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TYNDALL HEADLINE: HIGHLIGHTS FROM APRIL 28, 2008
This week begins as last week ended. All three networks led with the rising cost of gasoline and the federal government's efforts to stave off recession by injecting a fiscal stimulus into the economy: CBS led with the rebate checks; NBC with the marketing efforts of retailers to get those checks spent; ABC with the prospects that prices at the pump will continue to climb. ABC, with substitute anchor George Stephanopoulos, expended its newshole (24 min v CBS 19, NBC 20) for the fourth Monday in a row, thanks to Pfizer's Celebrex brand, its single sponsor. Despite each newscast's decision to lead with the economy, a Campaign 2008 topic turned out to be Story of the Day: Barack Obama qualified, thanks to his longtime pastor Jeremiah Wright's defense of his provocative preaching at the National Press Club.
TYNDALL PICKS FOR APRIL 28, 2008: CLICK ON GRID ELEMENTS TO SEARCH FOR MATCHING ITEMS
THE MACROECONOMICS OF FISCAL STIMULUS This week begins as last week ended. All three networks led with the rising cost of gasoline and the federal government's efforts to stave off recession by injecting a fiscal stimulus into the economy: CBS led with the rebate checks; NBC with the marketing efforts of retailers to get those checks spent; ABC with the prospects that prices at the pump will continue to climb. ABC, with substitute anchor George Stephanopoulos, expended its newshole (24 min v CBS 19, NBC 20) for the fourth Monday in a row, thanks to Pfizer's Celebrex brand, its single sponsor. Despite each newscast's decision to lead with the economy, a Campaign 2008 topic turned out to be Story of the Day: Barack Obama qualified, thanks to his longtime pastor Jeremiah Wright's defense of his provocative preaching at the National Press Club.
What will the nation's 130m recipient households do with their $600-per-adult, $300-per-child rebate checks? CBS' Anthony Mason unveiled his network's opinion poll findings: 51% will pay already-incurred bills; 27% will add to their savings; and 18% will make new purchases. Mason quoted University of Maryland economist Peter Morici as reassuring us that paying down credit card debt does not undermine the economic principle behind the stimulus plan, since a lower balance one month provides leeway to spend extra the month after.
Trish Regan of CNBC, NBC's sibling financial news cable channel, ticked off those retailers planning to offer a "rebate special"--Sears, Wal-Mart, Staples, Kmart, not to mention grocery store chains such as Supervalu--before noting that it is unclear "whether or not the rebates are enough to jumpstart the economy or prevent a recession." Regan's economic rationale for the stimulus contradicted that of Morici on CBS. The government is "borrowing the money to issue the rebates," she pointed out, so she implied that if that increased federal debt merely becomes reduced household debt, net-net, the macro-economic stimulus amounts to zero.
On ABC, Dan Harris (embargoed link) reminded us that the stimulus plan was rushed through Congress when "they did not foresee these record high gas prices. So what was supposed to be a big economy booster may end up largely a pain reliever." Harris' economic worry was that households will spend their rebates on gasoline and "most of that money goes out of the country to Saudi Arabia, Russia and Venezuela instead of to American companies like Apple or The GAP." Can someone fact check that claim? Is it true that a higher proportion of the revenues at Apple or The GAP remain in the domestic economy compared with money spent at the local filling station?
By the way, Harris pointed out that global price hikes for crude oil have been slow to filter through the refinery system and arrive at that filling station. He warned that a gallon of gasoline will cost "50c or 60c more in the next couple of weeks."
CBS rounded out the day's economic coverage with Seth Doane's Hitting Home profile of the poverty-stricken Castellucci family of Gloucester Mass. The family's auto body shop went into debt and had to close. Father David was unemployed for five months before finding a job as a copier technician. The family of four children now eats pantry donations and groceries bought with food stamps. The house has home improvements that were halted in mid job. Mother Lisa collects cans off the street for the deposit money to help pay her bills. The Castelluccis, at least, could use that stimulus.
THE PREACHER MEETS THE PRESS All three newscasts had their campaign correspondents string together soundbites from the Rev Jeremiah Wright's q-&-a session at the National Press Club: NBC's Andrea Mitchell called Wright's time in the spotlight "an unwelcome distraction" for Barack Obama; ABC's David Wright (embargoed link) predicted that "the pastor will not make it easy for the politician to put this controversy behind him;" on CBS' Dean Reynolds saw Wright's reemergence as "a gift for the political opposition, which has stressed Obama's difference from the mainstream."
Reynolds' comment does not seem fair. Even Obama's opponents have stressed that it is his associates that are out of the "mainstream" not the candidate himself. Such criticisms have almost all amounted to guilt by association rather than direct attacks.
As for the content of Wright's pronouncements, these are the soundbites that were found newsworthy: he asserted that he served more patriotically in the military than Dick Cheney (ABC, CBS); he characterized the global reach of the US military as an empire, like Rome's, which killed Jesus Christ (ABC); he claimed that "all black America" listens to the speeches of the Nation of Islam's Louis Farrakhan (ABC, NBC); he accused his critics of targeting the entire African-American church (CBS, NBC); he repeated that God does, too, damn America, if ever its government transgresses (CBS); he insisted that the terrorist attacks of September 11th, 2001, were a reaction to the United States' own terrorist acts overseas (NBC).
ABC followed up from the campaign trail itself where Jake Tapper saw the preacher reappearing at an "awkward time" for the candidate "when he is reaching out precisely to the very voters who are most likely to be alienated by Wright--white, blue collar voters." Confusingly Tapper did not elaborate on the nature of that alienation; instead he invoked a separate reason, entirely unrelated to Wright, namely the "perception" that Obama is "an elitist." So Tapper aired soundbites from Obama's autobiographical stump speech as the fatherless son of a teenaged mother. Thus the candidate, at this late stage "reintroduces himself as someone who does not just understand the working class but is of it."
NEED ID TO EXERCISE FRANCHISE The decision by the Supreme Court to uphold Indiana's voting laws was a timely one, given that the state's Democratic Presidential primary is a week away. ABC's Jan Crawford Greenburg called the restriction "one of the toughest voter ID laws in the country" requiring every voter, even those without driver's licenses such as the poor, the elderly and the disabled, to present a state-issued photo ID card before exercising the franchise. The logic of the 6-3 majority was that Indiana has a "valid interest in protecting the integrity and reliability of the electoral process." NBC's Pete Williams (no link) stated that similar laws in Georgia, Florida and Michigan will now go into effect.
QUALITY END PRODUCT On Capitol Hill, CBS' Chip Reid obtained a preview of an expose of footdragging in the regulation of toxic chemicals. The Environmental Protection Agency is supposed to assess 50 different possible pollutants each year. Yet in the past two years the EPA has issued rules for just four. The investigation by the Government Accountability Office blames the White House for adding layers of red tape. Reid showed us before-and-after flow charts to demonstrate the "layer after layer of review" imposed by the Office of Management and Budget. "Endless delays and secrecy," was how the GAO report put it, leaving formaldehyde and polluted drinking water unregulated. OMB, in its own defense, called improving the "quality of the end product" more important than "timeliness."
I DID NOT LIKE THAT AT ALL Richard Butler, a freelance contributor for CBS News, spoke on the record for the first time since he was kidnapped. He had been held hostage by a Shiite militia in Basra for two months. CBS' Lara Logan described his rescue by Iraqi soldiers two weeks ago. Now Butler sits down with his colleague Allen Pizzey in London. At one stage, he recalled, he was moved at night into a cell three feet wide and just long enough for him to stretch out in: "They actually plastered the door up when I was inside. I did not like that at all." Butler intends to resume his career as war correspondent but not right away: "I think I have probably used up my share of luck of the coming few months."
CHECK OUT WANG’S NUNCHUCKS Mumbai, Cairo, Kenya…now Dailan. ABC completed its four-part series 21 and the World is Yours on global twentysomethings in the coastal city, population 6m, "China's Silicon Valley," according to Stephanie Sy. Sy's profile of Dang Qian, a kung-fu practicing student of English at Dailan University, included a midair interview in a Coca-Cola sponsored ski-lift-style chair and an all-you-can-eat seafood dinner. Sy traveled 1,200 miles inland to meet Qian's family, the only peasants in his village this year to have a college-educated son. They pay $2,500 for his annual tuition, making the extra money by selling duck meat at the local market: "With two children making ends meet is extremely difficult yet they laid out a generous feast for us."
VIRUNGA VOLCANOES NBC's world travel saw Ann Curry in Congo's Tanya Nature Reserve for an Our Planet feature on the mountain gorilla sanctuary amid the Virunga volcanoes. The apes face a triple threat of the ongoing civil war, poachers and aggressive logging of their habitat, Curry told us. The response by Conservation International is a $7m land-for-development swap that sets aside 350 square miles as a preserve in exchange for development aid including a hospital, a school, hydroelectric power, a radio station and training in conservation science. The aid project may be interesting but Curry needed those cute apes to win airtime for her story.
NO LONGER THE INGENUE To round out the day's news, all three newscasts showered Vanity Fair with publicity for Annie Leibovitz' photo spread with Miley Cyrus. Not that VF needed the help, noted CBS' Sandra Hughes (no link), "its Website had 5m hits by midday." Cyrus, for all of you non-pubescent non-females out there, is the 15-year-old actress who plays Hannah Montana, Disney Channel's TV-music-movie-merchandising megahit. According to Leibovitz' lens, Cyrus seems not to use those Montana brand pajamas--they are really for preteens after all--preferring to sleep naked. Leibovitz' image depicted a sleepy-eyed Cyrus sitting up in bed, a satin sheet protecting her from all immodesty, but still indisputably pajamafree.
Well, the image has "created on uproar," NBC' Rehema Ellis told us. ABC's Sharyn Alfonsi called it "revealing" even though nothing but her back was revealed. Cyrus herself said the mundane image "was supposed to be artistic," which shows that she is still immature, at least aesthetically. In a press release of monumental hypocrisy, Alfonsi's bosses at Disney said the photoshoot was "created to deliberately manipulate a 15-year-old in order to sell magazines"--as if manipulating Cyrus in her Montana role had never been used to sell anything. "She is Disney's cash cow!" Hughes exclaimed.
NBC's Ellis contacted Bob Garfield of Advertising Age about the publicity stunt: "The word that comes to mind is bonanza. She has probably positioned herself very nicely for the next stage when she can, you know, no longer be a 15-year-old ingenue."
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: a high speed train crash in China killed seven passengers…merger talks are under way between United Airlines and USAirways…Wrigley chewing gum will be bought by Mars for $23bn…a tornado touched down in Suffolk Va, killing one…the inventory of unsold vacant homes nationwide now exceeds 2.2m…General Motors has laid off 3,500 workers at pick-up truck and Sports Utility Vehicle factories…the first class postage stamp will cost 42c in two weeks…an incestuous horror has been exposed in Austria, where a father imprisoned his daughter for 24 years; she gave birth to his seven children…of the 464 children and teenagers removed from their parents at the Yearning for Zion ranch, 31 are girls, aged 14 to 17, who have been or still are pregnant…the Olympic torch paraded through China's ally of North Korea with no sign of protest.
What will the nation's 130m recipient households do with their $600-per-adult, $300-per-child rebate checks? CBS' Anthony Mason unveiled his network's opinion poll findings: 51% will pay already-incurred bills; 27% will add to their savings; and 18% will make new purchases. Mason quoted University of Maryland economist Peter Morici as reassuring us that paying down credit card debt does not undermine the economic principle behind the stimulus plan, since a lower balance one month provides leeway to spend extra the month after.
Trish Regan of CNBC, NBC's sibling financial news cable channel, ticked off those retailers planning to offer a "rebate special"--Sears, Wal-Mart, Staples, Kmart, not to mention grocery store chains such as Supervalu--before noting that it is unclear "whether or not the rebates are enough to jumpstart the economy or prevent a recession." Regan's economic rationale for the stimulus contradicted that of Morici on CBS. The government is "borrowing the money to issue the rebates," she pointed out, so she implied that if that increased federal debt merely becomes reduced household debt, net-net, the macro-economic stimulus amounts to zero.
On ABC, Dan Harris (embargoed link) reminded us that the stimulus plan was rushed through Congress when "they did not foresee these record high gas prices. So what was supposed to be a big economy booster may end up largely a pain reliever." Harris' economic worry was that households will spend their rebates on gasoline and "most of that money goes out of the country to Saudi Arabia, Russia and Venezuela instead of to American companies like Apple or The GAP." Can someone fact check that claim? Is it true that a higher proportion of the revenues at Apple or The GAP remain in the domestic economy compared with money spent at the local filling station?
By the way, Harris pointed out that global price hikes for crude oil have been slow to filter through the refinery system and arrive at that filling station. He warned that a gallon of gasoline will cost "50c or 60c more in the next couple of weeks."
CBS rounded out the day's economic coverage with Seth Doane's Hitting Home profile of the poverty-stricken Castellucci family of Gloucester Mass. The family's auto body shop went into debt and had to close. Father David was unemployed for five months before finding a job as a copier technician. The family of four children now eats pantry donations and groceries bought with food stamps. The house has home improvements that were halted in mid job. Mother Lisa collects cans off the street for the deposit money to help pay her bills. The Castelluccis, at least, could use that stimulus.
THE PREACHER MEETS THE PRESS All three newscasts had their campaign correspondents string together soundbites from the Rev Jeremiah Wright's q-&-a session at the National Press Club: NBC's Andrea Mitchell called Wright's time in the spotlight "an unwelcome distraction" for Barack Obama; ABC's David Wright (embargoed link) predicted that "the pastor will not make it easy for the politician to put this controversy behind him;" on CBS' Dean Reynolds saw Wright's reemergence as "a gift for the political opposition, which has stressed Obama's difference from the mainstream."
Reynolds' comment does not seem fair. Even Obama's opponents have stressed that it is his associates that are out of the "mainstream" not the candidate himself. Such criticisms have almost all amounted to guilt by association rather than direct attacks.
As for the content of Wright's pronouncements, these are the soundbites that were found newsworthy: he asserted that he served more patriotically in the military than Dick Cheney (ABC, CBS); he characterized the global reach of the US military as an empire, like Rome's, which killed Jesus Christ (ABC); he claimed that "all black America" listens to the speeches of the Nation of Islam's Louis Farrakhan (ABC, NBC); he accused his critics of targeting the entire African-American church (CBS, NBC); he repeated that God does, too, damn America, if ever its government transgresses (CBS); he insisted that the terrorist attacks of September 11th, 2001, were a reaction to the United States' own terrorist acts overseas (NBC).
ABC followed up from the campaign trail itself where Jake Tapper saw the preacher reappearing at an "awkward time" for the candidate "when he is reaching out precisely to the very voters who are most likely to be alienated by Wright--white, blue collar voters." Confusingly Tapper did not elaborate on the nature of that alienation; instead he invoked a separate reason, entirely unrelated to Wright, namely the "perception" that Obama is "an elitist." So Tapper aired soundbites from Obama's autobiographical stump speech as the fatherless son of a teenaged mother. Thus the candidate, at this late stage "reintroduces himself as someone who does not just understand the working class but is of it."
NEED ID TO EXERCISE FRANCHISE The decision by the Supreme Court to uphold Indiana's voting laws was a timely one, given that the state's Democratic Presidential primary is a week away. ABC's Jan Crawford Greenburg called the restriction "one of the toughest voter ID laws in the country" requiring every voter, even those without driver's licenses such as the poor, the elderly and the disabled, to present a state-issued photo ID card before exercising the franchise. The logic of the 6-3 majority was that Indiana has a "valid interest in protecting the integrity and reliability of the electoral process." NBC's Pete Williams (no link) stated that similar laws in Georgia, Florida and Michigan will now go into effect.
QUALITY END PRODUCT On Capitol Hill, CBS' Chip Reid obtained a preview of an expose of footdragging in the regulation of toxic chemicals. The Environmental Protection Agency is supposed to assess 50 different possible pollutants each year. Yet in the past two years the EPA has issued rules for just four. The investigation by the Government Accountability Office blames the White House for adding layers of red tape. Reid showed us before-and-after flow charts to demonstrate the "layer after layer of review" imposed by the Office of Management and Budget. "Endless delays and secrecy," was how the GAO report put it, leaving formaldehyde and polluted drinking water unregulated. OMB, in its own defense, called improving the "quality of the end product" more important than "timeliness."
I DID NOT LIKE THAT AT ALL Richard Butler, a freelance contributor for CBS News, spoke on the record for the first time since he was kidnapped. He had been held hostage by a Shiite militia in Basra for two months. CBS' Lara Logan described his rescue by Iraqi soldiers two weeks ago. Now Butler sits down with his colleague Allen Pizzey in London. At one stage, he recalled, he was moved at night into a cell three feet wide and just long enough for him to stretch out in: "They actually plastered the door up when I was inside. I did not like that at all." Butler intends to resume his career as war correspondent but not right away: "I think I have probably used up my share of luck of the coming few months."
CHECK OUT WANG’S NUNCHUCKS Mumbai, Cairo, Kenya…now Dailan. ABC completed its four-part series 21 and the World is Yours on global twentysomethings in the coastal city, population 6m, "China's Silicon Valley," according to Stephanie Sy. Sy's profile of Dang Qian, a kung-fu practicing student of English at Dailan University, included a midair interview in a Coca-Cola sponsored ski-lift-style chair and an all-you-can-eat seafood dinner. Sy traveled 1,200 miles inland to meet Qian's family, the only peasants in his village this year to have a college-educated son. They pay $2,500 for his annual tuition, making the extra money by selling duck meat at the local market: "With two children making ends meet is extremely difficult yet they laid out a generous feast for us."
VIRUNGA VOLCANOES NBC's world travel saw Ann Curry in Congo's Tanya Nature Reserve for an Our Planet feature on the mountain gorilla sanctuary amid the Virunga volcanoes. The apes face a triple threat of the ongoing civil war, poachers and aggressive logging of their habitat, Curry told us. The response by Conservation International is a $7m land-for-development swap that sets aside 350 square miles as a preserve in exchange for development aid including a hospital, a school, hydroelectric power, a radio station and training in conservation science. The aid project may be interesting but Curry needed those cute apes to win airtime for her story.
NO LONGER THE INGENUE To round out the day's news, all three newscasts showered Vanity Fair with publicity for Annie Leibovitz' photo spread with Miley Cyrus. Not that VF needed the help, noted CBS' Sandra Hughes (no link), "its Website had 5m hits by midday." Cyrus, for all of you non-pubescent non-females out there, is the 15-year-old actress who plays Hannah Montana, Disney Channel's TV-music-movie-merchandising megahit. According to Leibovitz' lens, Cyrus seems not to use those Montana brand pajamas--they are really for preteens after all--preferring to sleep naked. Leibovitz' image depicted a sleepy-eyed Cyrus sitting up in bed, a satin sheet protecting her from all immodesty, but still indisputably pajamafree.
Well, the image has "created on uproar," NBC' Rehema Ellis told us. ABC's Sharyn Alfonsi called it "revealing" even though nothing but her back was revealed. Cyrus herself said the mundane image "was supposed to be artistic," which shows that she is still immature, at least aesthetically. In a press release of monumental hypocrisy, Alfonsi's bosses at Disney said the photoshoot was "created to deliberately manipulate a 15-year-old in order to sell magazines"--as if manipulating Cyrus in her Montana role had never been used to sell anything. "She is Disney's cash cow!" Hughes exclaimed.
NBC's Ellis contacted Bob Garfield of Advertising Age about the publicity stunt: "The word that comes to mind is bonanza. She has probably positioned herself very nicely for the next stage when she can, you know, no longer be a 15-year-old ingenue."
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: a high speed train crash in China killed seven passengers…merger talks are under way between United Airlines and USAirways…Wrigley chewing gum will be bought by Mars for $23bn…a tornado touched down in Suffolk Va, killing one…the inventory of unsold vacant homes nationwide now exceeds 2.2m…General Motors has laid off 3,500 workers at pick-up truck and Sports Utility Vehicle factories…the first class postage stamp will cost 42c in two weeks…an incestuous horror has been exposed in Austria, where a father imprisoned his daughter for 24 years; she gave birth to his seven children…of the 464 children and teenagers removed from their parents at the Yearning for Zion ranch, 31 are girls, aged 14 to 17, who have been or still are pregnant…the Olympic torch paraded through China's ally of North Korea with no sign of protest.
