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TYNDALL HEADLINE: HIGHLIGHTS FROM MAY 05, 2008
The devastation wreaked by Cyclone Nargis in the Bay of Bengal over the weekend was the Story of the Day. The storm came ashore with 120mph over the Irrawaddy Delta in Myanmar but because of the restrictions of its ruling military junta, there were few video images available and none of the networks had permission to report from there: ABC filed from Bangkok; CBS from Tokyo; NBC from the White House. With such sparse information, only ABC decided to lead with the disaster. NBC chose the continuing increases in the cost of crude oil while CBS led from Indiana on the eve of its Presidential primary election.
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IRRAWADDY DELTA BLUES The devastation wreaked by Cyclone Nargis in the Bay of Bengal over the weekend was the Story of the Day. The storm came ashore with 120mph over the Irrawaddy Delta in Myanmar but because of the restrictions of its ruling military junta, there were few video images available and none of the networks had permission to report from there: ABC filed from Bangkok; CBS from Tokyo; NBC from the White House. With such sparse information, only ABC decided to lead with the disaster. NBC chose the continuing increases in the cost of crude oil while CBS led from Indiana on the eve of its Presidential primary election.
"There is no power. There is no drinking water. There is no food," that is how ABC's Nick Schifrin (no link) summarized the plight of tens of thousands of Burmese. He reported that the cyclone had flooded many rice farms with salt water and that Buddhist monasteries had been turned into makeshift shelters. "Roads were not that good to begin with," CBS' Barry Petersen pointed out. "Now many are just gone." He quoted estimates of the homeless population as exceeding 90,000. The known death toll is 4,000 so far but "what worries the United Nations is a second wave of catastrophe, " ABC's Schifrin warned, "that days after the storm left, hunger, thirst and disease can kill countless more."
From the White House, NBC's John Yang noted that First Lady Laura Bush, the administration's "main critic of Myanmar's oppressive military regime," was assigned as its spokesperson on the disaster. She blasted the junta for its failure to broadcast warnings before the storm hit and for its subsequent refusal to allow entry to international aid teams. As for the military response on the ground, ABC's Schifrin reported that in some areas "soldiers are helping to clean up but residents say they are largely absent--this in a country where the military presence is always felt."
WHITE WORKERS' GAS TANKS On the eve of the vote in North Carolina and Indiana, the Democratic candidates' closing arguments were "all about the price of gas," observed NBC's Andrea Mitchell. CBS anchor Katie Couric grabbed brief one-on-one interviews with each of them. Hillary Rodham Clinton explained her plan to grant motorists a tax holiday at filling stations as an attack on Big Oil: "We should make the oil companies pay the gas tax this summer." Barack Obama dismissed her plan as "a phony approach. It is a gimmick. This is a typical Washington response, trying to get through the next election."
Rodham Clinton, the "multimillionaire former First Lady," was teased by ABC's Jake Tapper for having "repackaged herself as a working class hero…the new populist." She has hardened her stance against free trade and softened her stance for gun control. Tapper quoted her newfound disdain for policy wonks: "Elite opinion is always on the side of doing things that really disadvantage the vast majority of Americans." NBC's Mitchell pointed out that her husband Bill had turned "folksier" in North Carolina, "in New Bern, Zebulon, Smithfield and Jacksonville, practically going door-to-door selling his wife's gas tax holiday."
Rodham Clinton's populism seemed not to be targeted at the entire working class--only at one racial segment of it. CBS' Jim Axelrod saw Rodham Clinton casting herself as the "tough and gritty champion" of blue collar "white" voters. ABC's Tapper, too, called her target demographic the "white" working class. When CBS' Couric asked Obama about his relative weakness among those "white" working class voters, he replied: "This issue has come up lately because it is the only argument that Sen Clinton has for winning the nomination."
ABC's Terry Moran (embargoed link) followed Obama through "another marathon day of campaigning" starting before dawn in Evansville. He noted "a rare flash of anger" when Obama was called an "elitist." He shot back that John McCain was an admiral's son and the Rodham Clinton was raised in Chicago's rich suburbs. As for the horse race, CBS' Dean Reynolds called Indiana "tight" and North Carolina "tight too" with a once-double-digit lead for Obama "nerve-wrackingly narrowed."
FLYING FOURS As the cost of a barrel of crude closed at $119, NBC had Scott Cohn from CNBC lead with the economic consequences and Tom Costello cover the ripple effect for the airlines. "With supplies tight and demand high the price of crude oil is supersensitive to the slightest disruption," Cohn warned, mentioning flare-ups in Nigeria and Iraq. The current high cost of crude should result in 10c or 15c more for a gallon of gasoline eventually. NBC's Costello traced the climbing cost of aviation fuel to power a jetliner from coast to coast: from $2,700 in 2000 to $9,600 in 1007 to $15,000 later this year. NWAirlines, Southwest and jetBlue are "literally easing up on the throttle," flying 10mph slower in order to burn less. On ABC, David Kerley (embargoed link) told us about Chrysler's incentive scheme to sell new automobiles: dealers throw in a pre-paid gasoline card for an annual 700 gallons at $2.99 for the next three years. Kerley offered a cool indicator for which direction the price of gasoline is headed: the signage firm that makes giant numbers for price signs at filling stations sees "4" flying off the shelves.
TO KILL OR NOT TO KILL Following the Supreme Court's go-ahead for a deadly cocktail of injections, Georgia will execute the first Death Row inmate in eight months. CBS' Mark Strassmann previewed 14 other scheduled deaths over the next six months even as he pointed out that a total of 129 former residents of Death Row are now free men, having been wrongly convicted and exonerated by DNA evidence. The risk of killing an innocent has inspired debates in five state legislatures--Md, NM, Colo, Neb, Mont--over repealing capital punishment even as five others--La, Okla, SC, Tex, Mont--debate expanding the penalty to include "a crime other than murder." It is most peculiar that Montana should be debating both changes simultaneously.
NOT IN MY BACK YARD The most dynamic news video of the day was filed by Richard Engel for NBC from Sadr City in Baghdad. For the last month, the USArmy has tried to build a concrete slab wall to divide the neighborhood in half. Talk about NIMBY! "Snipers seem to be in every building…on a good day the soldiers put up 100 slabs; when the fighting is heavy only eight." The worst job of all, Engel told us, comes after the crane has lowered a slab into place: some soldier has to expose himself to potshots by climbing a ladder to unhook the cables. "After a month of work and battles the wall is still only half way through."
A couple of other Iraq-related features were considerably gentler. NBC's Mike Taibbi filed an In Depth profile of Zachary Iscol, a Marine Corps lieutenant from Brooklyn, who fought red tape to win a visa for Abboud al-Hafaji, his interpreter in 2004 during the Battle of Fallujah. Iscol is now committed to locating and helping other former interpreters at risk for helping US forces. On ABC, John McKenzie (embargoed link) brought us the case of Ammar Muhammad, a five-year-old heart patient and the son of an Iraqi police lieutenant. The USMC unit working with his father raised the funds to fly the boy to Charleston SC for successful lifesaving surgery.
CLOSE TO HOME Last month we admired Ian Williams for persuading NBC to pay for his scuba reporting from the coral reefs of the Phi Phi islands off Thailand. Now Daniel Sieberg too dons his wet suit for his save-the-reefs report on CBS, although his expense account did not stretch to quite as exotic a location. Marine biologist Andrew Baker has a plan to save coral from the bleaching death caused by global warming by injecting them with strains of algae that tolerate temperature change. Those algae are found in Madagascar and Kenya and the Maldives--but Sieberg had to content himself with a quick dive near Baker's laboratory at Biscayne Bay.
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: Mount Chaiten, a long dormant volcano in Chile, has erupted…rising global food prices sparked riots in Mogadishu…Microsoft has withdrawn its takeover bid for the Internet firm Yahoo!…Iraq Airways is modernizing its fleet, buying jets from Boeing…a terrorism preparedness drill found hospital emergency rooms lacking…NASA is publishing high-definition videotape of its 1960s manned missions…a lightbulb in a Livermore Cal firehouse has been burning for a record 107 years.
"There is no power. There is no drinking water. There is no food," that is how ABC's Nick Schifrin (no link) summarized the plight of tens of thousands of Burmese. He reported that the cyclone had flooded many rice farms with salt water and that Buddhist monasteries had been turned into makeshift shelters. "Roads were not that good to begin with," CBS' Barry Petersen pointed out. "Now many are just gone." He quoted estimates of the homeless population as exceeding 90,000. The known death toll is 4,000 so far but "what worries the United Nations is a second wave of catastrophe, " ABC's Schifrin warned, "that days after the storm left, hunger, thirst and disease can kill countless more."
From the White House, NBC's John Yang noted that First Lady Laura Bush, the administration's "main critic of Myanmar's oppressive military regime," was assigned as its spokesperson on the disaster. She blasted the junta for its failure to broadcast warnings before the storm hit and for its subsequent refusal to allow entry to international aid teams. As for the military response on the ground, ABC's Schifrin reported that in some areas "soldiers are helping to clean up but residents say they are largely absent--this in a country where the military presence is always felt."
WHITE WORKERS' GAS TANKS On the eve of the vote in North Carolina and Indiana, the Democratic candidates' closing arguments were "all about the price of gas," observed NBC's Andrea Mitchell. CBS anchor Katie Couric grabbed brief one-on-one interviews with each of them. Hillary Rodham Clinton explained her plan to grant motorists a tax holiday at filling stations as an attack on Big Oil: "We should make the oil companies pay the gas tax this summer." Barack Obama dismissed her plan as "a phony approach. It is a gimmick. This is a typical Washington response, trying to get through the next election."
Rodham Clinton, the "multimillionaire former First Lady," was teased by ABC's Jake Tapper for having "repackaged herself as a working class hero…the new populist." She has hardened her stance against free trade and softened her stance for gun control. Tapper quoted her newfound disdain for policy wonks: "Elite opinion is always on the side of doing things that really disadvantage the vast majority of Americans." NBC's Mitchell pointed out that her husband Bill had turned "folksier" in North Carolina, "in New Bern, Zebulon, Smithfield and Jacksonville, practically going door-to-door selling his wife's gas tax holiday."
Rodham Clinton's populism seemed not to be targeted at the entire working class--only at one racial segment of it. CBS' Jim Axelrod saw Rodham Clinton casting herself as the "tough and gritty champion" of blue collar "white" voters. ABC's Tapper, too, called her target demographic the "white" working class. When CBS' Couric asked Obama about his relative weakness among those "white" working class voters, he replied: "This issue has come up lately because it is the only argument that Sen Clinton has for winning the nomination."
ABC's Terry Moran (embargoed link) followed Obama through "another marathon day of campaigning" starting before dawn in Evansville. He noted "a rare flash of anger" when Obama was called an "elitist." He shot back that John McCain was an admiral's son and the Rodham Clinton was raised in Chicago's rich suburbs. As for the horse race, CBS' Dean Reynolds called Indiana "tight" and North Carolina "tight too" with a once-double-digit lead for Obama "nerve-wrackingly narrowed."
FLYING FOURS As the cost of a barrel of crude closed at $119, NBC had Scott Cohn from CNBC lead with the economic consequences and Tom Costello cover the ripple effect for the airlines. "With supplies tight and demand high the price of crude oil is supersensitive to the slightest disruption," Cohn warned, mentioning flare-ups in Nigeria and Iraq. The current high cost of crude should result in 10c or 15c more for a gallon of gasoline eventually. NBC's Costello traced the climbing cost of aviation fuel to power a jetliner from coast to coast: from $2,700 in 2000 to $9,600 in 1007 to $15,000 later this year. NWAirlines, Southwest and jetBlue are "literally easing up on the throttle," flying 10mph slower in order to burn less. On ABC, David Kerley (embargoed link) told us about Chrysler's incentive scheme to sell new automobiles: dealers throw in a pre-paid gasoline card for an annual 700 gallons at $2.99 for the next three years. Kerley offered a cool indicator for which direction the price of gasoline is headed: the signage firm that makes giant numbers for price signs at filling stations sees "4" flying off the shelves.
TO KILL OR NOT TO KILL Following the Supreme Court's go-ahead for a deadly cocktail of injections, Georgia will execute the first Death Row inmate in eight months. CBS' Mark Strassmann previewed 14 other scheduled deaths over the next six months even as he pointed out that a total of 129 former residents of Death Row are now free men, having been wrongly convicted and exonerated by DNA evidence. The risk of killing an innocent has inspired debates in five state legislatures--Md, NM, Colo, Neb, Mont--over repealing capital punishment even as five others--La, Okla, SC, Tex, Mont--debate expanding the penalty to include "a crime other than murder." It is most peculiar that Montana should be debating both changes simultaneously.
NOT IN MY BACK YARD The most dynamic news video of the day was filed by Richard Engel for NBC from Sadr City in Baghdad. For the last month, the USArmy has tried to build a concrete slab wall to divide the neighborhood in half. Talk about NIMBY! "Snipers seem to be in every building…on a good day the soldiers put up 100 slabs; when the fighting is heavy only eight." The worst job of all, Engel told us, comes after the crane has lowered a slab into place: some soldier has to expose himself to potshots by climbing a ladder to unhook the cables. "After a month of work and battles the wall is still only half way through."
A couple of other Iraq-related features were considerably gentler. NBC's Mike Taibbi filed an In Depth profile of Zachary Iscol, a Marine Corps lieutenant from Brooklyn, who fought red tape to win a visa for Abboud al-Hafaji, his interpreter in 2004 during the Battle of Fallujah. Iscol is now committed to locating and helping other former interpreters at risk for helping US forces. On ABC, John McKenzie (embargoed link) brought us the case of Ammar Muhammad, a five-year-old heart patient and the son of an Iraqi police lieutenant. The USMC unit working with his father raised the funds to fly the boy to Charleston SC for successful lifesaving surgery.
CLOSE TO HOME Last month we admired Ian Williams for persuading NBC to pay for his scuba reporting from the coral reefs of the Phi Phi islands off Thailand. Now Daniel Sieberg too dons his wet suit for his save-the-reefs report on CBS, although his expense account did not stretch to quite as exotic a location. Marine biologist Andrew Baker has a plan to save coral from the bleaching death caused by global warming by injecting them with strains of algae that tolerate temperature change. Those algae are found in Madagascar and Kenya and the Maldives--but Sieberg had to content himself with a quick dive near Baker's laboratory at Biscayne Bay.
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: Mount Chaiten, a long dormant volcano in Chile, has erupted…rising global food prices sparked riots in Mogadishu…Microsoft has withdrawn its takeover bid for the Internet firm Yahoo!…Iraq Airways is modernizing its fleet, buying jets from Boeing…a terrorism preparedness drill found hospital emergency rooms lacking…NASA is publishing high-definition videotape of its 1960s manned missions…a lightbulb in a Livermore Cal firehouse has been burning for a record 107 years.
