happens to be a Down syndrome patient. "The ceremony at the stadium was perfect," the queen's mother told him, "except for one thing--they did not have enough tissues to hand out to the crowd." Families of Down syndrome patients are flocking to the campaign trail, noted NBC's Savannah Guthrie, to attend Sarah Palin's rallies. The Republican Vice-Presidential candidate gave birth to a son with the syndrome six months ago. Palin offered a rare q-&-a soundbite to Guthrie on the topic. Guthrie did not ask for a policy position on the federal role in supporting care for disabled children. Instead she asked: "Is it emotional for you to see these faces?" "Very emotional, very emotional, yes."
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.
CALLING ALL REPUBLICANS The third Presidential debate is being held in primetime Wednesday on the Long Island campus of Hofstra University. Bob Schieffer, former anchor of CBS Evening News and current host of Sunday morning's Face the Nation will moderate on the economy and other domestic social issues. Please log in to Rate the Debate using the Citizens' Media Scorecard. Assess Schieffer's journalism--his choice of topics and his questioning style. The online panel is all volunteer so anybody who logs in at the site run by Free Press, a media activist organization, gets to participate. Unfortunately Free Press' outreach in previous debates has skewed heavily towards Democratic partisans. Please pass this link on to any and all the Republicans in your address book. Here are the results for the first debate on foreign policy moderated by PBS' Jim Lehrer; the town hall format debate moderated by NBC's Tom Brokaw; and the Vice-Presidential debate moderated by PBS' Gwen Ifill.
