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TYNDALL HEADLINE: HIGHLIGHTS FROM MAY 21, 2008
It is hard to turn a mere price point in financial markets into a full-fledged story. So even as the cost of a barrel of crude oil continued its inexorable upward climb, closing in the commodity pits at $133, it was the ripple effect of the high price of fuel that attracted most attention, not the price itself. The Story of the Day was the pressure of pricey aviation fuel on the airline industry. NBC led with American Airlines' decision to cut its schedule and increase its fees. CBS kicked off with commodity speculation in the energy market. ABC left the oil story for later in the newscast, deciding to start with a follow-up on Tuesday's headliner as Edward Kennedy walked out of the hospital to go sailing in Nantucket Sound.
TYNDALL PICKS FOR MAY 21, 2008: CLICK ON GRID ELEMENTS TO SEARCH FOR MATCHING ITEMS
OIL PRICES LEAD TO MORE COSTLY SKIES It is hard to turn a mere price point in financial markets into a full-fledged story. So even as the cost of a barrel of crude oil continued its inexorable upward climb, closing in the commodity pits at $133, it was the ripple effect of the high price of fuel that attracted most attention, not the price itself. The Story of the Day was the pressure of pricey aviation fuel on the airline industry. NBC led with American Airlines' decision to cut its schedule and increase its fees. CBS kicked off with commodity speculation in the energy market. ABC left the oil story for later in the newscast, deciding to start with a follow-up on Tuesday's headliner as Edward Kennedy walked out of the hospital to go sailing in Nantucket Sound.
The headline grabbing part of American Airlines' belt-tightening was its decision to levy a $15 surcharge for checking a bag. If its rivals follow suit "free baggage service could go the way of free food in coach," warned CNBC's Scott Cohn, reporting for NBC. "Add another indignity to air travel." On ABC, Lisa Stark repeated a prediction that the new bag fee "will mean chaos at airports--more passengers trying to stuff carry-ons through security and into overhead bins." The year-over-year 80% hike in aviation fuel prices costs American an extra $3bn to operate each year. In response it will eliminate at least 11% of its domestic schedule, thus laying off thousands of workers, retiring "gas guzzling older jets" and eliminating some "bargain basement fares," CBS' Nancy Cordes summarized.
Jim Cramer, host of CNBC's Mad Money summarized the impact of high oil prices on the economy for NBC anchor Brian Williams: for motorists, a gallon of gasoline will cost between $5 and $6 by the end of the summer; for consumers, shopping visits to the mall will be scaled back; for airlines, fares will "go up dramatically" and some will go out of business; and for travelers, "a lot of people are going to have to go Greyhound."
ABC's David Muir (embargoed link) told us about skyrocketing demand for oil in India and China and static production of oil from Russia and Saudi Arabia as a set up for his visit to the middle of the Gulf of Mexico, a 200-mile helicopter ride from New Orleans. He showed us a floating oil rig drilling down 27,000 feet to tap into Chevron's 2002 discovery of a 400m barrel field. Production begins next year. Compare that 400m with the 920m barrels that CBS' Anthony Mason calculates is being bought each year by China---or the 848m annual barrels being bought by "a new class of speculators led by pension funds and university endowments." Mason quoted Michael Masters, a hedge fund manager, as estimating that such commodity investing has increased the price of a barrel by at least $50.
FLORIDA, FLORIDA, FLORIDA As predicted, Tuesday's primary elections produced a split decision. Hillary Rodham Clinton prevailed in Kentucky; Barack Obama in Oregon. The fact that Oregon's racial make-up is predominantly white inspired CBS' Jeff Greenfield to correct the impression that Obama alienates white working class voters. "This whole term is a vast oversimplification," he told anchor Katie Couric. Anyway, Democrats do not need to win a majority of white votes to win the White House, they just have to prevent working class white men from deserting "in droves" as they did from Al Gore and John Kerry to George Bush. "That is when states like Michigan and Pennsylvania get in jeopardy and Ohio gets lost." As for the white population of Appalachia, they "have been trending Republican for many years."
Oregon and Kentucky leave Obama 61 delegates short of the nomination according to ABC, 70 according to CBS. As both Democratic candidates headed to Florida, each of the three networks followed and each came up with a different storyline. NBC's Andrea Mitchell looked at the likelihood of the so-called "dream ticket" with Rodham Clinton as Obama's running mate, given his "gender gap" among white women. CBS' Dean Reynolds unpacked the state's demography in a General Election contest. And ABC's David Wright saw Rodham Clinton still working the nomination contest, trying to move the goal posts that define a clinching majority.
Rodham Clinton invoked Al Gore's defeat in Florida in 2000 to argue that the Democratic Party is harmed when it does not count all votes cast. The Democratic National Committee had declared in advance that Florida's primary would not count in selecting a nominee yet ABC's Wright heard her frame that debate "as a civil rights issue." Then she "ratcheted her rhetoric up even more, going so far as to compare the disputed vote here to the election process in one of the most brutal regimes in Africa--Zimbabwe." Does that mean she is casting Barack Obama as Robert Mugabe!
KENNEDY’S CANCER There was not much to report on the prognosis for Sen Edward Kennedy following Tuesday's headline-grabbing brain cancer diagnosis. All three networks had correspondents cover the photo-op anyway--John Berman on ABC, Jeff Glor on CBS, Robert Bazell on NBC--as he walked out of his hospital in Boston; acknowledged his supporters; traveled to his family's Cape Cod home in Hyannisport; and went sailing. CBS' Bill Whitaker followed up with Keith Black, a neurosurgeon at Cedar Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles, who is experimenting with a vaccine for brain cancer patients. ABC had John McKenzie take A Closer Look at the lack of a cure for malignant gliomas, the type of cancer that afflicts the senator: "Only 27% are alive two years after diagnosis."
By coincidence, CBS was in the middle of a three-part series The War on Cancer. In-house physician Jon LaPook teamed up with Business Week magazine to examine the low approval rate of experimental medicines for all sorts of cancer, not just tumors of the brain. Between 1990 and 2006, the Food & Drug Administration approved only 32 new cancer drugs, just 8% of those that went through clinical trials. "We have to be confident that this is a real drug--that it works," was the simple standard the FDA's Richard Pazdur offered to explain the high failure rate.
LaPook's example looked at the biotech firm Antigenics, which conducted a five year clinical trial of Oncophage, a kidney cancer vaccine: "There was no statistical evidence that it helped patients live longer," so the FDA refused to approve it. Then Antigenics massaged the data and isolated a subset of patients in the trial that "seemed to benefit," according to LaPook. That was enough to persuade Russian drug authorities to approve Oncophage for that subset. The stricter FDA insists that a fresh trial be started for just that group, lasting another seven years and costing Antigenics at least $400m. Antigenics decided not to conduct the trial.
CB SPICES UP GAO Normally bureaucracy-monitoring reports by the Government Accountability Office are as dry as dust and have to struggle to get airtime. NBC's Lisa Myers got hold of the latest one on the failure of federal transportation authorities to organize a national database of licensed insterstate truck drivers to allow employers to crosscheck results on the 3%-or-so who fail narcotics tests. How to translate that into a television news story? Go to a truckstop and listen in on the chatter. Myers sent a crew to Ontario Cal last weekend to tune into CB radio as drivers sought to score. Some wanted crack; some marijuana; some "sugar candy cane"--others needed speed to stay awake.
WHEN COVERAGE PETERS OUT The rule of thumb here at Tyndall Report that indicates when a major story has come to the end of its dominance of the news agenda is to look out for animal features. When sentimental tales of forlorn pets or displaced wildlife close a newscast, then we know that all other more newsworthy angles have been exhausted. There are two penultimate warning signs that the story is near to running out its string, but not quite yet--news media stories about how the news media is covering the story; and sentimental tales of children, the precursor to animals.
So even though the refugee crisis of 5m homeless in Sichuan Province will be a concern inside China for years to come, American interest in the killer earthquake there appears to be on the wane. NBC's Mark Mullen filed that warning sign story on media coverage last Thursday. CBS, for the second straight day, had no correspondent file from the earthquake zone. And now both NBC and ABC are visiting camps to tell us about the plight of children. NBC had Mullen file In Depth from Mianyang on grief counseling for the newly orphaned while ABC's Stephanie Sy profiled a trio of American ex-patriate volunteer jokesters from Heart to Heart International in Xiao Ba: "They started entertaining the children. The kids are laughing again; in fact they cannot stop smiling."
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 ceasefire has been called in Sadr City, the majority Shiite neighborhood of Baghdad…Turkey is mediating diplomatic contacts between Israel and Syria…Hamilton Jordan, Chief of Staff in Jimmy Carter's White House, died, aged 65…underfunding for Minnesota's infrastructure budget was blamed for the collapse if the I-35 bridge over the Mississippi River last summer…another brush fire has flared in Florida, this time near Orlando…the National Geography Bee tournament was won with an answer that placed Cochabamba in Bolivia…sailors are On The Town in New York City as its harbor's annual Fleet Week begins.
The headline grabbing part of American Airlines' belt-tightening was its decision to levy a $15 surcharge for checking a bag. If its rivals follow suit "free baggage service could go the way of free food in coach," warned CNBC's Scott Cohn, reporting for NBC. "Add another indignity to air travel." On ABC, Lisa Stark repeated a prediction that the new bag fee "will mean chaos at airports--more passengers trying to stuff carry-ons through security and into overhead bins." The year-over-year 80% hike in aviation fuel prices costs American an extra $3bn to operate each year. In response it will eliminate at least 11% of its domestic schedule, thus laying off thousands of workers, retiring "gas guzzling older jets" and eliminating some "bargain basement fares," CBS' Nancy Cordes summarized.
Jim Cramer, host of CNBC's Mad Money summarized the impact of high oil prices on the economy for NBC anchor Brian Williams: for motorists, a gallon of gasoline will cost between $5 and $6 by the end of the summer; for consumers, shopping visits to the mall will be scaled back; for airlines, fares will "go up dramatically" and some will go out of business; and for travelers, "a lot of people are going to have to go Greyhound."
ABC's David Muir (embargoed link) told us about skyrocketing demand for oil in India and China and static production of oil from Russia and Saudi Arabia as a set up for his visit to the middle of the Gulf of Mexico, a 200-mile helicopter ride from New Orleans. He showed us a floating oil rig drilling down 27,000 feet to tap into Chevron's 2002 discovery of a 400m barrel field. Production begins next year. Compare that 400m with the 920m barrels that CBS' Anthony Mason calculates is being bought each year by China---or the 848m annual barrels being bought by "a new class of speculators led by pension funds and university endowments." Mason quoted Michael Masters, a hedge fund manager, as estimating that such commodity investing has increased the price of a barrel by at least $50.
FLORIDA, FLORIDA, FLORIDA As predicted, Tuesday's primary elections produced a split decision. Hillary Rodham Clinton prevailed in Kentucky; Barack Obama in Oregon. The fact that Oregon's racial make-up is predominantly white inspired CBS' Jeff Greenfield to correct the impression that Obama alienates white working class voters. "This whole term is a vast oversimplification," he told anchor Katie Couric. Anyway, Democrats do not need to win a majority of white votes to win the White House, they just have to prevent working class white men from deserting "in droves" as they did from Al Gore and John Kerry to George Bush. "That is when states like Michigan and Pennsylvania get in jeopardy and Ohio gets lost." As for the white population of Appalachia, they "have been trending Republican for many years."
Oregon and Kentucky leave Obama 61 delegates short of the nomination according to ABC, 70 according to CBS. As both Democratic candidates headed to Florida, each of the three networks followed and each came up with a different storyline. NBC's Andrea Mitchell looked at the likelihood of the so-called "dream ticket" with Rodham Clinton as Obama's running mate, given his "gender gap" among white women. CBS' Dean Reynolds unpacked the state's demography in a General Election contest. And ABC's David Wright saw Rodham Clinton still working the nomination contest, trying to move the goal posts that define a clinching majority.
Rodham Clinton invoked Al Gore's defeat in Florida in 2000 to argue that the Democratic Party is harmed when it does not count all votes cast. The Democratic National Committee had declared in advance that Florida's primary would not count in selecting a nominee yet ABC's Wright heard her frame that debate "as a civil rights issue." Then she "ratcheted her rhetoric up even more, going so far as to compare the disputed vote here to the election process in one of the most brutal regimes in Africa--Zimbabwe." Does that mean she is casting Barack Obama as Robert Mugabe!
KENNEDY’S CANCER There was not much to report on the prognosis for Sen Edward Kennedy following Tuesday's headline-grabbing brain cancer diagnosis. All three networks had correspondents cover the photo-op anyway--John Berman on ABC, Jeff Glor on CBS, Robert Bazell on NBC--as he walked out of his hospital in Boston; acknowledged his supporters; traveled to his family's Cape Cod home in Hyannisport; and went sailing. CBS' Bill Whitaker followed up with Keith Black, a neurosurgeon at Cedar Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles, who is experimenting with a vaccine for brain cancer patients. ABC had John McKenzie take A Closer Look at the lack of a cure for malignant gliomas, the type of cancer that afflicts the senator: "Only 27% are alive two years after diagnosis."
By coincidence, CBS was in the middle of a three-part series The War on Cancer. In-house physician Jon LaPook teamed up with Business Week magazine to examine the low approval rate of experimental medicines for all sorts of cancer, not just tumors of the brain. Between 1990 and 2006, the Food & Drug Administration approved only 32 new cancer drugs, just 8% of those that went through clinical trials. "We have to be confident that this is a real drug--that it works," was the simple standard the FDA's Richard Pazdur offered to explain the high failure rate.
LaPook's example looked at the biotech firm Antigenics, which conducted a five year clinical trial of Oncophage, a kidney cancer vaccine: "There was no statistical evidence that it helped patients live longer," so the FDA refused to approve it. Then Antigenics massaged the data and isolated a subset of patients in the trial that "seemed to benefit," according to LaPook. That was enough to persuade Russian drug authorities to approve Oncophage for that subset. The stricter FDA insists that a fresh trial be started for just that group, lasting another seven years and costing Antigenics at least $400m. Antigenics decided not to conduct the trial.
CB SPICES UP GAO Normally bureaucracy-monitoring reports by the Government Accountability Office are as dry as dust and have to struggle to get airtime. NBC's Lisa Myers got hold of the latest one on the failure of federal transportation authorities to organize a national database of licensed insterstate truck drivers to allow employers to crosscheck results on the 3%-or-so who fail narcotics tests. How to translate that into a television news story? Go to a truckstop and listen in on the chatter. Myers sent a crew to Ontario Cal last weekend to tune into CB radio as drivers sought to score. Some wanted crack; some marijuana; some "sugar candy cane"--others needed speed to stay awake.
WHEN COVERAGE PETERS OUT The rule of thumb here at Tyndall Report that indicates when a major story has come to the end of its dominance of the news agenda is to look out for animal features. When sentimental tales of forlorn pets or displaced wildlife close a newscast, then we know that all other more newsworthy angles have been exhausted. There are two penultimate warning signs that the story is near to running out its string, but not quite yet--news media stories about how the news media is covering the story; and sentimental tales of children, the precursor to animals.
So even though the refugee crisis of 5m homeless in Sichuan Province will be a concern inside China for years to come, American interest in the killer earthquake there appears to be on the wane. NBC's Mark Mullen filed that warning sign story on media coverage last Thursday. CBS, for the second straight day, had no correspondent file from the earthquake zone. And now both NBC and ABC are visiting camps to tell us about the plight of children. NBC had Mullen file In Depth from Mianyang on grief counseling for the newly orphaned while ABC's Stephanie Sy profiled a trio of American ex-patriate volunteer jokesters from Heart to Heart International in Xiao Ba: "They started entertaining the children. The kids are laughing again; in fact they cannot stop smiling."
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 ceasefire has been called in Sadr City, the majority Shiite neighborhood of Baghdad…Turkey is mediating diplomatic contacts between Israel and Syria…Hamilton Jordan, Chief of Staff in Jimmy Carter's White House, died, aged 65…underfunding for Minnesota's infrastructure budget was blamed for the collapse if the I-35 bridge over the Mississippi River last summer…another brush fire has flared in Florida, this time near Orlando…the National Geography Bee tournament was won with an answer that placed Cochabamba in Bolivia…sailors are On The Town in New York City as its harbor's annual Fleet Week begins.
