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TYNDALL HEADLINE: HIGHLIGHTS FROM JUNE 13, 2008
The shocking news of the sudden and untimely death of Tim Russert was Story of the Day. All three newscast led with his collapse while at work at the age of 58. Russert was the preeminent political journalist of his generation--not only bureau chief of one Washington DC's major newsgathering organizations, NBC News, but also the on-air moderator of the leading Sunday morning political interview talkshow, Meet the Press, a chair he had occupied since 1991. NBC had expected to spend the day on in-depth reporting on Afghanistan, with anchor Brian Williams located at Bagram AFB. Its newscast scrapped those plans--and even scrapped most of its commercials--to devote its entire newshole (28 min v ABC 5, CBS 12) to covering its own loss. Even though ABC and CBS offered a more conventional rounded news agenda, the three networks combined still spent 67% of their airtime (44 min out of 66) on remembrances of Russert.
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NBC NEWS’ WASHINGTON BUREAU CHIEF DIES The shocking news of the sudden and untimely death of Tim Russert was Story of the Day. All three newscast led with his collapse while at work at the age of 58. Russert was the preeminent political journalist of his generation--not only bureau chief of one Washington DC's major newsgathering organizations, NBC News, but also the on-air moderator of the leading Sunday morning political interview talkshow, Meet the Press, a chair he had occupied since 1991. NBC had expected to spend the day on in-depth reporting on Afghanistan, with anchor Brian Williams located at Bagram AFB. Its newscast scrapped those plans--and even scrapped most of its commercials--to devote its entire newshole (28 min v ABC 5, CBS 12) to covering its own loss. Even though ABC and CBS offered a more conventional rounded news agenda, the three networks combined still spent 67% of their airtime (44 min out of 66) on remembrances of Russert.
ABC's White House correspondent Martha Raddatz called the news of Russert's death "stunning" and mourned "a profound loss for this city." On CBS, Richard Schlesinger labeled Russert, husband of Vanity Fair journalist Maureen Orth, "the toast of Washington."
NBC assigned its lead-off obituary to Pete Williams, hired by Russert from his job as Pentagon spokesman to become NBC's Justice Department correspondent. Williams took us through Russert's Buffalo NY roots, his parochial school education, his political experience in New York State's Democratic Party, his catchphrase If It's Sunday It's Meet the Press, his Election Night white eraser board in 2000 with the forecast Florida, Florida, Florida that is now in the Smithsonian, and his bestselling book in tribute to his sanitation worker father Big Russ & Me. Williams pointed out that his boss "collapsed and died two days before Father's Day." Russert described his own family's care for his aging father in a feature report on NBC Nightly News in February 2007. It was replayed in his memory.
ABC anchor Charles Gibson recounted that advice Russert received from Daniel Patrick Moynihan, who brought him to Washington, that his working class Buffalo background would give him a sense of the capital city that "insiders would never have." CBS' Anthony Mason said Meet the Press, routinely subjecting major newsmakers to hourlong questioning, "set the agenda for the week in Washington and any politician seeking a path to higher office knew you had to pass through Russert."
RUSSERT THE INTERVIEWER Tom Brokaw, former anchor of NBC Nightly News, pointed to Russert's Jesuit education and his training as a lawyer to describe his interviewing technique on Meet the Press. His initial questions were almost always based on the interviewee's own words or words written about them and answers would be clarified with follow-ups. Brokaw recalled that when Russert first unveiled his style, friends who were litigators asked: "Does he have a law degree? He could give one heckuva deposition. I would hate to face him on cross."
Brokaw judged that Russert "raised the whole level of Sunday morning" but then, being an NBC Newser, he may have been partial. CBS substitute anchor Harry Smith asked Bob Schieffer, Russert's longtime rival on CBS' Face the Nation: "He was an expert interviewer because he did it the right way. He did prodigious research. He knew every thing about his guests before they came on the program. He did not try to trip them up. He wanted to find out exactly what they meant and then he asked them questions about it to see if it would stand hard questioning. Face the Nation, I think, was a lot better because I had to compete against Tim Russert." ABC's Martha Raddatz checked in with George Stephanopoulos of his network's This Week: "By watching him and competing against him it made all of us better."
Harry Smith, who conducts plenty of political interviews on CBS' Early Show reflected: "Hacks or pretenders did not last long with Russert on a Sunday morning. He was always better prepared than the people he questioned…Russert really was a sentinel at the gates of our democracy. He would not be fooled, could not be tricked. We trusted him to be about our business and to be about our concerns."
RUSSERT THE LEADER NBC's Andrea Mitchell called Tim Russert her "player coach. This was a man who not only led this bureau but taught all of us." NBC's White House man David Gregory recalled mornings before each Presidential press conference: "I spoke to Tim about the question I would ask, how to refine it, how we shape it, his idea, my idea, how to make it better. Only the boss can help you make it better." CBS anchor Katie Couric returned to the air to remember Russert with substitute Harry Smith. When she was working in local news in Washington DC at NBC's WRC-TV affiliate, Russert told her: "Kid I like your reporting. I think you are really scrappy." He hired her for NBC's Pentagon beat: "So I really owe it to Tim for having a network career."
RUSSERT INSIDE-THE-BELTWAY NBC rounded out its extended coverage of its DC chief by soliciting remembrances from Washington's elite: Albert Hunt of Bloomberg News on his love of family, Sally Quinn of Washington Post on his religious devotion, Bob Woodward of Washington Post on his living in the present, Mike Barnicle of MSNBC on his sense of joy--and Ethel Kennedy: "He will be right at home in heaven," declared RFK's widow.
As ABC anchor Charles Gibson put it: "He just loved politics. His enthusiasm was infectious…Tim Russert was robust, larger than life. He filled a room--which makes his sudden death hard to comprehend."
MEET TIM RUSSERT, MENTOR OF THE PRESS So much airtime on so many Sunday mornings has made Tim Russert's weekend job as moderator of Meet the Press the most memorable and recognizable part of his legacy. Yet anchor Brian Williams would always introduce Russert whenever he would appear on NBC Nightly News by using his full title: "NBC News DC bureau chief and moderator of Meet the Press." His weekday behind the scenes job as leader of the bureau was just as important.
The DC bureau has been the backbone of NBC's journalism. Each evening at the news hour, NBC Nightly News has relied on Russert's inside-the-Beltway corps of correspondents much more heavily than either CBS Evening News or ABC World News. Tyndall Report's data show that since 1991, when Russert took the chair at Meet the Press, his DC bureau has accounted for fully 30% of all Nightly's weekday stories, an annual average output of 1520 minutes, more than 25 hours. By contrast, the other two newscasts' DC bureaus were 23% less productive (ABC 1176 min, CBS 1165) in an average year. In those 17 years, NBC has had the busiest of the three DC bureaus in every single year save 1995.
It was not just this greater workload that is a tribute to Russert's skills as a bureau chief. His skills on the assignment desk and as copy editor are evident in the quality of the bereaved stable of correspondents he leaves behind: David Gregory at the White House, Jim Miklaszewski at the Pentagon, Andrea Mitchell at the State Department, Pete Williams at Justice, Lisa Myers on investigations, Tom Costello on the alphabet soup of executive branch agencies, Kelly O'Donnell on the campaign trail. Of those names, none was hired away from another network news organization. All were hired and groomed in-house under Russert's leadership or inherited when he took over the bureau. Anchor Brian Williams was one of Gregory's predecessors at the White House in Russert's bureau.
The converse does not apply. Several of the correspondents who thrived under Russert's mentorship at NBC's DC bureau are now leading lights at the competition: CBS' Katie Couric was at the Pentagon, CNN's Campbell Brown at the White House, ABC's Claire Shipman at the White House, CBS' Chip Reid at Capitol Hill, ABC's John Cochran at the White House, PBS' Gwen Ifill on the campaign trail.
This is how Andrea Mitchell described her late chief on Nightly News on Friday: "Tim was our teacher and our mentor -- my mentor…There are real leaders in this world. There are not that many of them. He led this bureau here in Washington, our political team. He had all of us on Meet the Press only last Sunday and he was so enthusiastic about bringing us all together, many off the road to share stories...He was also a player coach. This was a man who not only led this bureau, but taught all of us. And the first call every morning would be: 'Hey, Mitch, Here is what you should go after today.' He inspired me to learn Capitol Hill when I went there and to learn the State Department. Every beat I have been on, he taught me how to do it best…There is no way to share with our viewers how broken our hearts are tonight.
The importance of the DC bureau at NBC News is reflected in the network's general emphasis on the primary of politics. A longstanding hallmark of Today, where Russert was a frequent guest, was to cover more politics, especially in its first half hour, than either ABC's Good Morning America or CBS' Early Show. Much of the improvement in MSNBC's ratings vis-à-vis CNN and FOX News Channel is attributable to its unrelenting emphasis on Campaign 2008.
The strength of NBC News' political bench, nurtured by hours of airtime at MSNBC, means that the most visible absence created by Russert's death--the empty moderator's chair at Meet the Press--may be an easier void for NBC News management to fill than Russert's behind-the-scenes expertise as DC bureau chief.
Almost all the obvious contenders for the Meet the Press job are already working at NBC News. This is how Tyndall Report handicaps them:
Chuck Todd NBC's political director is no smooth, sophisticated on-air presence--but neither was Russert when he took the job back in 1991. His call of Campaign 2008 has been exemplary throughout the primary season so he obviously has a spot-on sense of the political pulse. The public policy and foreign policy aspects of Meet the Press would be unchartered territory.
David Gregory NBC's lame duck White House correspondent has already begun his transition from cantankerous reporter to dignified interviewer-anchor, substituting on Today and hosting his own Race for the White House on MSNBC. NBC is clearly grooming him for an eventual full anchor role but he might not be there yet.
Chris Matthews MSNBC's Hardballer already has a successful Sunday morning presence with his syndicated week-in-review panel show but his argumentative, hyperactive interviewing style would be hard to translate to the august rhythms of Meet the Press. Under Russert, NBC made great strides in establishing his show's reputation as fair-minded and respectful. Matthews' bombast would undercut those attributes.
Tom Brokaw NBC's former Nightly News anchor could find a perfect coda to his broadcasting career by following in the steps of David Brinkley and turning Sunday morning talk into a font of wisdom and perspective. Brokaw certainly has the interviewing chops for the job but it would be highly uncharacteristic of the always-forward-planning management at NBC to go retro.
Andrea Mitchell NBC's politico-diplomatic correspondent has already occasionally substituted at Meet the Press for Russert--as has Gregory. Mitchell has a well-rounded knowledge of politics and policy, domestic and foreign. Her appointment would provide NBC with a viable claim that it had the nation's preeminent female journalist--not Katie Couric at CBS nor Diane Sawyer at ABC. Mitchell has the finest Rolodex of contacts inside-the-Beltway so booking the show would be a breeze for her. However her skills are more as a reporter than an interviewer.
Joe Scarborough MSNBC's Morning Joe would have been an unthinkable candidate even a few months ago but he has found his voice as the cable channel's intelligent replacement for radio-on-television Imus in the Morning. After a pair of former Democratic operatives--Tim Russert and George Stephanopoulos--providing fodder for the liberal-media-bias culture warriors, a former Republican congressman would be just the antidote.
Gwen Ifill PBS' Washington Week anchor is the only non-NBC Newser on Tyndall Report's list but she sports the Russert pedigree, having been hired for television by him from The New York Times. Ifill always seems too large a presence for the collegial reporters' fivesome of the PBS half hour, brimming with more curiosity, knowledge and attitude than those constraints allow. An hour each week one-on-one with world leaders would allow her to strut her stuff.
As for the name to replace Russert as DC bureau chief, those are harder shoes to fill.
WATER, WATER EVERYWHERE With NBC totally preoccupied by its loss, only ABC and CBS covered what would otherwise have been Story of the Day, the floods in Iowa. ABC had Barbara Pinto (embargoed link) and Chris Bury in Cedar Rapids, where 400 city blocks are under water. Pinto showed us a submerged downtown--"the entire business district, the police department, the fire department, City Hall." Even buildings that were sandbagged to stop water coming in from outside had flooded basements as it welled up from the sewage system through toilets, sinks and drinking fountains. Bury told us that the floods were so sudden that residents more than a mile away from the Cedar River were caught by surprise. They spent the day waist deep in water retrieving stranded house pets. CBS' Dean Reynolds was down stream in the small town of Oakville, where the Iowa River and Cedar River converge just before they enter the Mississippi. Reynolds forecast that the "grotesquely swollen" Iowa River would be at 32 feet by Monday: "The problem with that is this new and improved levee is not at 32 feet--so you know what is going to happen."
THE STAFF OF LIFE NBC's Brian Williams was supposed to be the one reporting on Afghanistan as he anchored from Bagram AFB with military jets taking off in the background. Instead it fell to Jim Sciutto to file form Kabul for ABC. He pointed to the same problem Williams had found Wednesday, that the rising price of food is a greater threat to political stability than the guerrillas of the Taliban. As the price of bread has doubled in the past year, refugees are settling in tent cities on the outskirts of Kabul desperate for basic supplies: "In a country where three quarters of the average person's income goes to food the effects can be devastating."
IN A CAPSULE Friday is usually feature heavy but Tim Russert pre-empted Person of the Week on ABC and Making a Difference on NBC and Assignment America on CBS. Sharyl Attkisson stuck to her task, however, for CBS' Follow the Money. She told us of the nationwide corporate policy of Walgreens, the drugstore chain, to fix its pharmacy computers to exploit a Medicaid loophole. Medicaid sets price controls for reimbursement for frequently dispensed medication but pays full price for rarities. Walgreens found, for example, that generic Zantac in common pill form was restricted to 34c, while its rarer capsule went for full price at $1.25. Eventually all of its Zantac popping patients had been automatically switched to capsules. Medicaid has now stopped the switch and demanded its money back: Walgreens paid $35m, rivals CVS and Omnicare "coughing up $86m more."
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: President George Bush's European tour took him to the Vatican for talks with Pope Benedict XVI…consumer prices jumped by a higher than usual 0.6% in May…the rate of home mortgage foreclosures continues its steady year-to-year increase…wild forest fires have broken out in northern California near Sacramento…a three-hour electricity outage blacked out Washington DC…a part fell off NASA's Space Shuttle Discovery on its return trip to Earth from the space station.
ABC's White House correspondent Martha Raddatz called the news of Russert's death "stunning" and mourned "a profound loss for this city." On CBS, Richard Schlesinger labeled Russert, husband of Vanity Fair journalist Maureen Orth, "the toast of Washington."
NBC assigned its lead-off obituary to Pete Williams, hired by Russert from his job as Pentagon spokesman to become NBC's Justice Department correspondent. Williams took us through Russert's Buffalo NY roots, his parochial school education, his political experience in New York State's Democratic Party, his catchphrase If It's Sunday It's Meet the Press, his Election Night white eraser board in 2000 with the forecast Florida, Florida, Florida that is now in the Smithsonian, and his bestselling book in tribute to his sanitation worker father Big Russ & Me. Williams pointed out that his boss "collapsed and died two days before Father's Day." Russert described his own family's care for his aging father in a feature report on NBC Nightly News in February 2007. It was replayed in his memory.
ABC anchor Charles Gibson recounted that advice Russert received from Daniel Patrick Moynihan, who brought him to Washington, that his working class Buffalo background would give him a sense of the capital city that "insiders would never have." CBS' Anthony Mason said Meet the Press, routinely subjecting major newsmakers to hourlong questioning, "set the agenda for the week in Washington and any politician seeking a path to higher office knew you had to pass through Russert."
RUSSERT THE INTERVIEWER Tom Brokaw, former anchor of NBC Nightly News, pointed to Russert's Jesuit education and his training as a lawyer to describe his interviewing technique on Meet the Press. His initial questions were almost always based on the interviewee's own words or words written about them and answers would be clarified with follow-ups. Brokaw recalled that when Russert first unveiled his style, friends who were litigators asked: "Does he have a law degree? He could give one heckuva deposition. I would hate to face him on cross."
Brokaw judged that Russert "raised the whole level of Sunday morning" but then, being an NBC Newser, he may have been partial. CBS substitute anchor Harry Smith asked Bob Schieffer, Russert's longtime rival on CBS' Face the Nation: "He was an expert interviewer because he did it the right way. He did prodigious research. He knew every thing about his guests before they came on the program. He did not try to trip them up. He wanted to find out exactly what they meant and then he asked them questions about it to see if it would stand hard questioning. Face the Nation, I think, was a lot better because I had to compete against Tim Russert." ABC's Martha Raddatz checked in with George Stephanopoulos of his network's This Week: "By watching him and competing against him it made all of us better."
Harry Smith, who conducts plenty of political interviews on CBS' Early Show reflected: "Hacks or pretenders did not last long with Russert on a Sunday morning. He was always better prepared than the people he questioned…Russert really was a sentinel at the gates of our democracy. He would not be fooled, could not be tricked. We trusted him to be about our business and to be about our concerns."
RUSSERT THE LEADER NBC's Andrea Mitchell called Tim Russert her "player coach. This was a man who not only led this bureau but taught all of us." NBC's White House man David Gregory recalled mornings before each Presidential press conference: "I spoke to Tim about the question I would ask, how to refine it, how we shape it, his idea, my idea, how to make it better. Only the boss can help you make it better." CBS anchor Katie Couric returned to the air to remember Russert with substitute Harry Smith. When she was working in local news in Washington DC at NBC's WRC-TV affiliate, Russert told her: "Kid I like your reporting. I think you are really scrappy." He hired her for NBC's Pentagon beat: "So I really owe it to Tim for having a network career."
RUSSERT INSIDE-THE-BELTWAY NBC rounded out its extended coverage of its DC chief by soliciting remembrances from Washington's elite: Albert Hunt of Bloomberg News on his love of family, Sally Quinn of Washington Post on his religious devotion, Bob Woodward of Washington Post on his living in the present, Mike Barnicle of MSNBC on his sense of joy--and Ethel Kennedy: "He will be right at home in heaven," declared RFK's widow.
As ABC anchor Charles Gibson put it: "He just loved politics. His enthusiasm was infectious…Tim Russert was robust, larger than life. He filled a room--which makes his sudden death hard to comprehend."
MEET TIM RUSSERT, MENTOR OF THE PRESS So much airtime on so many Sunday mornings has made Tim Russert's weekend job as moderator of Meet the Press the most memorable and recognizable part of his legacy. Yet anchor Brian Williams would always introduce Russert whenever he would appear on NBC Nightly News by using his full title: "NBC News DC bureau chief and moderator of Meet the Press." His weekday behind the scenes job as leader of the bureau was just as important.
The DC bureau has been the backbone of NBC's journalism. Each evening at the news hour, NBC Nightly News has relied on Russert's inside-the-Beltway corps of correspondents much more heavily than either CBS Evening News or ABC World News. Tyndall Report's data show that since 1991, when Russert took the chair at Meet the Press, his DC bureau has accounted for fully 30% of all Nightly's weekday stories, an annual average output of 1520 minutes, more than 25 hours. By contrast, the other two newscasts' DC bureaus were 23% less productive (ABC 1176 min, CBS 1165) in an average year. In those 17 years, NBC has had the busiest of the three DC bureaus in every single year save 1995.
It was not just this greater workload that is a tribute to Russert's skills as a bureau chief. His skills on the assignment desk and as copy editor are evident in the quality of the bereaved stable of correspondents he leaves behind: David Gregory at the White House, Jim Miklaszewski at the Pentagon, Andrea Mitchell at the State Department, Pete Williams at Justice, Lisa Myers on investigations, Tom Costello on the alphabet soup of executive branch agencies, Kelly O'Donnell on the campaign trail. Of those names, none was hired away from another network news organization. All were hired and groomed in-house under Russert's leadership or inherited when he took over the bureau. Anchor Brian Williams was one of Gregory's predecessors at the White House in Russert's bureau.
The converse does not apply. Several of the correspondents who thrived under Russert's mentorship at NBC's DC bureau are now leading lights at the competition: CBS' Katie Couric was at the Pentagon, CNN's Campbell Brown at the White House, ABC's Claire Shipman at the White House, CBS' Chip Reid at Capitol Hill, ABC's John Cochran at the White House, PBS' Gwen Ifill on the campaign trail.
This is how Andrea Mitchell described her late chief on Nightly News on Friday: "Tim was our teacher and our mentor -- my mentor…There are real leaders in this world. There are not that many of them. He led this bureau here in Washington, our political team. He had all of us on Meet the Press only last Sunday and he was so enthusiastic about bringing us all together, many off the road to share stories...He was also a player coach. This was a man who not only led this bureau, but taught all of us. And the first call every morning would be: 'Hey, Mitch, Here is what you should go after today.' He inspired me to learn Capitol Hill when I went there and to learn the State Department. Every beat I have been on, he taught me how to do it best…There is no way to share with our viewers how broken our hearts are tonight.
The importance of the DC bureau at NBC News is reflected in the network's general emphasis on the primary of politics. A longstanding hallmark of Today, where Russert was a frequent guest, was to cover more politics, especially in its first half hour, than either ABC's Good Morning America or CBS' Early Show. Much of the improvement in MSNBC's ratings vis-à-vis CNN and FOX News Channel is attributable to its unrelenting emphasis on Campaign 2008.
The strength of NBC News' political bench, nurtured by hours of airtime at MSNBC, means that the most visible absence created by Russert's death--the empty moderator's chair at Meet the Press--may be an easier void for NBC News management to fill than Russert's behind-the-scenes expertise as DC bureau chief.
Almost all the obvious contenders for the Meet the Press job are already working at NBC News. This is how Tyndall Report handicaps them:
Chuck Todd NBC's political director is no smooth, sophisticated on-air presence--but neither was Russert when he took the job back in 1991. His call of Campaign 2008 has been exemplary throughout the primary season so he obviously has a spot-on sense of the political pulse. The public policy and foreign policy aspects of Meet the Press would be unchartered territory.
David Gregory NBC's lame duck White House correspondent has already begun his transition from cantankerous reporter to dignified interviewer-anchor, substituting on Today and hosting his own Race for the White House on MSNBC. NBC is clearly grooming him for an eventual full anchor role but he might not be there yet.
Chris Matthews MSNBC's Hardballer already has a successful Sunday morning presence with his syndicated week-in-review panel show but his argumentative, hyperactive interviewing style would be hard to translate to the august rhythms of Meet the Press. Under Russert, NBC made great strides in establishing his show's reputation as fair-minded and respectful. Matthews' bombast would undercut those attributes.
Tom Brokaw NBC's former Nightly News anchor could find a perfect coda to his broadcasting career by following in the steps of David Brinkley and turning Sunday morning talk into a font of wisdom and perspective. Brokaw certainly has the interviewing chops for the job but it would be highly uncharacteristic of the always-forward-planning management at NBC to go retro.
Andrea Mitchell NBC's politico-diplomatic correspondent has already occasionally substituted at Meet the Press for Russert--as has Gregory. Mitchell has a well-rounded knowledge of politics and policy, domestic and foreign. Her appointment would provide NBC with a viable claim that it had the nation's preeminent female journalist--not Katie Couric at CBS nor Diane Sawyer at ABC. Mitchell has the finest Rolodex of contacts inside-the-Beltway so booking the show would be a breeze for her. However her skills are more as a reporter than an interviewer.
Joe Scarborough MSNBC's Morning Joe would have been an unthinkable candidate even a few months ago but he has found his voice as the cable channel's intelligent replacement for radio-on-television Imus in the Morning. After a pair of former Democratic operatives--Tim Russert and George Stephanopoulos--providing fodder for the liberal-media-bias culture warriors, a former Republican congressman would be just the antidote.
Gwen Ifill PBS' Washington Week anchor is the only non-NBC Newser on Tyndall Report's list but she sports the Russert pedigree, having been hired for television by him from The New York Times. Ifill always seems too large a presence for the collegial reporters' fivesome of the PBS half hour, brimming with more curiosity, knowledge and attitude than those constraints allow. An hour each week one-on-one with world leaders would allow her to strut her stuff.
As for the name to replace Russert as DC bureau chief, those are harder shoes to fill.
WATER, WATER EVERYWHERE With NBC totally preoccupied by its loss, only ABC and CBS covered what would otherwise have been Story of the Day, the floods in Iowa. ABC had Barbara Pinto (embargoed link) and Chris Bury in Cedar Rapids, where 400 city blocks are under water. Pinto showed us a submerged downtown--"the entire business district, the police department, the fire department, City Hall." Even buildings that were sandbagged to stop water coming in from outside had flooded basements as it welled up from the sewage system through toilets, sinks and drinking fountains. Bury told us that the floods were so sudden that residents more than a mile away from the Cedar River were caught by surprise. They spent the day waist deep in water retrieving stranded house pets. CBS' Dean Reynolds was down stream in the small town of Oakville, where the Iowa River and Cedar River converge just before they enter the Mississippi. Reynolds forecast that the "grotesquely swollen" Iowa River would be at 32 feet by Monday: "The problem with that is this new and improved levee is not at 32 feet--so you know what is going to happen."
THE STAFF OF LIFE NBC's Brian Williams was supposed to be the one reporting on Afghanistan as he anchored from Bagram AFB with military jets taking off in the background. Instead it fell to Jim Sciutto to file form Kabul for ABC. He pointed to the same problem Williams had found Wednesday, that the rising price of food is a greater threat to political stability than the guerrillas of the Taliban. As the price of bread has doubled in the past year, refugees are settling in tent cities on the outskirts of Kabul desperate for basic supplies: "In a country where three quarters of the average person's income goes to food the effects can be devastating."
IN A CAPSULE Friday is usually feature heavy but Tim Russert pre-empted Person of the Week on ABC and Making a Difference on NBC and Assignment America on CBS. Sharyl Attkisson stuck to her task, however, for CBS' Follow the Money. She told us of the nationwide corporate policy of Walgreens, the drugstore chain, to fix its pharmacy computers to exploit a Medicaid loophole. Medicaid sets price controls for reimbursement for frequently dispensed medication but pays full price for rarities. Walgreens found, for example, that generic Zantac in common pill form was restricted to 34c, while its rarer capsule went for full price at $1.25. Eventually all of its Zantac popping patients had been automatically switched to capsules. Medicaid has now stopped the switch and demanded its money back: Walgreens paid $35m, rivals CVS and Omnicare "coughing up $86m more."
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: President George Bush's European tour took him to the Vatican for talks with Pope Benedict XVI…consumer prices jumped by a higher than usual 0.6% in May…the rate of home mortgage foreclosures continues its steady year-to-year increase…wild forest fires have broken out in northern California near Sacramento…a three-hour electricity outage blacked out Washington DC…a part fell off NASA's Space Shuttle Discovery on its return trip to Earth from the space station.
