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TYNDALL HEADLINE: HIGHLIGHTS FROM APRIL 04, 2008
It was not news that dominated Friday's network newscasts but the anniversary of news. Fully 49% of the three-network newshole (28 min out of 58) was devoted to the 40th anniversary of the assassination of Martin Luther King at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis. NBC had Brian Williams anchor from the motel, now the National Civil Rights Museum, and his network assigned 83% of its newshole (17 min out of 20) to his sometimes impenetrable coverage of the Story of the Day. It is a marker of the true lame duck status of President George Bush that his reaction to the anniversary was not even mentioned on any newscast. Williams, by contrast, interviewed all three current Presidential candidates about King. There was actual breaking news to report, too. ABC, with George Stephanopoulos as substitute anchor, led with Hillary Rodham Clinton's publication of her tax records. CBS and NBC both led with MLK.
TYNDALL PICKS FOR APRIL 04, 2008: CLICK ON GRID ELEMENTS TO SEARCH FOR MATCHING ITEMS
ANNIVERSARY OF NEWS PAST It was not news that dominated Friday's network newscasts but the anniversary of news. Fully 49% of the three-network newshole (28 min out of 58) was devoted to the 40th anniversary of the assassination of Martin Luther King at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis. NBC had Brian Williams anchor from the motel, now the National Civil Rights Museum, and his network assigned 83% of its newshole (17 min out of 20) to his sometimes impenetrable coverage of the Story of the Day. It is a marker of the true lame duck status of President George Bush that his reaction to the anniversary was not even mentioned on any newscast. Williams, by contrast, interviewed all three current Presidential candidates about King. There was actual breaking news to report, too. ABC, with George Stephanopoulos as substitute anchor, led with Hillary Rodham Clinton's publication of her tax records. CBS and NBC both led with MLK.
Bill and Hillary, the former First Couple, have made $109m in the seven years since he left office. "They really are really rich!" exclaimed NBC's Andrea Mitchell, noting that he left office with $12m in unpaid legal fees. Those were paid off and then some. Most of the couple's income was made by the former President not the would-be President: $52m in speaking fees and $30m in book royalties. Her books, by contrast, made $10m. Together they paid $34m in taxes over the seven years and tithed $10m to charity. Bill Clinton had a partnership with Ron Burkle, a supermarket operator based in Los Angeles, that made him $15m, some of it from investments in Dubai, what NBC's Mitchell called a "controversial foreign country."
CBS' Jim Axelrod quoted candidate Rodham Clinton: "As recipients of all of George Bush's tax breaks, I can tell you I did not need them, I did not want them, I did not ask for them." "But she took them," mused Axelrod. "This does clear up the question of where she got $5m to loan to her campaign back in February." On ABC, Kate Snow noted the coincidence that Rodham Clinton announced plans to create the Cabinet-level post of a czar to end "poverty as we know it" on the very day she published her millionaire status. Still, Mark Halperin, ABC's political analyst, remarked to Snow that he was mystified as to why Rodham Clinton dragged her heels in releasing these records: "Yes they made a lot of money--but they gave a lot of money to charity; they paid a lot in taxes. I am not sure what they were trying to hide."
WHERE THE JOBS AREN’T The March unemployment numbers were as dismal as the Clintons' finances were rosy. The size of the workforce shrank for the third straight month, CBS' Anthony Mason noted, with a total of 232,000 positions disappearing since the New Year. He showed us monster.com's job fair in Atlanta where only a dozen businesses set up stalls and 1,200 applicants showed up. ABC's Betsy Stark (embargoed link) went through the details of the 5.1% jobless rate: 7.8m are looking for work; 1.4m are so discouraged that they have given up; 4.9m want full time positions but are forced to settled for part time. Stark called it "a discouraging picture."
OUR MAN IN HWANGE Hats off to Jim Sciutto (embargoed link), ABC's London-based senior foreign correspondent, who managed to get into Hwange in Zimbabwe, where he admitted he was "filming without permission." He found a city that has "come to a complete stop. We found a bakery with no bread, a butcher with no meat, a grocery store with no groceries"…and an election with no result. President Robert Mugabe announced, six days after the ballots were cast, that "there was no clear winner" between himself and opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai and ordered a do-over.
OUTSKIRT SKIRMISH Last week, as fighting flared between Iraqi government troops and Shiite militias in Basra, things also heated up in Baghdad, CBS' Lara Logan pointed out. A total of 132 mortar and rocket attacks were launched on the "heavily protected" Green Zone. Logan showed us one rocket launch site as seen from the scope of a USArmy Apache helicopter as it lined up a Hellfire missile salvo. Logan explained that most of the mortars originate from Shiite neighborhoods but US troops have "stopped short of going deep into the heart of Sadr City where the militias are dug in amongst millions of people. A bloody street fight there could cost thousands of innocent lives and throw the capital into chaos." Instead a USArmy Stryker regiment contented itself with closing down a rocket launching site on Sadr City's outskirts. "There are not enough US soldiers to hold this position alone. Iraqi reinforcements are needed," she warned, but the promised local back-up failed to materialize.
As she did last week when reporting on the Basra fighting as a "proxy war" between the United States and Iran, Logan decided to frame this Baghdad skirmish in a larger geostrategic context. She described the Mahdi Army as "Iranian-backed" and its leader, opposition politician Muqtada al-Sadr, as an "anti-American cleric."
MURTHA THE MASTER The legion of inside-the-Beltway lobbyists from the defense industry that attended a fundraiser for Rep John Murtha (D-PA) at the Ritz Carlton Hotel caught the eye of Sharyl Attkisson at CBS. Accordingly she filed a Follow the Money report on the Chairman of the Defense Appropriations Subcommittee.
Murtha has extended $12m in earmarked funding to Concurrent Technologies Corporation, a not-for-profit organization in his hometown whose mission includes helping other organizations apply for federal funds. CTC in turn pays The PMA Group, a lobbying firm run by a former Murtha staffer. Murtha has earmarked funds for the Center for Instrumented Critical Infrastructure. Attkisson reported that some of Murtha's critics suspect that CICI does not exist. Murtha also supports his hometown's National Drug Intelligence Center even though the White House wants it closed because it duplicates the work of a different facility. Murtha, marveled Attkisson, has "mastered" the appropriations system.
I AM A MAN "In the driving rain they marched, sanitation workers, 40 years later," ABC's Claire Shipman (embargoed link) observed from Memphis, "the same group Martin Luther King was in Memphis to fight for the day he was shot." She called "a day of pilgrimages to and from that fated and bitter slice of America's history, the Lorraine Motel." On CBS, Bill Whitaker sat down with Elmore Nickelberry, now 76, who was one of those striking trash collectors. Nickelberry explained why the pickets used the slogan I Am A Man--because his municipal supervisors "treated me like I was a boy. 'Come here boy! Why don't you get on that truck boy?" Nickelberry wept as a he recounted visiting a history class at a local elementary school where two little children, one white, one black, asked whether he marched with King. "I said I sure did. He said: 'Could I have your autograph, please?'"
ABC's Steve Osunsami suggested that some of King's campaign for economic justice has born fruit in forty years: "There is now a definable black middle class and a whole generation of black children who have never had to live the struggle of the 1960s." Nevertheless, "four decades later there are still large disparities." Osunsami talked to Jesse Jackson, an aide to King who was at his side when he was assassinated: "We are freer but less equal…first class jails and second class schools."
RFK NOT MLK The Presidential candidates dominated the news coverage of the King anniversary. Both John McCain and Hillary Rodham Clinton made speeches in Memphis. She spoke from the church where he preached his last sermon, the one in which he predicted his own imminent death. McCain spoke to apologize for having initially opposed a federal holiday to celebrate King's birthday. Missing from Memphis was Barack Obama. CBS' Dean Reynolds reported an interpretation for his absence that it was "a sign Obama wants to avoid the label of black candidate." ABC's Claire Shipman (embargoed link) pointed out that his speech was in Indianapolis instead, where "then-Presidential candidate Robert Kennedy heard the news" and made his famous speech calling for conciliation.
HANOI HANNAH AND OTHER POSERS NBC anchor Brian Williams underlined the decision to make the candidates the focus of the commemorations by interviewing all three of them on his newscast. His live q-&-a with John McCain had to compete with an outdoor rally so a second, different interview is posted online. On the actual newscast, McCain recounted a strange tale of how the news of the assassination of that prominent anti-Vietnam War activist played in the prisoner of war camp in North Vietnam. McCain remembered Hanoi Hannah, the North Vietnamese radio propagandist, broadcasting the news of King's death: "They knew it would harm our morale and cause chaos and further their cause." Was McCain's morale really harmed back in 1968 by this news? Did those prisoners of war really feel solidarity with leaders of the anti-war movement back home? Williams did not push him with a follow-up.
Candidate Barack Obama responded to Williams' questioning by emphasizing King's commitment to economic justice and downplaying any lasting racial divide. On the racial front Obama saw "enormous progress" over the last 40 years and "attitudes that are light years away from where they were." Not so for the economy: "Having an agenda that ensures economic justice so that everybody can get paid a decent wage and find a job, that part of Dr King's dream has not yet been achieved."
As for the questions Williams asked Hillary Rodham Clinton, they were so opaque that one just had to feel sorry for her. How can a candidate with even the best message discipline devise something intelligible in response to posers like these: "Is the sun rising or setting where race as a topic in this country is concerned?" "How can you become the leading voice for matters of race?" "It has been theorized that not having a national conversation on race was perhaps one of the missing elements of your husband's Presidency. Can you pledge yourself to a national conversation on race?"
SHARPTON’S STRANGE HISTORY LESSON As for the motel-turned-museum, NBC's Ron Mott offered generous positive publicity to the Best Buy corporation for its use of the Lorraine Motel museum as a venue for its diversity training courses. Some 1,300 employees have been taken round the museum by Best Buy in the past four years, including 800 managers, in order to foster "a more family-like environment" in its workforce. NBC anchor Brian Williams urged his viewers to put the museum on their to-do list. Williams checked out the exhibit in room 306 with civil rights activist Al Sharpton, the organizer of much of the 40th anniversary remembrances. Williams said that the balcony outside "held for a long time, until it was washed away, a national stain" but he did not explain who did the washing and when. Sharpton also said a peculiar thing about the assassination: "King dying on this balcony led to America exploding. So for the first time we saw America officially saying that we are two Americas." For the first time? Sharpton makes no sense.
MENTIONED IN PASSING The network newscasts do not assign correspondents to all of the news of the day. If Tyndall Report readers come across videostreamed reports online of stories that were mentioned only in passing, post the link in comments for us to check out.
Today's examples: Defense Secretary Robert Gates announced that the United States will send troop reinforcements of between 7,000 and 10,000 to Afghanistan…a line of storms from Texas to the Carolinas spawned five tornadoes, causing two deaths.
Bill and Hillary, the former First Couple, have made $109m in the seven years since he left office. "They really are really rich!" exclaimed NBC's Andrea Mitchell, noting that he left office with $12m in unpaid legal fees. Those were paid off and then some. Most of the couple's income was made by the former President not the would-be President: $52m in speaking fees and $30m in book royalties. Her books, by contrast, made $10m. Together they paid $34m in taxes over the seven years and tithed $10m to charity. Bill Clinton had a partnership with Ron Burkle, a supermarket operator based in Los Angeles, that made him $15m, some of it from investments in Dubai, what NBC's Mitchell called a "controversial foreign country."
CBS' Jim Axelrod quoted candidate Rodham Clinton: "As recipients of all of George Bush's tax breaks, I can tell you I did not need them, I did not want them, I did not ask for them." "But she took them," mused Axelrod. "This does clear up the question of where she got $5m to loan to her campaign back in February." On ABC, Kate Snow noted the coincidence that Rodham Clinton announced plans to create the Cabinet-level post of a czar to end "poverty as we know it" on the very day she published her millionaire status. Still, Mark Halperin, ABC's political analyst, remarked to Snow that he was mystified as to why Rodham Clinton dragged her heels in releasing these records: "Yes they made a lot of money--but they gave a lot of money to charity; they paid a lot in taxes. I am not sure what they were trying to hide."
WHERE THE JOBS AREN’T The March unemployment numbers were as dismal as the Clintons' finances were rosy. The size of the workforce shrank for the third straight month, CBS' Anthony Mason noted, with a total of 232,000 positions disappearing since the New Year. He showed us monster.com's job fair in Atlanta where only a dozen businesses set up stalls and 1,200 applicants showed up. ABC's Betsy Stark (embargoed link) went through the details of the 5.1% jobless rate: 7.8m are looking for work; 1.4m are so discouraged that they have given up; 4.9m want full time positions but are forced to settled for part time. Stark called it "a discouraging picture."
OUR MAN IN HWANGE Hats off to Jim Sciutto (embargoed link), ABC's London-based senior foreign correspondent, who managed to get into Hwange in Zimbabwe, where he admitted he was "filming without permission." He found a city that has "come to a complete stop. We found a bakery with no bread, a butcher with no meat, a grocery store with no groceries"…and an election with no result. President Robert Mugabe announced, six days after the ballots were cast, that "there was no clear winner" between himself and opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai and ordered a do-over.
OUTSKIRT SKIRMISH Last week, as fighting flared between Iraqi government troops and Shiite militias in Basra, things also heated up in Baghdad, CBS' Lara Logan pointed out. A total of 132 mortar and rocket attacks were launched on the "heavily protected" Green Zone. Logan showed us one rocket launch site as seen from the scope of a USArmy Apache helicopter as it lined up a Hellfire missile salvo. Logan explained that most of the mortars originate from Shiite neighborhoods but US troops have "stopped short of going deep into the heart of Sadr City where the militias are dug in amongst millions of people. A bloody street fight there could cost thousands of innocent lives and throw the capital into chaos." Instead a USArmy Stryker regiment contented itself with closing down a rocket launching site on Sadr City's outskirts. "There are not enough US soldiers to hold this position alone. Iraqi reinforcements are needed," she warned, but the promised local back-up failed to materialize.
As she did last week when reporting on the Basra fighting as a "proxy war" between the United States and Iran, Logan decided to frame this Baghdad skirmish in a larger geostrategic context. She described the Mahdi Army as "Iranian-backed" and its leader, opposition politician Muqtada al-Sadr, as an "anti-American cleric."
MURTHA THE MASTER The legion of inside-the-Beltway lobbyists from the defense industry that attended a fundraiser for Rep John Murtha (D-PA) at the Ritz Carlton Hotel caught the eye of Sharyl Attkisson at CBS. Accordingly she filed a Follow the Money report on the Chairman of the Defense Appropriations Subcommittee.
Murtha has extended $12m in earmarked funding to Concurrent Technologies Corporation, a not-for-profit organization in his hometown whose mission includes helping other organizations apply for federal funds. CTC in turn pays The PMA Group, a lobbying firm run by a former Murtha staffer. Murtha has earmarked funds for the Center for Instrumented Critical Infrastructure. Attkisson reported that some of Murtha's critics suspect that CICI does not exist. Murtha also supports his hometown's National Drug Intelligence Center even though the White House wants it closed because it duplicates the work of a different facility. Murtha, marveled Attkisson, has "mastered" the appropriations system.
I AM A MAN "In the driving rain they marched, sanitation workers, 40 years later," ABC's Claire Shipman (embargoed link) observed from Memphis, "the same group Martin Luther King was in Memphis to fight for the day he was shot." She called "a day of pilgrimages to and from that fated and bitter slice of America's history, the Lorraine Motel." On CBS, Bill Whitaker sat down with Elmore Nickelberry, now 76, who was one of those striking trash collectors. Nickelberry explained why the pickets used the slogan I Am A Man--because his municipal supervisors "treated me like I was a boy. 'Come here boy! Why don't you get on that truck boy?" Nickelberry wept as a he recounted visiting a history class at a local elementary school where two little children, one white, one black, asked whether he marched with King. "I said I sure did. He said: 'Could I have your autograph, please?'"
ABC's Steve Osunsami suggested that some of King's campaign for economic justice has born fruit in forty years: "There is now a definable black middle class and a whole generation of black children who have never had to live the struggle of the 1960s." Nevertheless, "four decades later there are still large disparities." Osunsami talked to Jesse Jackson, an aide to King who was at his side when he was assassinated: "We are freer but less equal…first class jails and second class schools."
RFK NOT MLK The Presidential candidates dominated the news coverage of the King anniversary. Both John McCain and Hillary Rodham Clinton made speeches in Memphis. She spoke from the church where he preached his last sermon, the one in which he predicted his own imminent death. McCain spoke to apologize for having initially opposed a federal holiday to celebrate King's birthday. Missing from Memphis was Barack Obama. CBS' Dean Reynolds reported an interpretation for his absence that it was "a sign Obama wants to avoid the label of black candidate." ABC's Claire Shipman (embargoed link) pointed out that his speech was in Indianapolis instead, where "then-Presidential candidate Robert Kennedy heard the news" and made his famous speech calling for conciliation.
HANOI HANNAH AND OTHER POSERS NBC anchor Brian Williams underlined the decision to make the candidates the focus of the commemorations by interviewing all three of them on his newscast. His live q-&-a with John McCain had to compete with an outdoor rally so a second, different interview is posted online. On the actual newscast, McCain recounted a strange tale of how the news of the assassination of that prominent anti-Vietnam War activist played in the prisoner of war camp in North Vietnam. McCain remembered Hanoi Hannah, the North Vietnamese radio propagandist, broadcasting the news of King's death: "They knew it would harm our morale and cause chaos and further their cause." Was McCain's morale really harmed back in 1968 by this news? Did those prisoners of war really feel solidarity with leaders of the anti-war movement back home? Williams did not push him with a follow-up.
Candidate Barack Obama responded to Williams' questioning by emphasizing King's commitment to economic justice and downplaying any lasting racial divide. On the racial front Obama saw "enormous progress" over the last 40 years and "attitudes that are light years away from where they were." Not so for the economy: "Having an agenda that ensures economic justice so that everybody can get paid a decent wage and find a job, that part of Dr King's dream has not yet been achieved."
As for the questions Williams asked Hillary Rodham Clinton, they were so opaque that one just had to feel sorry for her. How can a candidate with even the best message discipline devise something intelligible in response to posers like these: "Is the sun rising or setting where race as a topic in this country is concerned?" "How can you become the leading voice for matters of race?" "It has been theorized that not having a national conversation on race was perhaps one of the missing elements of your husband's Presidency. Can you pledge yourself to a national conversation on race?"
SHARPTON’S STRANGE HISTORY LESSON As for the motel-turned-museum, NBC's Ron Mott offered generous positive publicity to the Best Buy corporation for its use of the Lorraine Motel museum as a venue for its diversity training courses. Some 1,300 employees have been taken round the museum by Best Buy in the past four years, including 800 managers, in order to foster "a more family-like environment" in its workforce. NBC anchor Brian Williams urged his viewers to put the museum on their to-do list. Williams checked out the exhibit in room 306 with civil rights activist Al Sharpton, the organizer of much of the 40th anniversary remembrances. Williams said that the balcony outside "held for a long time, until it was washed away, a national stain" but he did not explain who did the washing and when. Sharpton also said a peculiar thing about the assassination: "King dying on this balcony led to America exploding. So for the first time we saw America officially saying that we are two Americas." For the first time? Sharpton makes no sense.
MENTIONED IN PASSING The network newscasts do not assign correspondents to all of the news of the day. If Tyndall Report readers come across videostreamed reports online of stories that were mentioned only in passing, post the link in comments for us to check out.
Today's examples: Defense Secretary Robert Gates announced that the United States will send troop reinforcements of between 7,000 and 10,000 to Afghanistan…a line of storms from Texas to the Carolinas spawned five tornadoes, causing two deaths.
