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TYNDALL HEADLINE: HIGHLIGHTS FROM SEPTEMBER 22, 2008
Last week's five-day sweep of financial dominance of the news agenda continued. Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson's proposal to bail out financial capitalism was the unanimous choice as Story of the Day. He wants to spend $700bn in federal funds to buy illiquid securities derived from the crash in the housing market. He hopes that banks, with their balance sheets thus cleansed, will resume regular lending. All three newscasts led from Washington as Congressional leaders digested the three pages of legislation that Paulson drafted over the weekend. The national center of financial power has shifted from Wall Street to Capitol Hill.
TYNDALL PICKS FOR SEPTEMBER 22, 2008: CLICK ON GRID ELEMENTS TO SEARCH FOR MATCHING ITEMS
FINANCIAL CAPITAL MOVES TO THE CAPITOL Last week's five-day sweep of financial dominance of the news agenda continued. Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson's proposal to bail out financial capitalism was the unanimous choice as Story of the Day. He wants to spend $700bn in federal funds to buy illiquid securities derived from the crash in the housing market. He hopes that banks, with their balance sheets thus cleansed, will resume regular lending. All three newscasts led from Washington as Congressional leaders digested the three pages of legislation that Paulson drafted over the weekend. The national center of financial power has shifted from Wall Street to Capitol Hill.
Both ABC's Jake Tapper and CBS' Bob Orr found a consensus, in principle, that some bailout will pass. "All sides have grudgingly agreed that something has to get done," was how Orr put it. Leaders "agreed in theory," according to Tapper. So most of the reporting concerned the list of possible additions and amendments that could check and balance Paulson's powers. NBC's Tom Costello saw legislators "coming to terms with the enormity of the financial bailout the administration wants fast-tracked." Orr found Congress "in no mood to be rushed." Tapper told us: "Both Democrats and Republicans balked at handing over so much money and so much power to the Treasury Secretary."
All three reporters clearly worked the same set of sources. They each cited the same trio of early sticking points. Foreclosing homeowners should be able to have bankruptcy judges relax their mortgages. The Treasury Department's handling of the securities should be subject to oversight. Executives at participating financial firms should have exorbitant salaries, bonuses and severances curbed. NBC's Costello and CBS' Orr came up with a fourth potential rider--that the government should obtain a share of ownership in the companies it helps.
WALL STREET STILL EXISTS, JUST Over the weekend, the final two of Wall Street's great money houses, Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley, changed their stripe and became "plain vanilla commercial banks," as ABC's Betsy Stark (at the tail of the Tapper videostream) put it. "In just six months five major investment banks have now vanished from the landscape ending an era of aggressive deal-making and spectacular profits. These Masters of the Universe, immortalized by Hollywood, have been humbled." CNBC's economist Steve Liesman told NBC anchor Brian Williams that the worst day had been last Thursday when "the financial market came very close to freezing up and a lot of people in very high places were scared." Ominously he pointed out that Benjamin Bernanke, the Chairman of the Federal Reserve Board, is "one of the leading experts on the Great Depression." While Wall Street waited for legislation to emerge from Washington "investors were still edgy," commented CBS' Anthony Mason, watching the Dow Jones Industrial Average drop again, by 372 points to 11015.
PAULSON HAS HAMILTON’S JOB "The man who signs US currency is putting his stamp on the global economy," declared NBC's Pete Williams, as he filed a profile of the Treasury Secretary who seeks to control the $700bn bailout fund. Henry Paulson is a former aide to Richard Nixon and former chief executive of Goldman Sachs. A devout Christian Scientist, he neither drinks nor smokes. A committed environmentalist, he collects live snakes, is an avid fly fisherman and birdwatcher. The new endangered species, quipped Williams, is "the American economy."
CAMPAIGN CHICKEN There is still a Presidential election campaign going on so all three networks checked in on the candidates' response to Henry Paulson's plan. ABC's George Stephanopoulos noted that there are likely to be "large scale defections from the rank on file" from members of both parties in opposition to the legislation. As a consequence he saw Republican John McCain and Democrat Barack Obama "watching each other, playing chicken. I think they want to end up voting in the same way. If one defects, the other may defect too." On the campaign trail, CBS' Chip Reid heard both denounce the plan's lack of oversight and its focus on "the titans of Wall Street" at the expense of ordinary citizens: "It is not often that the two candidates sound like they are reading from the same talking points." CNBC's John Harwood told NBC anchor Brian Williams that while there were "broad similarities in their responses," McCain "knows the wind is in his face" so he is trying to shift the argument away from economic policy to "corruption and greed by individuals."
CAMPAIGN FEATURES Each of the networks rounded out Campaign '08 coverage with a feature. ABC is working with USA Today to look at 50 States in 50 Days. The Commonwealth of Virginia was John Berman's focus this time: he contrasted Barack Obama's 43 field offices concentrating on person-to-person canvassing and backyard barbecues with John McCain's focus on banks of data-collecting telephones.
On CBS, anchor Katie Couric went on the road with the Democrats' Vice-Presidential nominee in Ohio, the "freewheelin'" Joe Biden. "Have you found you have to be ubercareful and disciplined?" "No. I feel passionately about what I am doing and saying…and if I have to go parse through every single thing that I am going to say then I am not me." A couple of cases in point--he imagined a time-traveling Franklin Roosevelt addressing the nation on television and he criticized his own campaign for its ad teasing the computer-illiterate McCain. "I thought that was terrible," he asserted. "If I had anything to do with it we would never have done it and I do not think Barack…" and then his soundbite trailed off because he realized the ad contained that I Approved This Message tagline that was about to catch him in a lie.
NBC's issues series Where They Stand was a straightforward task for CNBC's Carl Quintanilla. The tax policies of the two candidates are clearly different. A middle class family would get three times as big a tax cut under Obama's platform than under McCain's--$1100 annually as opposed to $325. A rich family would get a $50,000 tax cut under McCain and a $94,000 hike under Obama.
MAYHEM AT THE MARRIOTT HOTEL The catastrophic truckbomb that killed 50-or-so outside the Marriott Hotel in Islamabad grabbed the attention of all three newscasts. CBS' Elizabeth Palmer caught up with John Armstrong, a foreign aid worker from upstate New York, who was outside the lobby of the hotel when the explosion happened. "There was just this huge shockwave and I do not know if I was knocked unconscious or how long I laid there." Ann Curry, newscaster for NBC's Today, sat down with Pakistan's new president, Asif ali-Zardari. She asked why his government prohibits US troops from crossing Pakistan's northwest frontier from Afghanistan in order to fight Taliban guerrillas. "Give us the intelligence and we will do the job," he replied, mistaking NBC News for a representative of the US military. "If you do the incursion then the constituency that I am trying to appease, they take it as a foreign war." On ABC, Jim Sciutto found the same resentment against US involvement inside Pakistani territory. It is "so unpopular that Pakistan is refusing to allow the FBI to help investigate Saturday's blast."
DAN’S EXCELLENT ADVENTURE Dan Harris offered a preview of his special for ABC's Nightline on his journey into the jungle to profile the Enawene Nawe of southwest Brazil. They are a tribe of 500 which invited the journalist to visit to publicize their struggle to preserve their Amazon habitat. Ranchers are logging their land and a municipality wants to dam their water for hydropower. Harris relayed this warning from the village elder: "If you destroy our land and we are not able to maintain relations with the spirits, we will die and you will die and you will die. The difference is--you do not know it."
Both ABC's Jake Tapper and CBS' Bob Orr found a consensus, in principle, that some bailout will pass. "All sides have grudgingly agreed that something has to get done," was how Orr put it. Leaders "agreed in theory," according to Tapper. So most of the reporting concerned the list of possible additions and amendments that could check and balance Paulson's powers. NBC's Tom Costello saw legislators "coming to terms with the enormity of the financial bailout the administration wants fast-tracked." Orr found Congress "in no mood to be rushed." Tapper told us: "Both Democrats and Republicans balked at handing over so much money and so much power to the Treasury Secretary."
All three reporters clearly worked the same set of sources. They each cited the same trio of early sticking points. Foreclosing homeowners should be able to have bankruptcy judges relax their mortgages. The Treasury Department's handling of the securities should be subject to oversight. Executives at participating financial firms should have exorbitant salaries, bonuses and severances curbed. NBC's Costello and CBS' Orr came up with a fourth potential rider--that the government should obtain a share of ownership in the companies it helps.
WALL STREET STILL EXISTS, JUST Over the weekend, the final two of Wall Street's great money houses, Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley, changed their stripe and became "plain vanilla commercial banks," as ABC's Betsy Stark (at the tail of the Tapper videostream) put it. "In just six months five major investment banks have now vanished from the landscape ending an era of aggressive deal-making and spectacular profits. These Masters of the Universe, immortalized by Hollywood, have been humbled." CNBC's economist Steve Liesman told NBC anchor Brian Williams that the worst day had been last Thursday when "the financial market came very close to freezing up and a lot of people in very high places were scared." Ominously he pointed out that Benjamin Bernanke, the Chairman of the Federal Reserve Board, is "one of the leading experts on the Great Depression." While Wall Street waited for legislation to emerge from Washington "investors were still edgy," commented CBS' Anthony Mason, watching the Dow Jones Industrial Average drop again, by 372 points to 11015.
PAULSON HAS HAMILTON’S JOB "The man who signs US currency is putting his stamp on the global economy," declared NBC's Pete Williams, as he filed a profile of the Treasury Secretary who seeks to control the $700bn bailout fund. Henry Paulson is a former aide to Richard Nixon and former chief executive of Goldman Sachs. A devout Christian Scientist, he neither drinks nor smokes. A committed environmentalist, he collects live snakes, is an avid fly fisherman and birdwatcher. The new endangered species, quipped Williams, is "the American economy."
CAMPAIGN CHICKEN There is still a Presidential election campaign going on so all three networks checked in on the candidates' response to Henry Paulson's plan. ABC's George Stephanopoulos noted that there are likely to be "large scale defections from the rank on file" from members of both parties in opposition to the legislation. As a consequence he saw Republican John McCain and Democrat Barack Obama "watching each other, playing chicken. I think they want to end up voting in the same way. If one defects, the other may defect too." On the campaign trail, CBS' Chip Reid heard both denounce the plan's lack of oversight and its focus on "the titans of Wall Street" at the expense of ordinary citizens: "It is not often that the two candidates sound like they are reading from the same talking points." CNBC's John Harwood told NBC anchor Brian Williams that while there were "broad similarities in their responses," McCain "knows the wind is in his face" so he is trying to shift the argument away from economic policy to "corruption and greed by individuals."
CAMPAIGN FEATURES Each of the networks rounded out Campaign '08 coverage with a feature. ABC is working with USA Today to look at 50 States in 50 Days. The Commonwealth of Virginia was John Berman's focus this time: he contrasted Barack Obama's 43 field offices concentrating on person-to-person canvassing and backyard barbecues with John McCain's focus on banks of data-collecting telephones.
On CBS, anchor Katie Couric went on the road with the Democrats' Vice-Presidential nominee in Ohio, the "freewheelin'" Joe Biden. "Have you found you have to be ubercareful and disciplined?" "No. I feel passionately about what I am doing and saying…and if I have to go parse through every single thing that I am going to say then I am not me." A couple of cases in point--he imagined a time-traveling Franklin Roosevelt addressing the nation on television and he criticized his own campaign for its ad teasing the computer-illiterate McCain. "I thought that was terrible," he asserted. "If I had anything to do with it we would never have done it and I do not think Barack…" and then his soundbite trailed off because he realized the ad contained that I Approved This Message tagline that was about to catch him in a lie.
NBC's issues series Where They Stand was a straightforward task for CNBC's Carl Quintanilla. The tax policies of the two candidates are clearly different. A middle class family would get three times as big a tax cut under Obama's platform than under McCain's--$1100 annually as opposed to $325. A rich family would get a $50,000 tax cut under McCain and a $94,000 hike under Obama.
MAYHEM AT THE MARRIOTT HOTEL The catastrophic truckbomb that killed 50-or-so outside the Marriott Hotel in Islamabad grabbed the attention of all three newscasts. CBS' Elizabeth Palmer caught up with John Armstrong, a foreign aid worker from upstate New York, who was outside the lobby of the hotel when the explosion happened. "There was just this huge shockwave and I do not know if I was knocked unconscious or how long I laid there." Ann Curry, newscaster for NBC's Today, sat down with Pakistan's new president, Asif ali-Zardari. She asked why his government prohibits US troops from crossing Pakistan's northwest frontier from Afghanistan in order to fight Taliban guerrillas. "Give us the intelligence and we will do the job," he replied, mistaking NBC News for a representative of the US military. "If you do the incursion then the constituency that I am trying to appease, they take it as a foreign war." On ABC, Jim Sciutto found the same resentment against US involvement inside Pakistani territory. It is "so unpopular that Pakistan is refusing to allow the FBI to help investigate Saturday's blast."
DAN’S EXCELLENT ADVENTURE Dan Harris offered a preview of his special for ABC's Nightline on his journey into the jungle to profile the Enawene Nawe of southwest Brazil. They are a tribe of 500 which invited the journalist to visit to publicize their struggle to preserve their Amazon habitat. Ranchers are logging their land and a municipality wants to dam their water for hydropower. Harris relayed this warning from the village elder: "If you destroy our land and we are not able to maintain relations with the spirits, we will die and you will die and you will die. The difference is--you do not know it."
