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TYNDALL HEADLINE: HIGHLIGHTS FROM JANUARY 13, 2009
How cold was it across the northern plains? Bone-chillingly cold. It was so cold that winter weather qualified as Story of the Day. ABC and NBC led off their newscasts with Chicago correspondents. CBS had its morning weathercaster lead off from Minneapolis. All were forced to file from an exterior stand-up. Why? To prove that it really was bone-chillingly cold outside. In both cities the air temperature--never mind the wind chill--was in negative numbers Fahrenheit.
TYNDALL PICKS FOR JANUARY 13, 2009: CLICK ON GRID ELEMENTS TO SEARCH FOR MATCHING ITEMS
COLD WEATHER How cold was it across the northern plains? Bone-chillingly cold. It was so cold that winter weather qualified as Story of the Day. ABC and NBC led off their newscasts with Chicago correspondents. CBS had its morning weathercaster lead off from Minneapolis. All were forced to file from an exterior stand-up. Why? To prove that it really was bone-chillingly cold outside. In both cities the air temperature--never mind the wind chill--was in negative numbers Fahrenheit.
NBC's Lee Cowan complained from Chicago that he was "starting to run out of adjectives" to describe how cold it was. He called the city's river a "mile-long ice cube." On ABC, a red-faced Chris Bury came up with "bitter, blustery, bone-chilling" and "brutal." Dave Price, the weathercaster for CBS' Early Show warned that frostbite can set in as quickly as ten minutes when the temperature is in the double-digit negatives. He shared that old weather reporter's trick of throwing a cup of water into the air and showing it freeze before it hits the ground.
The national angle on the regional cold was the prospect of it freezing on Barack Obama's Inauguration parade next week. ABC's Bury reminded us that Ronald Reagan had to be sworn in indoors in 1985 because the weather outside was frightful. Bury and CBS' Price forecast a temperature hovering around the freezing mark for DC on the 20th, suitable for outdoor ceremonies; on NBC, the Weather Channel's Jim Cantore predicted that the current "Alberta Clipper" will be followed by a "Saskatchewan Screamer." His "first stab" at a forecast envisioned "mid-20Fs, some snow flurries around, 15 mph to 25 mph winds, probably some upper single digit wind chills."
INTERNATIONAL MONETARY FUND & GLOBAL PHILANTHROPIC FOUNDATION On Capitol Hill, Senate confirmation hearings proceeded for several of Barack Obama's Cabinet nominees--Hillary Rodham Clinton for State, Arne Duncan for Education, Steven Chu for Energy, Shaun Donovan for HUD--even as his pick for Treasury Secretary had a hiccup. It turns out that when a federal bureaucrat works for the International Monetary Fund he is self-employed and therefore responsible for paying his own high rate of Social Security taxes. ABC's George Stephanopoulos reported that Timothy Geithner failed to pay $34,000 over four years from 2001 through 2004 when he was at the IMF. He paid two years' worth of back taxes in 2006 when he was audited but only forked over payment on the other two years once he was chosen by Obama as Secretary of the Treasury, a job which happens to include being the boss of the Internal Revenue Service.
ABC's Stephanopoulos depicted Geithner as being "embarrassed" about his oversight. NBC's Kelly O'Donnell reckoned it was "probably not enough to disqualify" Geithner from the job. On CBS, Chip Reid reported that senators "really like" Geithner: "He is very popular and he is highly respected."
The would-be boss at Foggy Bottom meanwhile discussed diplomacy swimmingly with her Senate colleagues. CBS' Reid called the reception afforded would-be Secretary Rodham Clinton warm "from both sides of the aisle." NBC's Andrea Mitchell saw her having "no problem displaying her mastery of foreign policy." ABC's Jonathan Karl (embargoed link) found it clear that Rodham Clinton "is the biggest star in Obama's Cabinet." The only tough questions, CBS' Reid pointed out, "had more to do with her husband than with her." Bill Clinton's global philanthropic foundation receives donations from foreign individuals and governments, posing potential conflicts asr the spouse of a Secretary of State. "The Clintons will not disclose foreign individuals who donate, only countries, and only those governments that have increased materially their contributions," noted NBC's Mitchell. "Too many loopholes say some senators."
SHARYL BUILDS HER BEAT Sharyl Attkisson at CBS has begun to make the Treasury Department's TARP bailout of the financial industry her personal beat. Attkisson's report on Barack Obama's lobbying on Capitol Hill for approval of the second TARP installment of $350bn before Inauguration Day marks her sixth TARP story since Election Day. "It is not an easy sales job," she reflected, "after the first half went to banks instead of mortgage relief." She pointed to the latest money merger as a case in point. The Smith Barney brokerage house will now be jointly operated by Morgan Stanley and Citigroup. The former has received $10bn in TARP funds; the latter $45bn.
LET’S GO TO GAZA VIDEOTAPE The three newscasts each chose its own angle on the continued fighting in the Gaza Strip, where the Palestinian death toll approaches 950 in 18 days. In that timespan 13 Israelis have been killed, CBS' Richard Roth told us. Roth covered the attempts of the Israel Defense Force to block Hamas' weapons supply routes. He showed us footage from the network of tunnels into the Gaza Strip from the Egyptian border town of Rafah, some as long as three-quarters of a mile. The IDF claims to have destroyed 200 of the 300 tunnels by aerial bombardment.
NBC's Richard Engel filed from Egypt, where tons of medical supplies are loaded onto trucks to be shipped into Gaza even as Israeli jets continued to bomb "just a few hundred yards away." Ceasefire talks are under way in Cairo, Engel reported, involving Saudi Arabia, with Israel joining in on Thursday. "Diplomacy is gaining momentum."
"Reporters are having real problems getting to the front line of this war," ABC's Simon McGregor-Wood (embargoed link) complained from Jerusalem. Yet lack of access has not resulted in a shortage of videotape. McGregor-Wood is offered Israeli battlefield video constantly via cellphone downloads even as his Gaza-based producer gets cellphone video offers from Hamas. Both sides post battle clips on YouTube; both sides use satellite TV news channel outlets to air soundbites in their "battle for public opinion."
ATLANTA, COKE CAPITAL The narco-violence south of the border in Mexico is finally starting to attract the attention of the nightly newscasts north of the border. Mark Potter's In Depth report for NBC from Atlanta followed up on his colleague George Lewis' coverage from Tijuana two weeks ago. Potter repeated a Drug Enforcement Agency estimate that Mexican narcotrafficantes are responsible for supplying 90% of all cocaine consumed in this country. Atlanta has become a major distribution hub, used to supply the entire eastern seaboard. "The Mexican border has now moved north."
MANAGED & UNIVERSAL CARE Healthcare reform was the topic of coverage on NBC and CBS: NBC was optimistic, CBS admonitory. Randall Pinkston on CBS described how health insurance companies decide what to pay patients who undergo out-of-network treatment. They consult a schedule of purportedly "customary and reasonable" fees compiled by a firm called Ingenix. The problem is that Ingenix happens to be a subsidiary of United Health Group, a major healthcare insurer with a vested interest in keeping out-of-network compensation as low as possible. New York State's Attorney General Andrew Cuomo sued over such conflict of interest, winning a $50m judgment and shutting Ingenix down. Ingenix "lowballed a medical provider's average fee by as much as 28%," Pinkston reported.
The optimism was found in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, where NBC's Robert Bazell completed a two-part survey (here and here) of the state's two-year-old program to provide universal coverage. Only 3% of the Massachusetts population has no health insurance, he found, as opposed to 16% in the rest of the United States. "The healthcare reform effort has exceeded the expectations of those who backed it." A statewide poll finds 69% approval for the scheme. Problems? The extra patients who can now afford to visit the doctor have "swamped" family practice clinics; and the worsening economy is liable to divert premium payments away from employers onto the state healthcare budget, already $750m annually.
INAUGURATION PERFORMERS All three newscasts closed with performers invited to the January 20th festivities. CBS' Road to the Inauguration series had Byron Pitts travel to New Haven to profile Professor Elizabeth Alexander, the poetess who will recite at the ceremony: "There is almost a quiet pool in which they are able to stand and think for a moment," she explained about her audience. "That is part of what poetry does. It arrests us."
NBC and ABC both profiled musical performers from charter schools. NBC's Rehema Ellis traveled to Harlem to show us the classical orchestra at the Opus 118 School of Music. ABC anchor Charles Gibson narrated musical footage of the choir at the Ron Clark Academy in Atlanta. Before the Inaugural Committee spotted the Clark singers online, Gibson bragged, ABC News had already called them its Persons of the Week.
NBC's Lee Cowan complained from Chicago that he was "starting to run out of adjectives" to describe how cold it was. He called the city's river a "mile-long ice cube." On ABC, a red-faced Chris Bury came up with "bitter, blustery, bone-chilling" and "brutal." Dave Price, the weathercaster for CBS' Early Show warned that frostbite can set in as quickly as ten minutes when the temperature is in the double-digit negatives. He shared that old weather reporter's trick of throwing a cup of water into the air and showing it freeze before it hits the ground.
The national angle on the regional cold was the prospect of it freezing on Barack Obama's Inauguration parade next week. ABC's Bury reminded us that Ronald Reagan had to be sworn in indoors in 1985 because the weather outside was frightful. Bury and CBS' Price forecast a temperature hovering around the freezing mark for DC on the 20th, suitable for outdoor ceremonies; on NBC, the Weather Channel's Jim Cantore predicted that the current "Alberta Clipper" will be followed by a "Saskatchewan Screamer." His "first stab" at a forecast envisioned "mid-20Fs, some snow flurries around, 15 mph to 25 mph winds, probably some upper single digit wind chills."
INTERNATIONAL MONETARY FUND & GLOBAL PHILANTHROPIC FOUNDATION On Capitol Hill, Senate confirmation hearings proceeded for several of Barack Obama's Cabinet nominees--Hillary Rodham Clinton for State, Arne Duncan for Education, Steven Chu for Energy, Shaun Donovan for HUD--even as his pick for Treasury Secretary had a hiccup. It turns out that when a federal bureaucrat works for the International Monetary Fund he is self-employed and therefore responsible for paying his own high rate of Social Security taxes. ABC's George Stephanopoulos reported that Timothy Geithner failed to pay $34,000 over four years from 2001 through 2004 when he was at the IMF. He paid two years' worth of back taxes in 2006 when he was audited but only forked over payment on the other two years once he was chosen by Obama as Secretary of the Treasury, a job which happens to include being the boss of the Internal Revenue Service.
ABC's Stephanopoulos depicted Geithner as being "embarrassed" about his oversight. NBC's Kelly O'Donnell reckoned it was "probably not enough to disqualify" Geithner from the job. On CBS, Chip Reid reported that senators "really like" Geithner: "He is very popular and he is highly respected."
The would-be boss at Foggy Bottom meanwhile discussed diplomacy swimmingly with her Senate colleagues. CBS' Reid called the reception afforded would-be Secretary Rodham Clinton warm "from both sides of the aisle." NBC's Andrea Mitchell saw her having "no problem displaying her mastery of foreign policy." ABC's Jonathan Karl (embargoed link) found it clear that Rodham Clinton "is the biggest star in Obama's Cabinet." The only tough questions, CBS' Reid pointed out, "had more to do with her husband than with her." Bill Clinton's global philanthropic foundation receives donations from foreign individuals and governments, posing potential conflicts asr the spouse of a Secretary of State. "The Clintons will not disclose foreign individuals who donate, only countries, and only those governments that have increased materially their contributions," noted NBC's Mitchell. "Too many loopholes say some senators."
SHARYL BUILDS HER BEAT Sharyl Attkisson at CBS has begun to make the Treasury Department's TARP bailout of the financial industry her personal beat. Attkisson's report on Barack Obama's lobbying on Capitol Hill for approval of the second TARP installment of $350bn before Inauguration Day marks her sixth TARP story since Election Day. "It is not an easy sales job," she reflected, "after the first half went to banks instead of mortgage relief." She pointed to the latest money merger as a case in point. The Smith Barney brokerage house will now be jointly operated by Morgan Stanley and Citigroup. The former has received $10bn in TARP funds; the latter $45bn.
LET’S GO TO GAZA VIDEOTAPE The three newscasts each chose its own angle on the continued fighting in the Gaza Strip, where the Palestinian death toll approaches 950 in 18 days. In that timespan 13 Israelis have been killed, CBS' Richard Roth told us. Roth covered the attempts of the Israel Defense Force to block Hamas' weapons supply routes. He showed us footage from the network of tunnels into the Gaza Strip from the Egyptian border town of Rafah, some as long as three-quarters of a mile. The IDF claims to have destroyed 200 of the 300 tunnels by aerial bombardment.
NBC's Richard Engel filed from Egypt, where tons of medical supplies are loaded onto trucks to be shipped into Gaza even as Israeli jets continued to bomb "just a few hundred yards away." Ceasefire talks are under way in Cairo, Engel reported, involving Saudi Arabia, with Israel joining in on Thursday. "Diplomacy is gaining momentum."
"Reporters are having real problems getting to the front line of this war," ABC's Simon McGregor-Wood (embargoed link) complained from Jerusalem. Yet lack of access has not resulted in a shortage of videotape. McGregor-Wood is offered Israeli battlefield video constantly via cellphone downloads even as his Gaza-based producer gets cellphone video offers from Hamas. Both sides post battle clips on YouTube; both sides use satellite TV news channel outlets to air soundbites in their "battle for public opinion."
ATLANTA, COKE CAPITAL The narco-violence south of the border in Mexico is finally starting to attract the attention of the nightly newscasts north of the border. Mark Potter's In Depth report for NBC from Atlanta followed up on his colleague George Lewis' coverage from Tijuana two weeks ago. Potter repeated a Drug Enforcement Agency estimate that Mexican narcotrafficantes are responsible for supplying 90% of all cocaine consumed in this country. Atlanta has become a major distribution hub, used to supply the entire eastern seaboard. "The Mexican border has now moved north."
MANAGED & UNIVERSAL CARE Healthcare reform was the topic of coverage on NBC and CBS: NBC was optimistic, CBS admonitory. Randall Pinkston on CBS described how health insurance companies decide what to pay patients who undergo out-of-network treatment. They consult a schedule of purportedly "customary and reasonable" fees compiled by a firm called Ingenix. The problem is that Ingenix happens to be a subsidiary of United Health Group, a major healthcare insurer with a vested interest in keeping out-of-network compensation as low as possible. New York State's Attorney General Andrew Cuomo sued over such conflict of interest, winning a $50m judgment and shutting Ingenix down. Ingenix "lowballed a medical provider's average fee by as much as 28%," Pinkston reported.
The optimism was found in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, where NBC's Robert Bazell completed a two-part survey (here and here) of the state's two-year-old program to provide universal coverage. Only 3% of the Massachusetts population has no health insurance, he found, as opposed to 16% in the rest of the United States. "The healthcare reform effort has exceeded the expectations of those who backed it." A statewide poll finds 69% approval for the scheme. Problems? The extra patients who can now afford to visit the doctor have "swamped" family practice clinics; and the worsening economy is liable to divert premium payments away from employers onto the state healthcare budget, already $750m annually.
INAUGURATION PERFORMERS All three newscasts closed with performers invited to the January 20th festivities. CBS' Road to the Inauguration series had Byron Pitts travel to New Haven to profile Professor Elizabeth Alexander, the poetess who will recite at the ceremony: "There is almost a quiet pool in which they are able to stand and think for a moment," she explained about her audience. "That is part of what poetry does. It arrests us."
NBC and ABC both profiled musical performers from charter schools. NBC's Rehema Ellis traveled to Harlem to show us the classical orchestra at the Opus 118 School of Music. ABC anchor Charles Gibson narrated musical footage of the choir at the Ron Clark Academy in Atlanta. Before the Inaugural Committee spotted the Clark singers online, Gibson bragged, ABC News had already called them its Persons of the Week.
