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TYNDALL HEADLINE: HIGHLIGHTS FROM JULY 07, 2008
There must have been high fives all around at the public relations office of the American Academy of Pediatrics. The academy's recommendation that preteen children with high risk factors for heart disease have their cholesterol levels tested was the unanimous choice for Story of the Day. It was selected as lead item on all three newscasts, each of which called in its network's in-house physician for a consultation. Courtesy of single sponsor Caduet, by coincidence a heart disease medication, ABC enlarged its newshole (24 min v CBS 19, NBC 20), allowing it to introduce its four-part Small World series.
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PEDIATRICIANS TO TEST BLOOD OF TODDLERS There must have been high fives all around at the public relations office of the American Academy of Pediatrics. The academy's recommendation that preteen children with high risk factors for heart disease have their cholesterol levels tested was the unanimous choice for Story of the Day. It was selected as lead item on all three newscasts, each of which called in its network's in-house physician for a consultation. Courtesy of single sponsor Caduet, by coincidence a heart disease medication, ABC enlarged its newshole (24 min v CBS 19, NBC 20), allowing it to introduce its four-part Small World series.
NBC's in-house sawbones Nancy Snyderman was assigned to file a report on the pediatricians' worries. They urge cholesterol screening for overweight children and toddlers, plus those with a family history of heart trouble. If diet and exercise do not do the job, the academy advised a lifetime dosage of statin prescriptions starting while children are still in grade school. On the other two newscasts, Dr Timothy Johnson assessed the wisdom of the advice after ABC's John McKenzie (embargoed link) did the reporting; Dr Jon LaPook followed CBS' Nancy Cordes.
JUDICIAL VACCINE WATCH CBS' LaPook returned after the next item in the newscast to reflect on the safety of Gardasil, Merck's vaccine for pre-teens against a sexually-transmitted virus that can cause cervical cancer. LaPook was reacting to Sharyl Attkisson's report on a Freedom of Information Act inquiry filed by Judicial Watch, the "conservative-funded public interest group." Since 2006, there have been 8,000 reports of adverse side effects following Gardasil shots, including 18 deaths. The Centers for Disease Control have found no causal link between the vaccine and the deaths.
NO FORTYSOMETHING FAIR USE The day's other big headliner was Dara Torres, who was first an Olympic swimmer as long ago as 1984. All three networks closed their newscast with a tribute to the 41-year-old mother who qualified for yet another team, for the Beijing Games, over the weekend. As usual, the networks' copyright lawyers refrained from exercising their rights under the fair use doctrine for this legitimately newsworthy event. They included clips of Torres racing on broadcast television but did not post those packages as videostreams online. So there are no links to the reports by CBS' Kelly Cobiella, by NBC's Amy Robach and by ABC's Sharyn Alfonsi.
COMPARE & CONTRAST There was a minor news event on the campaign trail, as Barack Obama's plane encountered in-flight steering problems en route to Charlotte. NBC's Lee Cowan filed a package on the minidrama from St Louis where an uneventful emergency landing was made. The actual substance from both Obama and John McCain consisted of speeches on economic policy. All three newscasts handled the speeches the same way, filing a compare-and-contrast feature on both candidates' economic platforms--tax rates, budget balancing, anti-recession stimulus, employment growth, free trade, energy costs. NBC's Andrea Mitchell and CBS' Chip Reid handled the issues chores singlehandedly. ABC split the tasks in a back and forth between Ron Claiborne and Jake Tapper.
REMEMBER MEGUMI Jim Axelrod of CBS was the only White House correspondent to cover the G8 Summit in Japan. His topic was not George Bush's superpower diplomacy but a longtime regional grievance for the President's hosts. Axelrod ran clips from the documentary Abduction: the Megumi Yokota Story to tell us about the 13 Japanese citizens, some children, who were kidnapped by North Korean spies 31 years ago as objects of cultural study. Only five of the 13 have been returned by Pyongyang.
ALL THAT GREENERY There was plenty of environmental coverage on all networks. Wild forest fires in California continue to burn and while NBC's George Lewis selected the angle of the current weather in fanning the flames, ABC's Brian Rooney (embargoed link) fingered global warming climate change for lengthening the Pacific coast fire season. Staying in California, CBS' Bill Whitaker balanced the expensive start-up capital costs of lining rooftops with solar photovoltaic cells against the eventual savings on electric utility bills. On ABC, Ned Potter (embargoed link) covered a warning from federal marine biologists that coral reefs are dying. NOAA blames pollution and overfishing and the change in the chemistry of coastal waters as global warming increases acidity. NBC filed a couple of features about conserving gasoline: Anne Thompson covered flextime schemes for employees that make the workday longer in order to commute only four days each week; and casual Tom Costello shed his collar and tie to don active wear to illustrate the trend away from cars towards bicycles. His What Works feature touted Washington DC's ride-and-drop rental scheme whereby a bicycle can be returned to any stand in the system but Costello gave greater credit to Portland Ore, the "most bike-friendly city in the country" where commuters form a "sea of cyclists."
WEDDING GUESTS ABC's Small World feature is a global exercise in comparative anthropology. It consists of a videotape compilation of the same ritual as it is performed across a variety of cultures. To kick off the series half a dozen female correspondents attended a variety of wedding ceremonies: Stephanie Sy in Beijing, Margaret Conley in Jakarta, Clarissa Ward in Moscow, Gretchen Peters in Lahore, Lara Setrakian in Jeddah and Dana Hughes in Nairobi. The Kenyan ritual seemed the most imaginative: before the knot can be tied, the groom's aunts have to turn up en masse at the house of the aunts in the bride's family to make their kinsman's case by singing songs in his praise.
WATTS LOVE Mondegreen was the inspiration for anchor Katie Couric's tribute to Merriam-Webster on CBS. It is a standard annual feature to publicize the dictionary's vocabulary updates of new entries. Mondegreen was Couric's favorite, meaning mishearing lyrics. She quoted Bob Dylan's "the ants are my friends" and the Beatles' "Lucy in the sky with Linus." Tina Turner has my mondegreen. I thought she was singing about the style of romance enjoyed by the denizens of South Central Los Angeles: Watts Love.
NBC's in-house sawbones Nancy Snyderman was assigned to file a report on the pediatricians' worries. They urge cholesterol screening for overweight children and toddlers, plus those with a family history of heart trouble. If diet and exercise do not do the job, the academy advised a lifetime dosage of statin prescriptions starting while children are still in grade school. On the other two newscasts, Dr Timothy Johnson assessed the wisdom of the advice after ABC's John McKenzie (embargoed link) did the reporting; Dr Jon LaPook followed CBS' Nancy Cordes.
JUDICIAL VACCINE WATCH CBS' LaPook returned after the next item in the newscast to reflect on the safety of Gardasil, Merck's vaccine for pre-teens against a sexually-transmitted virus that can cause cervical cancer. LaPook was reacting to Sharyl Attkisson's report on a Freedom of Information Act inquiry filed by Judicial Watch, the "conservative-funded public interest group." Since 2006, there have been 8,000 reports of adverse side effects following Gardasil shots, including 18 deaths. The Centers for Disease Control have found no causal link between the vaccine and the deaths.
NO FORTYSOMETHING FAIR USE The day's other big headliner was Dara Torres, who was first an Olympic swimmer as long ago as 1984. All three networks closed their newscast with a tribute to the 41-year-old mother who qualified for yet another team, for the Beijing Games, over the weekend. As usual, the networks' copyright lawyers refrained from exercising their rights under the fair use doctrine for this legitimately newsworthy event. They included clips of Torres racing on broadcast television but did not post those packages as videostreams online. So there are no links to the reports by CBS' Kelly Cobiella, by NBC's Amy Robach and by ABC's Sharyn Alfonsi.
COMPARE & CONTRAST There was a minor news event on the campaign trail, as Barack Obama's plane encountered in-flight steering problems en route to Charlotte. NBC's Lee Cowan filed a package on the minidrama from St Louis where an uneventful emergency landing was made. The actual substance from both Obama and John McCain consisted of speeches on economic policy. All three newscasts handled the speeches the same way, filing a compare-and-contrast feature on both candidates' economic platforms--tax rates, budget balancing, anti-recession stimulus, employment growth, free trade, energy costs. NBC's Andrea Mitchell and CBS' Chip Reid handled the issues chores singlehandedly. ABC split the tasks in a back and forth between Ron Claiborne and Jake Tapper.
REMEMBER MEGUMI Jim Axelrod of CBS was the only White House correspondent to cover the G8 Summit in Japan. His topic was not George Bush's superpower diplomacy but a longtime regional grievance for the President's hosts. Axelrod ran clips from the documentary Abduction: the Megumi Yokota Story to tell us about the 13 Japanese citizens, some children, who were kidnapped by North Korean spies 31 years ago as objects of cultural study. Only five of the 13 have been returned by Pyongyang.
ALL THAT GREENERY There was plenty of environmental coverage on all networks. Wild forest fires in California continue to burn and while NBC's George Lewis selected the angle of the current weather in fanning the flames, ABC's Brian Rooney (embargoed link) fingered global warming climate change for lengthening the Pacific coast fire season. Staying in California, CBS' Bill Whitaker balanced the expensive start-up capital costs of lining rooftops with solar photovoltaic cells against the eventual savings on electric utility bills. On ABC, Ned Potter (embargoed link) covered a warning from federal marine biologists that coral reefs are dying. NOAA blames pollution and overfishing and the change in the chemistry of coastal waters as global warming increases acidity. NBC filed a couple of features about conserving gasoline: Anne Thompson covered flextime schemes for employees that make the workday longer in order to commute only four days each week; and casual Tom Costello shed his collar and tie to don active wear to illustrate the trend away from cars towards bicycles. His What Works feature touted Washington DC's ride-and-drop rental scheme whereby a bicycle can be returned to any stand in the system but Costello gave greater credit to Portland Ore, the "most bike-friendly city in the country" where commuters form a "sea of cyclists."
WEDDING GUESTS ABC's Small World feature is a global exercise in comparative anthropology. It consists of a videotape compilation of the same ritual as it is performed across a variety of cultures. To kick off the series half a dozen female correspondents attended a variety of wedding ceremonies: Stephanie Sy in Beijing, Margaret Conley in Jakarta, Clarissa Ward in Moscow, Gretchen Peters in Lahore, Lara Setrakian in Jeddah and Dana Hughes in Nairobi. The Kenyan ritual seemed the most imaginative: before the knot can be tied, the groom's aunts have to turn up en masse at the house of the aunts in the bride's family to make their kinsman's case by singing songs in his praise.
WATTS LOVE Mondegreen was the inspiration for anchor Katie Couric's tribute to Merriam-Webster on CBS. It is a standard annual feature to publicize the dictionary's vocabulary updates of new entries. Mondegreen was Couric's favorite, meaning mishearing lyrics. She quoted Bob Dylan's "the ants are my friends" and the Beatles' "Lucy in the sky with Linus." Tina Turner has my mondegreen. I thought she was singing about the style of romance enjoyed by the denizens of South Central Los Angeles: Watts Love.
