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TYNDALL HEADLINE: HIGHLIGHTS FROM NOVEMBER 10, 2008
"When the incoming and outgoing first meet at the White House, the psychological transfer occurs then," thus ABC anchor Charles Gibson quoted former Vice President Walter Mondale. The meeting between lame duck President George Bush and President-elect Barack Obama at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue was the lead item on all three newscasts and the Story of the Day--a symbolic rehearsal for Inauguration Day, as it were.
TYNDALL PICKS FOR NOVEMBER 10, 2008: CLICK ON GRID ELEMENTS TO SEARCH FOR MATCHING ITEMS
A SYMBOLIC DAY AT THE WHITE HOUSE "When the incoming and outgoing first meet at the White House, the psychological transfer occurs then," thus ABC anchor Charles Gibson quoted former Vice President Walter Mondale. The meeting between lame duck President George Bush and President-elect Barack Obama at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue was the lead item on all three newscasts and the Story of the Day--a symbolic rehearsal for Inauguration Day, as it were.
"A potent symbol of democracy," was how NBC's Savannah Guthrie called the meeting, "just six days after a hard fought election." CBS anchor Katie Couric observed that "both men understand the symbolism of these images" and ABC anchor Gibson declared that it was "symbolic." NBC's Guthrie referred to Gibson's Mondale quote without the attribution: "White House visits have become a Presidential rite of passage, a moment some call the 'psychological transfer of power.'" The official White House statement called the Oval Office meeting between the two men "constructive, relaxed and friendly," ABC's Jake Tapper told us, while an unnamed source close to Obama relayed that the successor called the incumbent "gracious." CBS' Chip Reid contented himself with observing that neither man "had any public comment."
The meeting went beyond vacant symbolism, ABC's Tapper added, touching on the distress of the automobile industry and the $700bn federal bailout of the financial sector. Obama intends to use executive orders to reverse several of Bush's executive orders, lifting the ban on federal funds for embryonic stem cell research and reimposing restrictions on energy drilling in public lands. CBS' Reid noted that such reversals "appear to have ruffled feathers" in the current White House. "They cannot complain much because President Bush has used executive orders throughout his administration to put his stamp on a number of policies."
SEX ROLE STEREOTYPES While George and Barack talked issues, Laura and Michelle toured the accommodations, "measuring the drapes…trying to envision making a 200-year-old mansion home," as ABC's Claire Shipman (no link) put it. CBS anchor Katie Couric filed a feature to preview the First Lady role that Michelle Obama would adopt. "There is no training or description for one of the most high profile jobs in the country," Couric mused, before deciding that Mrs Obama would not treat the position as a "job" after all, despite her Ivy League law degree. "In many ways Michelle Obama will be a traditional First Lady whose primary duties will be wife and mother."
WAIT TILL INAUGURATION DAY ABC's George Stephanopoulos and CBS' Wyatt Andrews both reflected on the policy choices facing Barack Obama's incoming administration. Stephanopoulos was skeptical that the lame duck Congress would pass a major stimulus package before Inauguration Day. "A simple extension of unemployment benefits," he suggested, but no infrastructure spending nor aid to state and local governments. Andrews pointed out that Obama had committed to a quartet of "top-to-bottom very expensive reforms" besides the stimulus package, in the face of massive federal deficits. He ticked off renewable energy, universal healthcare, education funding and revision of the tax code to lessen the burden on the middle class. "All of his loyalists on Capitol Hill believe their reform issues should come first," Andrews generalized. "Whenever he decides his priorities, one of his greatest challenges will not be managing Republicans. It will be fending off demands from Democrats."
AT LEAST THERE IS THE DOLLAR MENU After politics, almost all of the remainder of the day's news agenda was preoccupied with the troubled economy. The only exceptions were medical research on heart disease, which was covered by all three newscasts, and a lone piece of international reporting, by Kevin Tibbles in Ontario for NBC.
NBC's Tom Costello walked us through the day's recession news: American International Group, the insurance conglomerate, needs a further federal bailout; Detroit's Big Three automakers need a federal loan of $25bn or $50bn "just to stay afloat;" Circuit City the retailer has declared bankruptcy; and "one bright spot--McDonald's sales surged in October as Americans sought out cheaper food."
Want more bad news? NBC sent Lee Cowan to Wilmington Ohio, the hub and company town for DHL air freight. DHL has thrown in the towel in its domestic competition with UPS and FedEx and is closing its Ohio operation. The 9,500 layoffs represent fully half of the town's workforce. NBC's Lisa Myers went to Texas to check out the mortgage service center for IndyMac Bank, which went broke and was taken over by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation. IndyMac is now the pilot bank for an FDIC scheme to lower interest rates and extend payment schedules for mortgage holders so that no one spends more than 38% of monthly income on housing payments. "It does not forgive debt so many borrowers may still owe more than their homes are worth." Yet the plan may be extended to other banks and applied to 2m homebuyers nationwide.
OUR OWN INSURANCE CONGLOMERATE The AIG story was covered by ABC's Brian Ross and CBS' Anthony Mason. Mason looked at the finances of the insurance conglomerate that posted $24bn in losses in the third quarter of 2008 alone. "The bailout needs a bailout," he shrugged, as its partial nationalization advanced by a further $40bn stock purchase. Ross used footage from Josh Bernstein of KNXV-TV, ABC's affiliate in Phoenix, that showed a $350,000 junket at the Pointe Hilton Squaw Peak Resort for 150 financial advisors. The conglomerate had a guilty conscience about its lavish accommodations, Ross suggested: "AIG instructed the hotel to keep its involvement secret." When asked about the expenditure, AIG said the cost "would ultimately be covered by other corporate sponsors."
DO NOT WATCH THIS Rounding out the economic coverage was a pair of lame personal finance features. There is so little time for hard news on a nightly newscast that this service journalism--so called news you can use--has no rationale for meandering over here from its traditional morning slot on such programs as Today and Good Morning America. On CBS' Dollars and Sense, Randall Pinkston advised us to use cash instead of plastic to buy stuff. On Women & Money for NBC, Rehema Ellis told us about women teaching their daughters to handle household finance.
The news you can use from Tyndall Report is advice not to watch such pabulum.
GREAT PUBLICITY FOR BIG PHARMA That research into preventing heart disease was covered by John McKenzie (no link) for ABC's A Closer Lookand science correspondent Robert Bazell on NBC and by two in-house physicians, Dr Jon LaPook for CBS' Eye on Medicine and Dr Timothy Johnson (no link) on ABC.
The study was funded by the pharmaceutical firm AstraZeneca, manufacturer of Crestor, the cholesterol-lowering statin medication. Its lead author, CBS' LaPook told us, holds a patent that tests patients for C-Reactive Protein, a marker for inflammation of the arteries.
Guess what the study found? That CRP is a risk factor for heart disease even in patients with already low cholesterol and that Crestor treats CRP, thereby lowering the risk of cardiac arrest, stroke and death in otherwise healthy patients. "Many doctors now predict that millions of healthy Americans, middle aged and older, will be tested for CRP and if their levels are high, start taking a statin," ABC's McKenzie concluded.
How about a little cost-benefit analysis first?
"So why not just test everyone and then treat the people who have the elevated CRP?" inquired CBS anchor Katie Couric of her doctor. "It is really expensive," LaPook replied.
NBC's Bazell told us that the CRP tests cost less than $20 each--so universal testing would presumably cost billions, although Bazell did not do the sums. CBS' LaPook reported an estimate of 6m patients testing positive nationwide but did not tell us how many of them would benefit if they all took the drug. Bazell told us that mass medication could prevent 50,000 heart attacks, strokes, bypass surgeries, angioplasties and cardiovascular deaths annually but did not tell us how many millions of prescriptions would have to be written to help those 50,000, nor did he estimate a cost savings for averting those 50,000 procedures. ABC's Dr Johnson warned that some have elevated CRP levels that are unconnected to coronary artery disease, caused by infections or rheumatoid arthritis instead.
No one told us the cost of the Crestor prescription, although Bazell reckoned that "the generic cheaper versions should work just as well." "Do other statins work as well as Crestor?" ABC anchor Charles Gibson inquired of Dr Johnson. "Well the company would like us to think that Crestor is the best." Johnson's judgment: statins are "interchangeable."
No wonder the nation's healthcare budget is spiraling out of control! There is no other major journalistic beat where cost considerations are so routinely absent when reporting new developments. This Crestor coverage is typical of that oversight.
FROM PICARDY TO THE KHYBER PASS NBC's Kevin Tibbles offered an unspoken reminder that Canada was once part of the British Empire when he wore a poppy to report on that nation's military dead from the War in Afghanistan, once part of the British Raj. The poppy evokes the fields of Picardy where millions were killed in the trenches of World War I. It is worn by Britons on Remembrance Day, formerly Armistice Day, aka Veterans Day. The cortege for each of the 97 Canadians killed in Afghanistan travels the same 100-mile route from airport to morgue through Ontario, Tibbles told us, and so "a grassroots phenomenon has risen out of a nation's grief." Each time the hearse passes, citizens line the route to salute it. The road is now called The Highway of Heroes, Autoroute des Heros.
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.
"A potent symbol of democracy," was how NBC's Savannah Guthrie called the meeting, "just six days after a hard fought election." CBS anchor Katie Couric observed that "both men understand the symbolism of these images" and ABC anchor Gibson declared that it was "symbolic." NBC's Guthrie referred to Gibson's Mondale quote without the attribution: "White House visits have become a Presidential rite of passage, a moment some call the 'psychological transfer of power.'" The official White House statement called the Oval Office meeting between the two men "constructive, relaxed and friendly," ABC's Jake Tapper told us, while an unnamed source close to Obama relayed that the successor called the incumbent "gracious." CBS' Chip Reid contented himself with observing that neither man "had any public comment."
The meeting went beyond vacant symbolism, ABC's Tapper added, touching on the distress of the automobile industry and the $700bn federal bailout of the financial sector. Obama intends to use executive orders to reverse several of Bush's executive orders, lifting the ban on federal funds for embryonic stem cell research and reimposing restrictions on energy drilling in public lands. CBS' Reid noted that such reversals "appear to have ruffled feathers" in the current White House. "They cannot complain much because President Bush has used executive orders throughout his administration to put his stamp on a number of policies."
SEX ROLE STEREOTYPES While George and Barack talked issues, Laura and Michelle toured the accommodations, "measuring the drapes…trying to envision making a 200-year-old mansion home," as ABC's Claire Shipman (no link) put it. CBS anchor Katie Couric filed a feature to preview the First Lady role that Michelle Obama would adopt. "There is no training or description for one of the most high profile jobs in the country," Couric mused, before deciding that Mrs Obama would not treat the position as a "job" after all, despite her Ivy League law degree. "In many ways Michelle Obama will be a traditional First Lady whose primary duties will be wife and mother."
WAIT TILL INAUGURATION DAY ABC's George Stephanopoulos and CBS' Wyatt Andrews both reflected on the policy choices facing Barack Obama's incoming administration. Stephanopoulos was skeptical that the lame duck Congress would pass a major stimulus package before Inauguration Day. "A simple extension of unemployment benefits," he suggested, but no infrastructure spending nor aid to state and local governments. Andrews pointed out that Obama had committed to a quartet of "top-to-bottom very expensive reforms" besides the stimulus package, in the face of massive federal deficits. He ticked off renewable energy, universal healthcare, education funding and revision of the tax code to lessen the burden on the middle class. "All of his loyalists on Capitol Hill believe their reform issues should come first," Andrews generalized. "Whenever he decides his priorities, one of his greatest challenges will not be managing Republicans. It will be fending off demands from Democrats."
AT LEAST THERE IS THE DOLLAR MENU After politics, almost all of the remainder of the day's news agenda was preoccupied with the troubled economy. The only exceptions were medical research on heart disease, which was covered by all three newscasts, and a lone piece of international reporting, by Kevin Tibbles in Ontario for NBC.
NBC's Tom Costello walked us through the day's recession news: American International Group, the insurance conglomerate, needs a further federal bailout; Detroit's Big Three automakers need a federal loan of $25bn or $50bn "just to stay afloat;" Circuit City the retailer has declared bankruptcy; and "one bright spot--McDonald's sales surged in October as Americans sought out cheaper food."
Want more bad news? NBC sent Lee Cowan to Wilmington Ohio, the hub and company town for DHL air freight. DHL has thrown in the towel in its domestic competition with UPS and FedEx and is closing its Ohio operation. The 9,500 layoffs represent fully half of the town's workforce. NBC's Lisa Myers went to Texas to check out the mortgage service center for IndyMac Bank, which went broke and was taken over by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation. IndyMac is now the pilot bank for an FDIC scheme to lower interest rates and extend payment schedules for mortgage holders so that no one spends more than 38% of monthly income on housing payments. "It does not forgive debt so many borrowers may still owe more than their homes are worth." Yet the plan may be extended to other banks and applied to 2m homebuyers nationwide.
OUR OWN INSURANCE CONGLOMERATE The AIG story was covered by ABC's Brian Ross and CBS' Anthony Mason. Mason looked at the finances of the insurance conglomerate that posted $24bn in losses in the third quarter of 2008 alone. "The bailout needs a bailout," he shrugged, as its partial nationalization advanced by a further $40bn stock purchase. Ross used footage from Josh Bernstein of KNXV-TV, ABC's affiliate in Phoenix, that showed a $350,000 junket at the Pointe Hilton Squaw Peak Resort for 150 financial advisors. The conglomerate had a guilty conscience about its lavish accommodations, Ross suggested: "AIG instructed the hotel to keep its involvement secret." When asked about the expenditure, AIG said the cost "would ultimately be covered by other corporate sponsors."
DO NOT WATCH THIS Rounding out the economic coverage was a pair of lame personal finance features. There is so little time for hard news on a nightly newscast that this service journalism--so called news you can use--has no rationale for meandering over here from its traditional morning slot on such programs as Today and Good Morning America. On CBS' Dollars and Sense, Randall Pinkston advised us to use cash instead of plastic to buy stuff. On Women & Money for NBC, Rehema Ellis told us about women teaching their daughters to handle household finance.
The news you can use from Tyndall Report is advice not to watch such pabulum.
GREAT PUBLICITY FOR BIG PHARMA That research into preventing heart disease was covered by John McKenzie (no link) for ABC's A Closer Lookand science correspondent Robert Bazell on NBC and by two in-house physicians, Dr Jon LaPook for CBS' Eye on Medicine and Dr Timothy Johnson (no link) on ABC.
The study was funded by the pharmaceutical firm AstraZeneca, manufacturer of Crestor, the cholesterol-lowering statin medication. Its lead author, CBS' LaPook told us, holds a patent that tests patients for C-Reactive Protein, a marker for inflammation of the arteries.
Guess what the study found? That CRP is a risk factor for heart disease even in patients with already low cholesterol and that Crestor treats CRP, thereby lowering the risk of cardiac arrest, stroke and death in otherwise healthy patients. "Many doctors now predict that millions of healthy Americans, middle aged and older, will be tested for CRP and if their levels are high, start taking a statin," ABC's McKenzie concluded.
How about a little cost-benefit analysis first?
"So why not just test everyone and then treat the people who have the elevated CRP?" inquired CBS anchor Katie Couric of her doctor. "It is really expensive," LaPook replied.
NBC's Bazell told us that the CRP tests cost less than $20 each--so universal testing would presumably cost billions, although Bazell did not do the sums. CBS' LaPook reported an estimate of 6m patients testing positive nationwide but did not tell us how many of them would benefit if they all took the drug. Bazell told us that mass medication could prevent 50,000 heart attacks, strokes, bypass surgeries, angioplasties and cardiovascular deaths annually but did not tell us how many millions of prescriptions would have to be written to help those 50,000, nor did he estimate a cost savings for averting those 50,000 procedures. ABC's Dr Johnson warned that some have elevated CRP levels that are unconnected to coronary artery disease, caused by infections or rheumatoid arthritis instead.
No one told us the cost of the Crestor prescription, although Bazell reckoned that "the generic cheaper versions should work just as well." "Do other statins work as well as Crestor?" ABC anchor Charles Gibson inquired of Dr Johnson. "Well the company would like us to think that Crestor is the best." Johnson's judgment: statins are "interchangeable."
No wonder the nation's healthcare budget is spiraling out of control! There is no other major journalistic beat where cost considerations are so routinely absent when reporting new developments. This Crestor coverage is typical of that oversight.
FROM PICARDY TO THE KHYBER PASS NBC's Kevin Tibbles offered an unspoken reminder that Canada was once part of the British Empire when he wore a poppy to report on that nation's military dead from the War in Afghanistan, once part of the British Raj. The poppy evokes the fields of Picardy where millions were killed in the trenches of World War I. It is worn by Britons on Remembrance Day, formerly Armistice Day, aka Veterans Day. The cortege for each of the 97 Canadians killed in Afghanistan travels the same 100-mile route from airport to morgue through Ontario, Tibbles told us, and so "a grassroots phenomenon has risen out of a nation's grief." Each time the hearse passes, citizens line the route to salute it. The road is now called The Highway of Heroes, Autoroute des Heros.
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.
