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TYNDALL HEADLINE: HIGHLIGHTS FROM OCTOBER 3, 2008
In the weeklong tussle over what tops the news agenda, Friday ended in a virtual tie. Approval of the Treasury Department's $700bn bailout of the financial sector by the House of Representatives was the lead item on all three newscasts. Yet the Story of the Day--the one that received most airtime on all three combined--was the aftermath of the Vice-Presidential debate between Sarah Palin and Joe Biden in St Louis. Thus the financial crisis was Story of the Day Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday this week; Campaign '08 took top honors Thursday and Friday.
TYNDALL PICKS FOR OCTOBER 3, 2008: CLICK ON GRID ELEMENTS TO SEARCH FOR MATCHING ITEMS
PALIN OUTDRAWS TOP OF THE TICKET In the weeklong tussle over what tops the news agenda, Friday ended in a virtual tie. Approval of the Treasury Department's $700bn bailout of the financial sector by the House of Representatives was the lead item on all three newscasts. Yet the Story of the Day--the one that received most airtime on all three combined--was the aftermath of the Vice-Presidential debate between Sarah Palin and Joe Biden in St Louis. Thus the financial crisis was Story of the Day Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday this week; Campaign '08 took top honors Thursday and Friday.
The television audience for the Palin-Biden face off on all channels combined was measured by AC Nielsen at around 70m, some 16m more than the top of the ticket attracted six days earlier in Mississippi. Most of the coverage concentrated on just one of the debaters. Biden was in the background. The spotlight, as it has been so often since she was selected by John McCain, was on Sarah Palin.
ABC's Kate Snow (embargoed link) and CBS' Jeff Greenfield analyzed the debaters' performance and style. CBS' Wyatt Andrews analyzed their substance in a Reality Check. NBC's Andrea Mitchell did a little of each. Mitchell noted that Republican partisans were "ecstatic" about Palin's performance, even as Mitchell herself was less inclined to gush: "She tried to charm her way through the hour and a half, limiting potential damage by answering only those questions she wanted to answer." When it came to answering a question about nuclear weapons, Mitchell commented that Palin "sounded confused."
ABC's Snow sat down with Mark Halperin, her network's onetime political director, now with Time. He was effusive. When Palin used the talking point that any criticism of the Republican ticket the relied on the performance of the Bush Administration was "pointing backwards," Halperin called it "a brilliant argument." Halperin conceded that Palin is no "great policy expert" before lavishing praise on her speaking skills: "Is she a Great Communicator like a Ronald Reagan or a Bill Clinton? We are learning that she is."
Referring to Palin's proclamation that she would refuse to answer some of moderator Gwen Ifill's questions, CBS' Greenfield mused that "politicians often ignore a question and talk about what they want to talk about but no one has ever announced that out loud." Greenfield saw no Great Communicator at work, yet he did acknowledge that she managed to "restore her standing with that conservative base and to banish, at least for now, that Tina Fey deer in the headlights image." Palin's strategy was to "reemerge as the feisty, plainspoken, G-droppin', frontier heroine." Yes, and he played us that wink too.
As for Palin's facts, CBS' Andrews called her accusation against Barack Obama that he wanted to raise taxes on households at the median annual income of $42,000 "simply false." He called her claim that millions of small business owners have annual incomes in excess of $250,000 "not even close." He contradicted her assertion that Alaska is building a $40bn natural gas pipeline, saying the project is "at least ten years away." Andrews corrected Biden once, concerning Obama's proposed diplomacy with Iran.
Considering how little attention Biden received in the debate post mortems, CBS' Bob Schieffer (at the tail of the Greenfield videostream) gave him a thumbs up. He judged that Palin's decision to dodge questions could seem "disconcerting" and that Biden had "a very good night," to use a boxing metaphor, winning the debate "on points."
WHAT A DIFFERENCE A WEEK MAKES The House of Representatives, which rejected the Treasury Department's $700bn bailout of the financial sector in a 205-228 vote on Monday, approved it 263-171 at week's end. There were changes in the actual bill--$110bn in tax cuts and extra insurance for bank deposits--but the correspondents covering the vote cited politics not substance as the reason 33 Democrats and 25 Republicans switched from No to Aye. NBC's Tom Costello called it a week of "hardball brass tacks politics" as leaders of both parties "sweet-talked, pressured and threatened" their members. CBS' Bob Orr saw the pressure coming from "skittish markets and voters worried about layoffs and dwindling nest eggs." ABC's Jake Tapper pointed to "heavy duty lobbying from the President, Congressional leaders and, perhaps most importantly, constituents."
BILLIONS NEEDED Now the bailout has been passed, "a whole new bureaucracy needs to be hired," ABC's Betsy Stark remarked, before the Treasury Department can purchase debt-ridden securities from banks "to start the process of breaking the logjam in the credit markets." That logjam has already harmed the State of California, CBS' Ben Tracy reported from Los Angeles. Its treasury has been unable to raise $7bn in short term paper and announced that it will stop paying its bills on October 28th unless it too receives federal help. Warren Buffett "has poured some of his billions into Goldman Sachs, billions more into General Electric," suggested Charles Gibson as he made the Omaha-based financier ABC's Person of the Week. In doing so Gibson offered free publicity to Snowball a just-published biography of the billionaire by Alice Schroeder.
With its billionaire Person of the Week, ABC decided not to assign a correspondent to the monthly release of economic data on joblessness. There were 159,000 fewer people in work in September than in the month before, CBS' Anthony Mason told us, "the worst month of job losses in five years." NBC's Mark Potter calculated that there are now 9.5m unemployed nationwide, 6.1% of the labor force, and "that does not include all the jobs lost this week in the credit crunch." Mason saw no prospects for improvement: "We appear to be headed into a deep recession that could last until the middle of next year."
THE TRIBESMEN OF THE NORTH WEST FRONTIER "The Pakistani army recently took journalists on a rare visit to Bajour," Richard Engel told us in the latest feature in NBC's Hot Spots series. Pakistan was the theme and Bajour is the site of a two-month-old offensive along its north west frontier with Afghanistan. "The army has deputized thousands of local tribesmen, who turned on the Taliban," Engel reported, delivering striking videotape of armed-to-the-teeth irregulars, "but their loyalty is untested." That party of journalists included Nick Schifrin (embargoed link) of ABC who filed his report Thursday. No sign yet of whether CBS joined in the Waziristan adventure.
DELUXE APARTMENT IN THE SKY For a New York City apartment dweller, Chris Jansing's shocked tone in her NBC feature about minihouses--residents "seriously downsizing to homes under 1,000 square feet"--seemed a little jarring. In the Big Apple, an entire thousand square feet seems like movin' on up, as the theme song goes. Some of Jansing's downsizers choose small to be green or to pay less for energy or to shuck off material possessions or to avoid the mortgage mess. Yet even this Manhattanite was impressed by an extreme example Jansing discovered in Oregon, "a Lilliputian cottage of 84 square feet, about twelve by seven!"
FAMOUS FIFTYSOMETHINGS For fun to end the week, Steve Hartman's Assignment America on CBS took us to Milwaukee for a babyboomer cream pie fight.
The television audience for the Palin-Biden face off on all channels combined was measured by AC Nielsen at around 70m, some 16m more than the top of the ticket attracted six days earlier in Mississippi. Most of the coverage concentrated on just one of the debaters. Biden was in the background. The spotlight, as it has been so often since she was selected by John McCain, was on Sarah Palin.
ABC's Kate Snow (embargoed link) and CBS' Jeff Greenfield analyzed the debaters' performance and style. CBS' Wyatt Andrews analyzed their substance in a Reality Check. NBC's Andrea Mitchell did a little of each. Mitchell noted that Republican partisans were "ecstatic" about Palin's performance, even as Mitchell herself was less inclined to gush: "She tried to charm her way through the hour and a half, limiting potential damage by answering only those questions she wanted to answer." When it came to answering a question about nuclear weapons, Mitchell commented that Palin "sounded confused."
ABC's Snow sat down with Mark Halperin, her network's onetime political director, now with Time. He was effusive. When Palin used the talking point that any criticism of the Republican ticket the relied on the performance of the Bush Administration was "pointing backwards," Halperin called it "a brilliant argument." Halperin conceded that Palin is no "great policy expert" before lavishing praise on her speaking skills: "Is she a Great Communicator like a Ronald Reagan or a Bill Clinton? We are learning that she is."
Referring to Palin's proclamation that she would refuse to answer some of moderator Gwen Ifill's questions, CBS' Greenfield mused that "politicians often ignore a question and talk about what they want to talk about but no one has ever announced that out loud." Greenfield saw no Great Communicator at work, yet he did acknowledge that she managed to "restore her standing with that conservative base and to banish, at least for now, that Tina Fey deer in the headlights image." Palin's strategy was to "reemerge as the feisty, plainspoken, G-droppin', frontier heroine." Yes, and he played us that wink too.
As for Palin's facts, CBS' Andrews called her accusation against Barack Obama that he wanted to raise taxes on households at the median annual income of $42,000 "simply false." He called her claim that millions of small business owners have annual incomes in excess of $250,000 "not even close." He contradicted her assertion that Alaska is building a $40bn natural gas pipeline, saying the project is "at least ten years away." Andrews corrected Biden once, concerning Obama's proposed diplomacy with Iran.
Considering how little attention Biden received in the debate post mortems, CBS' Bob Schieffer (at the tail of the Greenfield videostream) gave him a thumbs up. He judged that Palin's decision to dodge questions could seem "disconcerting" and that Biden had "a very good night," to use a boxing metaphor, winning the debate "on points."
WHAT A DIFFERENCE A WEEK MAKES The House of Representatives, which rejected the Treasury Department's $700bn bailout of the financial sector in a 205-228 vote on Monday, approved it 263-171 at week's end. There were changes in the actual bill--$110bn in tax cuts and extra insurance for bank deposits--but the correspondents covering the vote cited politics not substance as the reason 33 Democrats and 25 Republicans switched from No to Aye. NBC's Tom Costello called it a week of "hardball brass tacks politics" as leaders of both parties "sweet-talked, pressured and threatened" their members. CBS' Bob Orr saw the pressure coming from "skittish markets and voters worried about layoffs and dwindling nest eggs." ABC's Jake Tapper pointed to "heavy duty lobbying from the President, Congressional leaders and, perhaps most importantly, constituents."
BILLIONS NEEDED Now the bailout has been passed, "a whole new bureaucracy needs to be hired," ABC's Betsy Stark remarked, before the Treasury Department can purchase debt-ridden securities from banks "to start the process of breaking the logjam in the credit markets." That logjam has already harmed the State of California, CBS' Ben Tracy reported from Los Angeles. Its treasury has been unable to raise $7bn in short term paper and announced that it will stop paying its bills on October 28th unless it too receives federal help. Warren Buffett "has poured some of his billions into Goldman Sachs, billions more into General Electric," suggested Charles Gibson as he made the Omaha-based financier ABC's Person of the Week. In doing so Gibson offered free publicity to Snowball a just-published biography of the billionaire by Alice Schroeder.
With its billionaire Person of the Week, ABC decided not to assign a correspondent to the monthly release of economic data on joblessness. There were 159,000 fewer people in work in September than in the month before, CBS' Anthony Mason told us, "the worst month of job losses in five years." NBC's Mark Potter calculated that there are now 9.5m unemployed nationwide, 6.1% of the labor force, and "that does not include all the jobs lost this week in the credit crunch." Mason saw no prospects for improvement: "We appear to be headed into a deep recession that could last until the middle of next year."
THE TRIBESMEN OF THE NORTH WEST FRONTIER "The Pakistani army recently took journalists on a rare visit to Bajour," Richard Engel told us in the latest feature in NBC's Hot Spots series. Pakistan was the theme and Bajour is the site of a two-month-old offensive along its north west frontier with Afghanistan. "The army has deputized thousands of local tribesmen, who turned on the Taliban," Engel reported, delivering striking videotape of armed-to-the-teeth irregulars, "but their loyalty is untested." That party of journalists included Nick Schifrin (embargoed link) of ABC who filed his report Thursday. No sign yet of whether CBS joined in the Waziristan adventure.
DELUXE APARTMENT IN THE SKY For a New York City apartment dweller, Chris Jansing's shocked tone in her NBC feature about minihouses--residents "seriously downsizing to homes under 1,000 square feet"--seemed a little jarring. In the Big Apple, an entire thousand square feet seems like movin' on up, as the theme song goes. Some of Jansing's downsizers choose small to be green or to pay less for energy or to shuck off material possessions or to avoid the mortgage mess. Yet even this Manhattanite was impressed by an extreme example Jansing discovered in Oregon, "a Lilliputian cottage of 84 square feet, about twelve by seven!"
FAMOUS FIFTYSOMETHINGS For fun to end the week, Steve Hartman's Assignment America on CBS took us to Milwaukee for a babyboomer cream pie fight.
