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TYNDALL HEADLINE: HIGHLIGHTS FROM SEPTEMBER 26, 2008
The beginning of the General Election debate season lured two of the three anchors to the University of Mississippi in Oxford where PBS' Jim Lehrer will moderate Friday's night's gabfest, which was supposed to focus on foreign policy topics. The financial crisis has scrambled that agenda. CBS' Katie Couric and NBC's Brian Williams were both on hand--and NBC actually chose the debate as its lead. ABC anchor Charles Gibson stayed in New York with George Stephanopoulos to watch the debate on television like the rest of us. ABC's lead, along with CBS', was the Story of the Day, the continuing negotiations on Capitol Hill over the Treasury Department's proposed $700bn rescue package for the debt-ridden financial sector. Thus each of the three newscasts have led with high finance on nine out of the last ten weekdays--leading with Campaign '08 each only once.
TYNDALL PICKS FOR SEPTEMBER 26, 2008: CLICK ON GRID ELEMENTS TO SEARCH FOR MATCHING ITEMS
FINANCE UPSTAGES OLE MISS DEBATE The beginning of the General Election debate season lured two of the three anchors to the University of Mississippi in Oxford where PBS' Jim Lehrer will moderate Friday's night's gabfest, which was supposed to focus on foreign policy topics. The financial crisis has scrambled that agenda. CBS' Katie Couric and NBC's Brian Williams were both on hand--and NBC actually chose the debate as its lead. ABC anchor Charles Gibson stayed in New York with George Stephanopoulos to watch the debate on television like the rest of us. ABC's lead, along with CBS', was the Story of the Day, the continuing negotiations on Capitol Hill over the Treasury Department's proposed $700bn rescue package for the debt-ridden financial sector. Thus each of the three newscasts have led with high finance on nine out of the last ten weekdays--leading with Campaign '08 each only once.
House Republicans were the key movers in the day's financial bailout developments. They disagreed with the plan from the Republican White House on a federal buyout fund and offered their alternative: it would "create a mortgage insurance program paid for by the financial firms that hold the loans," was how NBC's Tom Costello described it. How would they get the money to set up the program? "Cut capital gains taxes…and cut corporate taxes." Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson responded to his fellow Republicans, Costello noted, with the verdict: "The conservative plan will not work."
"Disarray," was ABC's Jake Tapper verdict on the state of the talks, as Speaker Nancy Pelosi announced her insistence that the bill be passed with bipartisan support in the House. If Republicans would not support it, neither would Democrats. "Without a significant number of conservative votes any deal is doomed," CBS' Bob Orr calculated. ABC's George Stephanopoulos did a head count and reckoned that Pelosi would need "between 70 and 100" House GOPers. He predicted a compromise that the Treasury Secretary would be empowered to use the insurance program idea "at his discretion" but would not be obliged to.
Why does Pelosi need a bipartisan vote? ABC's Betsy Stark explained that "Americans are angry" because "the popular perception is that the government will be writing a $700bn check, a bailout from Main Street to Wall Street…that is $700bn they will not be able to spend on healthcare, Social Security reform, education, the environment, you name it." Stark suggested that "bailout" was the wrong way to look at the purchase of all those debt-ridden securities. "It is an investment," she smiled.
WAMU JOINS JP On a normal day the collapse of a savings & loan with 2,200 branches and $307bn in assets would be the financial Story of the Day. Washington Mutual, the nation's largest thrift, was rescued by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation and sold, along with $31bn in debts, to JP Morgan, the bank, for $1.9bn. CBS' Anthony Mason (no link) covered the bankruptcy from New York and NBC's George Lewis from Los Angeles. ABC had Neal Karlinsky (embargoed link) in WaMu's hometown of Seattle where the thrift had the reputation as "the Walmart of banking, catering to lower and middle class customers and pressing heavily into the mortgage business."
The ripple effect of high finance's problems into the personal finances of retirees and those saving for retirement has inspired anecdotal features on all three newscasts. Wednesday, ABC's Sharyn Alfonsi (embargoed link) profiled babyboomers in New Jersey. Thursday, NBC's Mark Potter introduced us to retirees in Florida. Now, CBS' Mark Strassmann is in Atlanta where a former firefighter found that "Wall Street scrambled his nest egg."
THE UNSUSPENDED CANDIDATE Wednesday, John McCain pledged to suspend his Republican Presidential candidacy because, in the words of his campaign slogan, he was putting Country First, as he explained in Katie Couric's Exclusive interview on CBS. He declared he would return to the Senate to work as a legislator until the bill to rescue the financial industry had been hammered out. Now two days later, the bill still unwritten, Candidate McCain reemerged and he flew off the Mississippi to debate Democrat Barack Obama. "He bowed to widespread insistence that the debate go ahead," CBS' Dean Reynolds (no link) reflected.
CBS' Couric asked two lead Congressional negotiators about McCain's contribution. "What it did was bring more attention to the problem," John Boehner answered, the leader of the House Republicans. "I thought it was constructive." Democrat Christopher Dodd, the chairman of the Senate Banking Committee, called it "pure political theater. It was a rescue plan for John McCain not a rescue plan for the economy." The failure of McCain's presence to produce a result, CBS' Bob Schieffer (no link) concluded, is a blow to his image as the maverick who can bring opposing parties together: "So far he is not looking too good on this."
NBC's Andrea Mitchell reported that McCain's claim of suspension was a falsehood: "Both candidates have been rehearsing--even McCain during his detour through Washington." Yet ABC's George Stephanopoulos did remark that the legislative negotiations of the past few days meant "probably less formal preparations than any candidates in the last 25 years." The scheduled questions will be preempted by the financial crisis, NBC's Tom Brokaw assured us. Jim Lehrer "gets to tee up the economy and he will find a way to turn it into foreign policy."
McCain's debating style is intense; Obama's is laid back. NBC political director Chuck Todd offered some pregame analysis for anchor Brian Williams: "Too hot and too cool, right. It is like which one of them is going to be Goldilocks at this point." CBS' preview consisted of Jeff Greenfield's The Good, the Bad and the Ugly montage of debate highlights past--Ronald Reagan, Ross Perot, Lloyd Bentsen (good); Gerald Ford, George Bush, Al Gore (bad). The ugly was a 1976 clip of Ford and Jimmy Carter standing at their podiums, uncommunicative, for 27 minutes while technicians tried to fix the audio: "If either Ford or Carter had acted like a human being, with a laugh, chatting with the other guy, they might have won hands down."
HELP HAITI Ike, the undercovered hurricane, got short shrift in Galveston and Houston until NBC anchor Brian Williams traveled there Wednesday. Now NBC goes even further in filling in the gaps, sending Maria Schiavocampo to Gonvaies in northern Haiti where mudslides rendered tens of thousands homeless. The supply of food aid--rice, beans and oil--"is not enough to meet demand," World Food Program workers told her, and she found a dead dog floating in the drinking water supply.
Less devastating was the fallout of Ike in major southeastern cities such as Atlanta, where ABC's Steve Osunsami (embargoed link) filed from, and Charlotte, base for NBC's Michelle Kosinski. The storm closed three refineries in Texas that supply gasoline pipelines to the region. Supplies are running low and lines are growing long. Kosinski told us that at one time only one filling station out of seven was open in Charlotte.
FRIDAY FEATURES The looming debate pre-empted CBS' normal weekender, Steve Hartman's Assignment America. ABC went ahead with its Person of the Week. Anchor Charles Gibson introduced us to Julia Burney-Witherspoon, a police officer in Racine Wisc, who founded the child literacy program Cops & Kids. Squad cars cruise the city with books in their trunks, ready to be distributed free to children. NBC's Making a Difference feature profiled Dan Cook, a one-time commodities trader, turned fly-fisherman. Mike Taibbi had the arduous assignment of hanging out in the picturesque canyons of Utah's Green River where Cook offers disabled veterans sanctuary and fishing therapy.
House Republicans were the key movers in the day's financial bailout developments. They disagreed with the plan from the Republican White House on a federal buyout fund and offered their alternative: it would "create a mortgage insurance program paid for by the financial firms that hold the loans," was how NBC's Tom Costello described it. How would they get the money to set up the program? "Cut capital gains taxes…and cut corporate taxes." Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson responded to his fellow Republicans, Costello noted, with the verdict: "The conservative plan will not work."
"Disarray," was ABC's Jake Tapper verdict on the state of the talks, as Speaker Nancy Pelosi announced her insistence that the bill be passed with bipartisan support in the House. If Republicans would not support it, neither would Democrats. "Without a significant number of conservative votes any deal is doomed," CBS' Bob Orr calculated. ABC's George Stephanopoulos did a head count and reckoned that Pelosi would need "between 70 and 100" House GOPers. He predicted a compromise that the Treasury Secretary would be empowered to use the insurance program idea "at his discretion" but would not be obliged to.
Why does Pelosi need a bipartisan vote? ABC's Betsy Stark explained that "Americans are angry" because "the popular perception is that the government will be writing a $700bn check, a bailout from Main Street to Wall Street…that is $700bn they will not be able to spend on healthcare, Social Security reform, education, the environment, you name it." Stark suggested that "bailout" was the wrong way to look at the purchase of all those debt-ridden securities. "It is an investment," she smiled.
WAMU JOINS JP On a normal day the collapse of a savings & loan with 2,200 branches and $307bn in assets would be the financial Story of the Day. Washington Mutual, the nation's largest thrift, was rescued by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation and sold, along with $31bn in debts, to JP Morgan, the bank, for $1.9bn. CBS' Anthony Mason (no link) covered the bankruptcy from New York and NBC's George Lewis from Los Angeles. ABC had Neal Karlinsky (embargoed link) in WaMu's hometown of Seattle where the thrift had the reputation as "the Walmart of banking, catering to lower and middle class customers and pressing heavily into the mortgage business."
The ripple effect of high finance's problems into the personal finances of retirees and those saving for retirement has inspired anecdotal features on all three newscasts. Wednesday, ABC's Sharyn Alfonsi (embargoed link) profiled babyboomers in New Jersey. Thursday, NBC's Mark Potter introduced us to retirees in Florida. Now, CBS' Mark Strassmann is in Atlanta where a former firefighter found that "Wall Street scrambled his nest egg."
THE UNSUSPENDED CANDIDATE Wednesday, John McCain pledged to suspend his Republican Presidential candidacy because, in the words of his campaign slogan, he was putting Country First, as he explained in Katie Couric's Exclusive interview on CBS. He declared he would return to the Senate to work as a legislator until the bill to rescue the financial industry had been hammered out. Now two days later, the bill still unwritten, Candidate McCain reemerged and he flew off the Mississippi to debate Democrat Barack Obama. "He bowed to widespread insistence that the debate go ahead," CBS' Dean Reynolds (no link) reflected.
CBS' Couric asked two lead Congressional negotiators about McCain's contribution. "What it did was bring more attention to the problem," John Boehner answered, the leader of the House Republicans. "I thought it was constructive." Democrat Christopher Dodd, the chairman of the Senate Banking Committee, called it "pure political theater. It was a rescue plan for John McCain not a rescue plan for the economy." The failure of McCain's presence to produce a result, CBS' Bob Schieffer (no link) concluded, is a blow to his image as the maverick who can bring opposing parties together: "So far he is not looking too good on this."
NBC's Andrea Mitchell reported that McCain's claim of suspension was a falsehood: "Both candidates have been rehearsing--even McCain during his detour through Washington." Yet ABC's George Stephanopoulos did remark that the legislative negotiations of the past few days meant "probably less formal preparations than any candidates in the last 25 years." The scheduled questions will be preempted by the financial crisis, NBC's Tom Brokaw assured us. Jim Lehrer "gets to tee up the economy and he will find a way to turn it into foreign policy."
McCain's debating style is intense; Obama's is laid back. NBC political director Chuck Todd offered some pregame analysis for anchor Brian Williams: "Too hot and too cool, right. It is like which one of them is going to be Goldilocks at this point." CBS' preview consisted of Jeff Greenfield's The Good, the Bad and the Ugly montage of debate highlights past--Ronald Reagan, Ross Perot, Lloyd Bentsen (good); Gerald Ford, George Bush, Al Gore (bad). The ugly was a 1976 clip of Ford and Jimmy Carter standing at their podiums, uncommunicative, for 27 minutes while technicians tried to fix the audio: "If either Ford or Carter had acted like a human being, with a laugh, chatting with the other guy, they might have won hands down."
HELP HAITI Ike, the undercovered hurricane, got short shrift in Galveston and Houston until NBC anchor Brian Williams traveled there Wednesday. Now NBC goes even further in filling in the gaps, sending Maria Schiavocampo to Gonvaies in northern Haiti where mudslides rendered tens of thousands homeless. The supply of food aid--rice, beans and oil--"is not enough to meet demand," World Food Program workers told her, and she found a dead dog floating in the drinking water supply.
Less devastating was the fallout of Ike in major southeastern cities such as Atlanta, where ABC's Steve Osunsami (embargoed link) filed from, and Charlotte, base for NBC's Michelle Kosinski. The storm closed three refineries in Texas that supply gasoline pipelines to the region. Supplies are running low and lines are growing long. Kosinski told us that at one time only one filling station out of seven was open in Charlotte.
FRIDAY FEATURES The looming debate pre-empted CBS' normal weekender, Steve Hartman's Assignment America. ABC went ahead with its Person of the Week. Anchor Charles Gibson introduced us to Julia Burney-Witherspoon, a police officer in Racine Wisc, who founded the child literacy program Cops & Kids. Squad cars cruise the city with books in their trunks, ready to be distributed free to children. NBC's Making a Difference feature profiled Dan Cook, a one-time commodities trader, turned fly-fisherman. Mike Taibbi had the arduous assignment of hanging out in the picturesque canyons of Utah's Green River where Cook offers disabled veterans sanctuary and fishing therapy.
