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TYNDALL HEADLINE: HIGHLIGHTS FROM AUGUST 11, 2008
The war in the Caucasus was the unanimous selection as Story of the Day. Russian troops consolidated their incursion into Georgia. The secessionist provinces of Abkhazia and South Ossetia were under Moscow's control. Its navy is blockading Georgia's Black Sea ports and its army holds the city of Gori, closing the only east-west highway to Tbilisi and effectively dividing Georgia in half. All three network newscasts led with the war, even though NBC had sent its anchor Brian Williams to Beijing, where his topic was supposed to be the Olympic Games, a celebration of peace.
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GEORGIA ON ALL THREE NETWORKS’ MIND The war in the Caucasus was the unanimous selection as Story of the Day. Russian troops consolidated their incursion into Georgia. The secessionist provinces of Abkhazia and South Ossetia were under Moscow's control. Its navy is blockading Georgia's Black Sea ports and its army holds the city of Gori, closing the only east-west highway to Tbilisi and effectively dividing Georgia in half. All three network newscasts led with the war, even though NBC had sent its anchor Brian Williams to Beijing, where his topic was supposed to be the Olympic Games, a celebration of peace.
ABC's Clarissa Ward (embargoed link) filed from Gori where she found "panic and chaos" before the Russians moved in: "Convoy after convoy of Georgian troops poured out of the city shouting that the Russians were coming," to coin a phrase. NBC located Jim Maceda in Tbilisi, where he introduced Gori footage from Julian Manyon of NBC's British newsgathering partner ITN. "The Georgian government insists that its troops had not been humiliated," Manyon noted, "but the truth is that they and their equipment have not been able to stand up to Russian firepower." CBS had Richard Roth narrate war footage and cover the diplomatic response from London: "Diplomacy is the only weapon the West is using," he observed.
In a rare newsmaking achievement for the lame duck President, ABC assigned David Wright to file from the White House on George Bush's insistence that Georgia's territorial integrity and sovereignty be respected: "The Russian government must reverse the course it appears to be on." Wright called Georgia "a new friend and ally" of the United States, although he did not use the word literally since Georgia is only "hoping to join NATO" and has not done so. And then there is oil. It does have "one of the only pipelines from Asia to Europe that Russia does not control."
When it comes to what is at stake in the fighting, NBC's Jim Maceda, on the ground in Tbilisi, and CBS' Wyatt Andrews, talking to inside-the-Beltway foreign policy wonks, took opposite lines. Maceda judged that the conflict "started as a gamble" by Georgia's president, Mikheil Shaakasvili, a "darling of the West" when he moved quickly to take back control of South Ossetia. "The plan failed." Maceda consulted Russian analysts who concluded that Shaakasvili "made one big mistake, threatening Russia in its own backyard."
Now listen to CBS' Andrews: "None of the suffering here is about the enclave of Ossetia," he asserted. "This war is all about Russia and the message Russia is sending to the world." Andrews saw Moscow's incursion as the culmination of a four-year "nationalistic anti-Georgia propaganda campaign" by a "seething" Vladimir Putin to stymie plans to expand NATO right up to Russia's southern borders. That campaign was intensified by President Bush's visit to Georgia in 2005 when he offered a pledge of support--"The American people will stand with you"--and received "a hero's welcome." Now, despite that promise, "almost nothing now stands between the Russian Army and the Georgian capital of Tbilisi."
HE DOES NOT LOOK LIKE THOSE DEAD PRESIDENTS Remember two weeks ago when Barack Obama joked on the stump about how he did not look like those dead Presidents on the banknotes and John McCain's campaign bristled at a perceived accusation of racebaiting. Back then ABC's Jake Tapper seemed to side with McCain: "If Obama was not suggesting that McCain and Republicans were going after him for his name and his race just what was he suggesting? And there was no satisfactory answer."
Now a hint at a satisfactory answer comes from Tapper's coverage of a post-mortem on Hillary Rodham Clinton's primary defeat in Atlantic Monthly magazine. Tapper quoted strategist Mark Penn recommending that Rodham Clinton attack Obama for his Kenyan-Hawaiian heritage and Indonesian upbringing: "His roots to basic American values and culture are at best limited." Rodham Clinton, it turns out, rejected Penn's xenophobic advice. Yet Tapper quoted McCain's latest campaign ad tagline The American President Americans Have Been Waiting For and heard insinuations that there is "something not quite American about Obama."
So the "satisfactory answer" about those dollar bills is that Obama was not defending against attacks that he is African-American but that he is not-quite-American--not playing the race card but, instead, laying a charge of nativism at McCain's door.
The day's other campaign coverage came from CBS anchor Katie Couric. She filed a long behind-the-scenes profile of Valerie Jarrett, a senior advisor to Obama, who first met the candidate when she was deputy chief of staff in the Chicago mayor's office 17 years ago and hired his wife Michelle. Couric failed to find out what job in a possible Obama Administration Jarrett would fill yet already, the anchor claimed, Jarrett "just may be the most powerful woman in Chicago besides Oprah."
SO WHAT? NBC stayed away from the campaign trail. Its only political story on a day when China was on its mind was Andrea Mitchell's follow-up to Friday's confession by former candidate John Edwards that he had cheated on his wife. Mitchell mused that details of his story--the timeline he offered to ABC's Nightline and his categorical denial of involvement in payoffs to Rielle Hunter--were still not entirely uncontradicted. So what?
TWO ENDS OF THE SUPPLY CHAIN Even as the extreme shock to the nation's economy from last month's bubble in the commodity price of crude oil is starting to wear off, oil's place on the news agenda remains strong. ABC launched a series called Oil Crunch by sending David Muir to the Gulf of Mexico to offer striking visuals and free publicity to Chevron. The Big Oil firm's floating platform 190 miles south of New Orleans is completing its $4.7bn exploration of a field discovered six years ago 28,000 feet below sea level. It is gearing up to pump 30,000 barrels of crude each day. On CBS, Armen Keteyian traveled to New England, where half the homes use oil for heat each winter. Prices have increased so much since last winter that carrying costs have already driven 15 supply firms out of business. Customers who prepaid for oil with those bankrupt firms are doubly screwed: they not only lost their deposits but will have to pay 60% more than last year to a solvent supplier.
EYE ON PHARMA Tyndall Report always approves of a decision by the nightly newscasts to publicize cautionary research about prescription drugs. So much of the advertising that their viewers see--delivering the revenue that the news divisions pocket--extols the virtues of popping pills that the newscasts gain extra credibility by expending the editorial effort to alert viewers to contradictory evidence, especially at the risk of seeming to bite the hand that feeds them.
Thus hats off to Nancy Cordes at CBS for bringing us a red flag about Prevacid, Prilosec and Nexium, so-called proton pump inhibitors, drugs that suppress the stomach's production of hydrochloric acid in order to treat heartburn. The trouble is that the acid has the beneficial effect of facilitating the absorption of calcium into the bones. Long term poppers of PPIs run the risk of weaker hips and broken bones. A broken hip is frequently fatal in the elderly.
On ABC, in-house physician Timothy Johnson (embargoed link) warned us that Vitamin D deficiency is bad for our health. It can lead to diabetes, multiple sclerosis, heart disease and early death. Rather than advise us to get our Ds the old fashioned way through the skin by sucking up some extra sun, Dr Tim offered his personal testimonial. He pops a daily multivitamin plus an extra daily 1,000 units of D3 supplement. The good doctor stopped short of endorsing a particular brand.
TANKS ON TIANANMEN NBC anchor Brian Williams and his predecessor Tom Brokaw were in Tiananmen Square for their Beijing Olympics coverage. NBC did not actually file a sports-related feature--of the three newscasts only ABC's David Muir covered the competition proper but because of copyright issues there is no link to his story on the famous come-from-behind freestyle relay victory by USA's male swimmers. Williams' closing feature instead focused on the city's efforts to welcome Olympic visitors: "The government office of Capital Spiritual Civilization Construction has printed a booklet on how to behave."
Williams showed us the massive wonders of Tiananmen, its history from Ming to Mao, and its environs, the Forbidden City and the Great Hall of the People. The square's slogan du jour is Opening Up and Reform. Harmonious Society. Brokaw relived his previous visits as a correspondent, in 1974 and 1982 and after the crackdown of 1989 when he bicycled through the square with a secret cameraman to document the tanks arrayed under Mao Zedong's giant portrait, "a scene only an authoritarian could love." Williams reminded us of that lone protestor standing in front of the line of oncoming tanks. Curiously he called it "the picture that became synonymous around the world with people power"--curiously, because it actually depicts personal impotence.
ABC's Clarissa Ward (embargoed link) filed from Gori where she found "panic and chaos" before the Russians moved in: "Convoy after convoy of Georgian troops poured out of the city shouting that the Russians were coming," to coin a phrase. NBC located Jim Maceda in Tbilisi, where he introduced Gori footage from Julian Manyon of NBC's British newsgathering partner ITN. "The Georgian government insists that its troops had not been humiliated," Manyon noted, "but the truth is that they and their equipment have not been able to stand up to Russian firepower." CBS had Richard Roth narrate war footage and cover the diplomatic response from London: "Diplomacy is the only weapon the West is using," he observed.
In a rare newsmaking achievement for the lame duck President, ABC assigned David Wright to file from the White House on George Bush's insistence that Georgia's territorial integrity and sovereignty be respected: "The Russian government must reverse the course it appears to be on." Wright called Georgia "a new friend and ally" of the United States, although he did not use the word literally since Georgia is only "hoping to join NATO" and has not done so. And then there is oil. It does have "one of the only pipelines from Asia to Europe that Russia does not control."
When it comes to what is at stake in the fighting, NBC's Jim Maceda, on the ground in Tbilisi, and CBS' Wyatt Andrews, talking to inside-the-Beltway foreign policy wonks, took opposite lines. Maceda judged that the conflict "started as a gamble" by Georgia's president, Mikheil Shaakasvili, a "darling of the West" when he moved quickly to take back control of South Ossetia. "The plan failed." Maceda consulted Russian analysts who concluded that Shaakasvili "made one big mistake, threatening Russia in its own backyard."
Now listen to CBS' Andrews: "None of the suffering here is about the enclave of Ossetia," he asserted. "This war is all about Russia and the message Russia is sending to the world." Andrews saw Moscow's incursion as the culmination of a four-year "nationalistic anti-Georgia propaganda campaign" by a "seething" Vladimir Putin to stymie plans to expand NATO right up to Russia's southern borders. That campaign was intensified by President Bush's visit to Georgia in 2005 when he offered a pledge of support--"The American people will stand with you"--and received "a hero's welcome." Now, despite that promise, "almost nothing now stands between the Russian Army and the Georgian capital of Tbilisi."
HE DOES NOT LOOK LIKE THOSE DEAD PRESIDENTS Remember two weeks ago when Barack Obama joked on the stump about how he did not look like those dead Presidents on the banknotes and John McCain's campaign bristled at a perceived accusation of racebaiting. Back then ABC's Jake Tapper seemed to side with McCain: "If Obama was not suggesting that McCain and Republicans were going after him for his name and his race just what was he suggesting? And there was no satisfactory answer."
Now a hint at a satisfactory answer comes from Tapper's coverage of a post-mortem on Hillary Rodham Clinton's primary defeat in Atlantic Monthly magazine. Tapper quoted strategist Mark Penn recommending that Rodham Clinton attack Obama for his Kenyan-Hawaiian heritage and Indonesian upbringing: "His roots to basic American values and culture are at best limited." Rodham Clinton, it turns out, rejected Penn's xenophobic advice. Yet Tapper quoted McCain's latest campaign ad tagline The American President Americans Have Been Waiting For and heard insinuations that there is "something not quite American about Obama."
So the "satisfactory answer" about those dollar bills is that Obama was not defending against attacks that he is African-American but that he is not-quite-American--not playing the race card but, instead, laying a charge of nativism at McCain's door.
The day's other campaign coverage came from CBS anchor Katie Couric. She filed a long behind-the-scenes profile of Valerie Jarrett, a senior advisor to Obama, who first met the candidate when she was deputy chief of staff in the Chicago mayor's office 17 years ago and hired his wife Michelle. Couric failed to find out what job in a possible Obama Administration Jarrett would fill yet already, the anchor claimed, Jarrett "just may be the most powerful woman in Chicago besides Oprah."
SO WHAT? NBC stayed away from the campaign trail. Its only political story on a day when China was on its mind was Andrea Mitchell's follow-up to Friday's confession by former candidate John Edwards that he had cheated on his wife. Mitchell mused that details of his story--the timeline he offered to ABC's Nightline and his categorical denial of involvement in payoffs to Rielle Hunter--were still not entirely uncontradicted. So what?
TWO ENDS OF THE SUPPLY CHAIN Even as the extreme shock to the nation's economy from last month's bubble in the commodity price of crude oil is starting to wear off, oil's place on the news agenda remains strong. ABC launched a series called Oil Crunch by sending David Muir to the Gulf of Mexico to offer striking visuals and free publicity to Chevron. The Big Oil firm's floating platform 190 miles south of New Orleans is completing its $4.7bn exploration of a field discovered six years ago 28,000 feet below sea level. It is gearing up to pump 30,000 barrels of crude each day. On CBS, Armen Keteyian traveled to New England, where half the homes use oil for heat each winter. Prices have increased so much since last winter that carrying costs have already driven 15 supply firms out of business. Customers who prepaid for oil with those bankrupt firms are doubly screwed: they not only lost their deposits but will have to pay 60% more than last year to a solvent supplier.
EYE ON PHARMA Tyndall Report always approves of a decision by the nightly newscasts to publicize cautionary research about prescription drugs. So much of the advertising that their viewers see--delivering the revenue that the news divisions pocket--extols the virtues of popping pills that the newscasts gain extra credibility by expending the editorial effort to alert viewers to contradictory evidence, especially at the risk of seeming to bite the hand that feeds them.
Thus hats off to Nancy Cordes at CBS for bringing us a red flag about Prevacid, Prilosec and Nexium, so-called proton pump inhibitors, drugs that suppress the stomach's production of hydrochloric acid in order to treat heartburn. The trouble is that the acid has the beneficial effect of facilitating the absorption of calcium into the bones. Long term poppers of PPIs run the risk of weaker hips and broken bones. A broken hip is frequently fatal in the elderly.
On ABC, in-house physician Timothy Johnson (embargoed link) warned us that Vitamin D deficiency is bad for our health. It can lead to diabetes, multiple sclerosis, heart disease and early death. Rather than advise us to get our Ds the old fashioned way through the skin by sucking up some extra sun, Dr Tim offered his personal testimonial. He pops a daily multivitamin plus an extra daily 1,000 units of D3 supplement. The good doctor stopped short of endorsing a particular brand.
TANKS ON TIANANMEN NBC anchor Brian Williams and his predecessor Tom Brokaw were in Tiananmen Square for their Beijing Olympics coverage. NBC did not actually file a sports-related feature--of the three newscasts only ABC's David Muir covered the competition proper but because of copyright issues there is no link to his story on the famous come-from-behind freestyle relay victory by USA's male swimmers. Williams' closing feature instead focused on the city's efforts to welcome Olympic visitors: "The government office of Capital Spiritual Civilization Construction has printed a booklet on how to behave."
Williams showed us the massive wonders of Tiananmen, its history from Ming to Mao, and its environs, the Forbidden City and the Great Hall of the People. The square's slogan du jour is Opening Up and Reform. Harmonious Society. Brokaw relived his previous visits as a correspondent, in 1974 and 1982 and after the crackdown of 1989 when he bicycled through the square with a secret cameraman to document the tanks arrayed under Mao Zedong's giant portrait, "a scene only an authoritarian could love." Williams reminded us of that lone protestor standing in front of the line of oncoming tanks. Curiously he called it "the picture that became synonymous around the world with people power"--curiously, because it actually depicts personal impotence.
