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TYNDALL HEADLINE: HIGHLIGHTS FROM NOVEMBER 12, 2008
The economy topped the networks' news agenda yet again but a pair of different sectors caused Wednesday's headaches. Tuesday the face-off for top spot was between near-bankrupt automakers and near-evicted homeowners. Now the networks split on retailers' gloom and the federal bailout of banks. NBC led from Herald Square in New York City, where Macy's expects no Miracle on 34th Street during the holiday shopping season. ABC and CBS chose the announcement by Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson that the $700bn federal bailout of financial capitalism--the Troubled Asset Relief Program--would not be used to purchase troubled assets after all. Paulson's about-face was Story of the Day.
TYNDALL PICKS FOR NOVEMBER 12, 2008: CLICK ON GRID ELEMENTS TO SEARCH FOR MATCHING ITEMS
SECRETARY PAULSON FLIP-FLOPS The economy topped the networks' news agenda yet again but a pair of different sectors caused Wednesday's headaches. Tuesday the face-off for top spot was between near-bankrupt automakers and near-evicted homeowners. Now the networks split on retailers' gloom and the federal bailout of banks. NBC led from Herald Square in New York City, where Macy's expects no Miracle on 34th Street during the holiday shopping season. ABC and CBS chose the announcement by Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson that the $700bn federal bailout of financial capitalism--the Troubled Asset Relief Program--would not be used to purchase troubled assets after all. Paulson's about-face was Story of the Day.
ABC's Betsy Stark noted Paulson's explanation for using TARP funds to part-nationalize major banks instead of buying non-performing mortgages. His original plan was "not the most effective or efficient way to stabilize the nation's financial system." Just seven weeks ago, Stark pointed out, Paulson had testified that it was the investment in banks that "would be a big mistake." "Bait and switch" was how CBS' Sharyl Attkisson characterized Paulson's change of heart: "Your tax dollars are buying massive shares in some of the nation's biggest and most successful banks with virtually no strings attached. It is all allowed under Congress' plan." On NBC, CNBC's in-house economist Steve Liesman was more charitable to the Treasury Secretary, resorting to a football metaphor. "He called an audible," Liesman suggested. "I think they realized that there is so much mortgage debt out there that the $700bn was not going to go far enough."
CBS' Anthony Mason pointed out that TARP still has enough assets left over to help "auto loans, credit card loans, student loans." Together they account for 40% or so of the consumer credit market "and it has all-but ground to a halt." Congress may instruct Treasury to use TARP funds to secure a federal ownership stake in Detroit's Big Three automakers. "Do you think the government is eventually going to own everything?" wondered anchor Katie Couric. "Some people are worried about that," Mason replied.
As for the $125bn or so from TARP that the Treasury Department has already invested in the banking sector, CBS' Attkisson played Follow the Money and got nowhere. The Financial Stability Oversight Board has met four times but "they do not know how the banks are using the money. There is no hint in the first official Treasury report." Congress also pledged to set up an oversight board "but more than five weeks later not one person has been named to the panel."
COLD CHRISTMAS "Long before winter, retailers are already feeling the deep freeze," David Muir worried on ABC. "American consumers are not spending." Muir went down the list of money losing retail chains: Best Buy, Macy's, JCPenney, Dillard's. On NBC, Scott Cohn of the network's sibling financial news channel CNBC, added Starbucks and Barnes & Noble to the list. He consulted retail experts and they predicted "the first real decline in holiday sales in 20 years." Cohn quoted economist Diane Swonk as predicting a "BYOB potluck Christmas, a Secret Santa Christmas."
HARD TIMES, EVEN IN MASSACHUSETTS All three newscasts chipped in with hard times features. By coincidence, both ABC's Gigi Stone and NBC's Michelle Kosinski settled on Boston to illustrate the weak economy. Kosinski found home heating oil prices in New England failing to fall as rapidly as crude costs on global markets: an average household will pay $500 more this winter compared with the past five years. ABC's Stone took A Closer Look at the costs of healthcare--deductibles and co-payments and prescription drugs--rising so quickly that even patients with insurance are skimping on preventive health and medications. Over at newsbusters.org, our conservative news-monitoring colleague Brent Baker found it amusing that these "heart-rending anecdotes of people in pain thanks to the awful Bush economy" should emanate from the "veritable liberal nirvana" of Massachusetts. Yet neither Stone nor Kosinski mentioned George Bush, the Republican President, nor Deval Patrick, the commonwealth's Democratic governor
A hard times federal program that was singled out--for praise--is the Individual Development Account. Seth Doane showed us how the IDA works in his CBS series The Other America. IDA subsidizes $2000 in annual savings by working poor families--up to $40,000 annual income for a family of four--by matching their IDA contributions two-to-one. Doane introduced us to Richelle Durham, a participant in Washington State, who became homeless with her three children when she broke up with her abusive husband, yet manages to put aside that $2000 out of an annual income of just $20,000.
TRANSITION FROM TORTURE Only NBC had a reporter update us on the progress of the Obama transition. Andrea Mitchell focused on the recommendation by three former Secretaries of State--James Baker, Madeleine Albright, Colin Powell--that President Barack Obama close the "festering sore" that is the detention camp at the Guantanamo Bay Naval Base in Cuba. The closure would raise "thorny questions, " Mitchell conceded: "Some of the detainees cannot be sent home because they would be tortured; others are considered too dangerous to be set free." Mitchell did not address the accusation that the "torture" has happened already--at American hands.
Wrapping up Campaign 2008 coverage, NBC's Kelly O'Donnell saw John McCain "freer and unburdened after the election" and returning to the Senate "with a smile." The smile referred to a piece of NBC cross-promotion for McCain's appearance on Tonight with Jay Leno. McCain told a legitimately funny joke, which justified O'Donnell's plug: since the defeat, "I have been sleeping like a baby," he declared. "Sleep two hours; wake up and cry; sleep two hours; wake up and cry." Then O'Donnell spoiled it with a corny, and non-newsworthy, Tonight plug too far. McCain joked that he is working on the "transition"--from Leno to his successor Conan O'Brien.
FLOOGLE Atlanta is the home of the Centers for Disease Control so CBS assigned Mark Strassmann from its Georgia bureau to cover the floogle story. Google, the search engine, can spot which areas of the country have a sudden surge in Internet queries for information on fever symptoms. Public health scientists have to wait for the sick searcher to visit the doctor, get tested, have results analyzed, then reported back to Atlanta. Google claims to be able to locate influenza outbreaks two weeks earlier than the CDC so CDC plan to use that head start to locate hot spots for vaccine delivery.
MORMONS AND MARRIAGE ABC's Dan Harris contrasted nuptials in Connecticut with street protests outside Latter Day Saints temples nationwide. The common theme was same-sex marriages. They are now being solemnized in New England even as they have been halted in California by a popular vote on that state's Proposition 8. The protests, Harris explained, were inspired by the Mormon Church's activism in support of California's ban: "No other church went to these lengths, having so many members donate so much time, and money for TV ads." There is a second reason why gay rights activists should single out the LDS Church for especial protest--its "troubled history with polygamy" as Harris put it, when its marriages, too, were singled out for prohibition.
KIDNAPS KEPT SECRET A "brutal expansion of the raging Mexican drug wars, spilling across the border"--that was the warning by Armen Keteyian in a CBS Investigation. He filed from Phoenix where federal BATF agents have uncovered narcogangsters armed with military-grade hand grenades and disguised as police SWAT teams. The feuding drug cartels are raiding homes and kidnapping rivals, Keteyian warned. Phoenix has seen more than 250 reported kidnappings so far this year but Keteyian worried that "real figures could run as much as three times higher because so many go unreported."
GREAT BALLS OF TWINE Steve Hartman, the human interest specialist who closes CBS' newscasts each week with his Assignment America series, paid tribute to the daddy of all human interest correspondents, his network's Charles Kuralt, who died in 1997. Hartman unveiled his series On the Road Again which retraces some of Kuralt's byway discoveries. First off was Francis Johnson's giant ball of twine, found in Darwin Minn 30 years ago. Inspired by Kuralt's first On the Road showcase, rival balls have been wound in Kansas and Wisconsin. The Twine Ball Museum in Darwin maintains its claim to fame by dismissing the Kansas ball as group-wrapped and Wisconsin's for deviation from the spherical. In the meantime Minnesota's ball is shrinking. It sheds fiber every day.
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.
ABC's Betsy Stark noted Paulson's explanation for using TARP funds to part-nationalize major banks instead of buying non-performing mortgages. His original plan was "not the most effective or efficient way to stabilize the nation's financial system." Just seven weeks ago, Stark pointed out, Paulson had testified that it was the investment in banks that "would be a big mistake." "Bait and switch" was how CBS' Sharyl Attkisson characterized Paulson's change of heart: "Your tax dollars are buying massive shares in some of the nation's biggest and most successful banks with virtually no strings attached. It is all allowed under Congress' plan." On NBC, CNBC's in-house economist Steve Liesman was more charitable to the Treasury Secretary, resorting to a football metaphor. "He called an audible," Liesman suggested. "I think they realized that there is so much mortgage debt out there that the $700bn was not going to go far enough."
CBS' Anthony Mason pointed out that TARP still has enough assets left over to help "auto loans, credit card loans, student loans." Together they account for 40% or so of the consumer credit market "and it has all-but ground to a halt." Congress may instruct Treasury to use TARP funds to secure a federal ownership stake in Detroit's Big Three automakers. "Do you think the government is eventually going to own everything?" wondered anchor Katie Couric. "Some people are worried about that," Mason replied.
As for the $125bn or so from TARP that the Treasury Department has already invested in the banking sector, CBS' Attkisson played Follow the Money and got nowhere. The Financial Stability Oversight Board has met four times but "they do not know how the banks are using the money. There is no hint in the first official Treasury report." Congress also pledged to set up an oversight board "but more than five weeks later not one person has been named to the panel."
COLD CHRISTMAS "Long before winter, retailers are already feeling the deep freeze," David Muir worried on ABC. "American consumers are not spending." Muir went down the list of money losing retail chains: Best Buy, Macy's, JCPenney, Dillard's. On NBC, Scott Cohn of the network's sibling financial news channel CNBC, added Starbucks and Barnes & Noble to the list. He consulted retail experts and they predicted "the first real decline in holiday sales in 20 years." Cohn quoted economist Diane Swonk as predicting a "BYOB potluck Christmas, a Secret Santa Christmas."
HARD TIMES, EVEN IN MASSACHUSETTS All three newscasts chipped in with hard times features. By coincidence, both ABC's Gigi Stone and NBC's Michelle Kosinski settled on Boston to illustrate the weak economy. Kosinski found home heating oil prices in New England failing to fall as rapidly as crude costs on global markets: an average household will pay $500 more this winter compared with the past five years. ABC's Stone took A Closer Look at the costs of healthcare--deductibles and co-payments and prescription drugs--rising so quickly that even patients with insurance are skimping on preventive health and medications. Over at newsbusters.org, our conservative news-monitoring colleague Brent Baker found it amusing that these "heart-rending anecdotes of people in pain thanks to the awful Bush economy" should emanate from the "veritable liberal nirvana" of Massachusetts. Yet neither Stone nor Kosinski mentioned George Bush, the Republican President, nor Deval Patrick, the commonwealth's Democratic governor
A hard times federal program that was singled out--for praise--is the Individual Development Account. Seth Doane showed us how the IDA works in his CBS series The Other America. IDA subsidizes $2000 in annual savings by working poor families--up to $40,000 annual income for a family of four--by matching their IDA contributions two-to-one. Doane introduced us to Richelle Durham, a participant in Washington State, who became homeless with her three children when she broke up with her abusive husband, yet manages to put aside that $2000 out of an annual income of just $20,000.
TRANSITION FROM TORTURE Only NBC had a reporter update us on the progress of the Obama transition. Andrea Mitchell focused on the recommendation by three former Secretaries of State--James Baker, Madeleine Albright, Colin Powell--that President Barack Obama close the "festering sore" that is the detention camp at the Guantanamo Bay Naval Base in Cuba. The closure would raise "thorny questions, " Mitchell conceded: "Some of the detainees cannot be sent home because they would be tortured; others are considered too dangerous to be set free." Mitchell did not address the accusation that the "torture" has happened already--at American hands.
Wrapping up Campaign 2008 coverage, NBC's Kelly O'Donnell saw John McCain "freer and unburdened after the election" and returning to the Senate "with a smile." The smile referred to a piece of NBC cross-promotion for McCain's appearance on Tonight with Jay Leno. McCain told a legitimately funny joke, which justified O'Donnell's plug: since the defeat, "I have been sleeping like a baby," he declared. "Sleep two hours; wake up and cry; sleep two hours; wake up and cry." Then O'Donnell spoiled it with a corny, and non-newsworthy, Tonight plug too far. McCain joked that he is working on the "transition"--from Leno to his successor Conan O'Brien.
FLOOGLE Atlanta is the home of the Centers for Disease Control so CBS assigned Mark Strassmann from its Georgia bureau to cover the floogle story. Google, the search engine, can spot which areas of the country have a sudden surge in Internet queries for information on fever symptoms. Public health scientists have to wait for the sick searcher to visit the doctor, get tested, have results analyzed, then reported back to Atlanta. Google claims to be able to locate influenza outbreaks two weeks earlier than the CDC so CDC plan to use that head start to locate hot spots for vaccine delivery.
MORMONS AND MARRIAGE ABC's Dan Harris contrasted nuptials in Connecticut with street protests outside Latter Day Saints temples nationwide. The common theme was same-sex marriages. They are now being solemnized in New England even as they have been halted in California by a popular vote on that state's Proposition 8. The protests, Harris explained, were inspired by the Mormon Church's activism in support of California's ban: "No other church went to these lengths, having so many members donate so much time, and money for TV ads." There is a second reason why gay rights activists should single out the LDS Church for especial protest--its "troubled history with polygamy" as Harris put it, when its marriages, too, were singled out for prohibition.
KIDNAPS KEPT SECRET A "brutal expansion of the raging Mexican drug wars, spilling across the border"--that was the warning by Armen Keteyian in a CBS Investigation. He filed from Phoenix where federal BATF agents have uncovered narcogangsters armed with military-grade hand grenades and disguised as police SWAT teams. The feuding drug cartels are raiding homes and kidnapping rivals, Keteyian warned. Phoenix has seen more than 250 reported kidnappings so far this year but Keteyian worried that "real figures could run as much as three times higher because so many go unreported."
GREAT BALLS OF TWINE Steve Hartman, the human interest specialist who closes CBS' newscasts each week with his Assignment America series, paid tribute to the daddy of all human interest correspondents, his network's Charles Kuralt, who died in 1997. Hartman unveiled his series On the Road Again which retraces some of Kuralt's byway discoveries. First off was Francis Johnson's giant ball of twine, found in Darwin Minn 30 years ago. Inspired by Kuralt's first On the Road showcase, rival balls have been wound in Kansas and Wisconsin. The Twine Ball Museum in Darwin maintains its claim to fame by dismissing the Kansas ball as group-wrapped and Wisconsin's for deviation from the spherical. In the meantime Minnesota's ball is shrinking. It sheds fiber every day.
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.
