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TYNDALL HEADLINE: HIGHLIGHTS FROM MARCH 09, 2009
Barack Obama's executive order rescinding an eight-year-old ban on federal funding for certain biotech research was Story of the Day. His predecessor had prohibited the National Institutes of Health from backing research on stem cells derived from newly-destroyed human embryos. All three newscasts led from the White House, so one might assume that all three networks led with stem cells. ABC and CBS did; NBC deviated. Maybe corporate cross-promotion infected NBC's news judgment. It chose criticism of Obama's economic leadership by financier Warren Buffett. Where did Buffett vent his critique? In an exclusive interview on NBC's sibling network CNBC.
TYNDALL PICKS FOR MARCH 09, 2009: CLICK ON GRID ELEMENTS TO SEARCH FOR MATCHING ITEMS
STEM CELLS SCIENCE UNDERCUT BY ORACLE OF OMAHA Barack Obama's executive order rescinding an eight-year-old ban on federal funding for certain biotech research was Story of the Day. His predecessor had prohibited the National Institutes of Health from backing research on stem cells derived from newly-destroyed human embryos. All three newscasts led from the White House, so one might assume that all three networks led with stem cells. ABC and CBS did; NBC deviated. Maybe corporate cross-promotion infected NBC's news judgment. It chose criticism of Obama's economic leadership by financier Warren Buffett. Where did Buffett vent his critique? In an exclusive interview on NBC's sibling network CNBC.
ABC's Jake Tapper picked up on the President's order to his Office of Science & Technology to restore "scientific integrity to policymaking" when he lifted the stem cell funding ban. NBC's science correspondent Robert Bazell heard Obama make it clear that "his administration would have a new attitude toward all science," making decisions "based on facts not ideology." If these were veiled insults at George Bush's supposed aversion to science, CBS' Chip Reid pointed out that it was not opposition to science that had led to the ban but moral principle. Bush decided "it was unethical to destroy human embryos to do medical research."
As for the biotech, CBS' Sandra Hughes pointed out that research on stem cells from human embryos has gone ahead in Britain, Singapore, Japan, China and California. Geron, a biotech firm, has FDA permission to perform trials to generate new nerve cells in spinal cords of paralyzed humans after some success with paralyzed rats. ABC's Lisa Stark (at the tail of the Tapper videostream) found that Parkinson's Disease and Diabetes Type I show the most promise: "Cells might be able to replace cells in the patient's body which have malfunctioned." On CBS, CNN's medical correspondent Sanjay Gupta (at the tail of the Hughes videostream) too singled out organs with "discrete problems"--insulin from the pancreas, dopamine from the brain--rather than a disease like Alzheimer's. "Because it is so global in the brain it might be less responsive."
MORE CLARITY, MORE STIMULUS Billionaire Warren Buffett's interview with CNBC's Becky Quick was picked up by ABC's Betsy Stark as well as by Chuck Todd on NBC, CNBC's corporate sibling. "It is falling off a cliff," was the key Buffett soundbite, referring to the economy. "People have really changed their behavior like nothing I have ever seen." Buffett, "one of the President's most trusted economic advisors," as NBC's Todd reminded us, criticized Barack Obama's management of the bully pulpit: "You need the President of the United States to make it very clear." George Stephanopoulos, anchor of ABC's This Week, theorized that a muddled message might be a function of the ambition of Obama's agenda: "The phrase is overloading the circuit." ABC's Stark pointed out that this new administration "has been minting recovery programs at a record pace"--she ticked off stimulus and foreclosure prevention and credit lines and bailouts--"despite it all the economy has gone from bad to worse." It is possible, ABC's Stephanopoulos added, "that a second stimulus package might be necessary."
WHEELS FALLING OFF AT TOYOTA & GM Both CBS and NBC chose the economic travails of a specific industry--automobiles. NBC's Ian Williams selected Toyota with a report on layoffs in Nagoya. "Jobs in Japan frequently come with accommodation so if you lose your job, you lose your home." Toyota is failing to make a profit for the first year since 1950. For all the talk of Japan's lost decade, "this crisis is hitting people far worse than the stagnation of the '90s." On CBS, Anthony Mason was assigned to a What It Means explainer on General Motors. According to Mason, either bailout or bankruptcy is not the choice that GM represents for the federal government. The bucks will have to be paid either way. "Bankruptcy for the country's largest automaker would cost at least another $50bn," he warned. "With the banking system crippled, the government would have to help organize and pay for it."
NBC ON FOOD & SHELTER Along with Warren Buffett and Toyota's troubles, NBC continued a heavy focus on the economy with a pair of poverty stories. Its closer, filed by Roger O'Neil, kicked off NBC's weeklong Making a Difference series, which will feature anecdotes about acts of kindness in the recession submitted by viewers. So All May Eat is the slogan of Denver's SAME Cafe, a restaurant-cum-soup-kitchen, where those who can afford to are encouraged to pay a little extra for their meals and those who cannot do the dishes or sweep the floor or bus the tables in exchange for victuals. SAME's menu posts no prices.
Chris Jansing filed shocking images "hauntingly reminiscent of the iconic photos of the '30s" in her report from the shadow of California's statehouse. "Along the railroad tracks in Sacramento a modern day shantytown is swelling," she showed us. Tent cities of the newly homeless are springing up in Seattle and Reno too. About 300 people live in the Sacramento Hooverville, "with more arriving every day."
SECOND AMENDMENT RIGHTS ABC's Brian Ross and NBC's Mark Potter have both already covered the north-to-south angle of the Mexican narcoviolence story--not the drugs heading north from Mexico but the firearms heading south from the United States. Now Ben Tracy on CBS covers the trial of George Iknadosian, a Phoenix firearms dealer accused of knowingly selling more than 700 guns to so-called straw buyers for export to Mexico. Each straw buyer allegedly gets paid $100 for acting as a conduit. Tracy cited an estimate by the Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco & Firearms that up to 2,000 guns are smuggled across the border daily. Mexico has no Second Amendment: its law "makes it nearly impossible to buy a gun there legally."
THE IRRELIGIOUS & THE BORN-AGAIN All three networks assigned a reporter to the latest American Religious Identification Survey. Godlessness was the top line. Here is Anne Thompson's lead at NBC: "A shrinking percentage of Americans identify themselves as members of organized religions." Mark Strassmann at CBS put it this way: "Across American denominations, the faithful are fleeing." For ABC's A Closer Look, Dan Harris acknowledged that America "is still a predominantly Christian country but it has apparently become both less Christian and less religious."
Specifically, the proportion of non-believers has almost doubled since 1990 from 8% to 15%. We irreligious are expanding our ranks at the same speed as born-again Christians. ABC's Harris called them the "one major growth area in American Christianity." Evangelicals, during the same period, grew from 5% to 12% of the population.
BARBIE, THE ANTI-TOMBOY CBS and ABC both chose the same closer, Barbara Millicent Roberts. That is the full name Mattel gave to the doll the toy firm launched 50 years ago. CBS anchor Katie Couric greeted her fellow babyboomer: "Even without plastic surgery, Barbie is still buff and wrinklefree." ABC's Robert Krulwich told the story of Barbie's creation at a time when "almost every doll in America was a little baby--so girls could pretend to be mommies." Mattel's Ruth Handler "was convinced that little girls wanted to imagine being grown-ups, fill-figured grown-ups."
When '50s mothers complained that Barbie was too sexy and provocative for their girls, Mattel advertising team rose to the challenge, Krulwich recounted. The ads described Barbie as a teaching tool: "If your daughter is a little too tomboyish, this doll will teach her what to wear, how to catch a guy."
ABC's Jake Tapper picked up on the President's order to his Office of Science & Technology to restore "scientific integrity to policymaking" when he lifted the stem cell funding ban. NBC's science correspondent Robert Bazell heard Obama make it clear that "his administration would have a new attitude toward all science," making decisions "based on facts not ideology." If these were veiled insults at George Bush's supposed aversion to science, CBS' Chip Reid pointed out that it was not opposition to science that had led to the ban but moral principle. Bush decided "it was unethical to destroy human embryos to do medical research."
As for the biotech, CBS' Sandra Hughes pointed out that research on stem cells from human embryos has gone ahead in Britain, Singapore, Japan, China and California. Geron, a biotech firm, has FDA permission to perform trials to generate new nerve cells in spinal cords of paralyzed humans after some success with paralyzed rats. ABC's Lisa Stark (at the tail of the Tapper videostream) found that Parkinson's Disease and Diabetes Type I show the most promise: "Cells might be able to replace cells in the patient's body which have malfunctioned." On CBS, CNN's medical correspondent Sanjay Gupta (at the tail of the Hughes videostream) too singled out organs with "discrete problems"--insulin from the pancreas, dopamine from the brain--rather than a disease like Alzheimer's. "Because it is so global in the brain it might be less responsive."
MORE CLARITY, MORE STIMULUS Billionaire Warren Buffett's interview with CNBC's Becky Quick was picked up by ABC's Betsy Stark as well as by Chuck Todd on NBC, CNBC's corporate sibling. "It is falling off a cliff," was the key Buffett soundbite, referring to the economy. "People have really changed their behavior like nothing I have ever seen." Buffett, "one of the President's most trusted economic advisors," as NBC's Todd reminded us, criticized Barack Obama's management of the bully pulpit: "You need the President of the United States to make it very clear." George Stephanopoulos, anchor of ABC's This Week, theorized that a muddled message might be a function of the ambition of Obama's agenda: "The phrase is overloading the circuit." ABC's Stark pointed out that this new administration "has been minting recovery programs at a record pace"--she ticked off stimulus and foreclosure prevention and credit lines and bailouts--"despite it all the economy has gone from bad to worse." It is possible, ABC's Stephanopoulos added, "that a second stimulus package might be necessary."
WHEELS FALLING OFF AT TOYOTA & GM Both CBS and NBC chose the economic travails of a specific industry--automobiles. NBC's Ian Williams selected Toyota with a report on layoffs in Nagoya. "Jobs in Japan frequently come with accommodation so if you lose your job, you lose your home." Toyota is failing to make a profit for the first year since 1950. For all the talk of Japan's lost decade, "this crisis is hitting people far worse than the stagnation of the '90s." On CBS, Anthony Mason was assigned to a What It Means explainer on General Motors. According to Mason, either bailout or bankruptcy is not the choice that GM represents for the federal government. The bucks will have to be paid either way. "Bankruptcy for the country's largest automaker would cost at least another $50bn," he warned. "With the banking system crippled, the government would have to help organize and pay for it."
NBC ON FOOD & SHELTER Along with Warren Buffett and Toyota's troubles, NBC continued a heavy focus on the economy with a pair of poverty stories. Its closer, filed by Roger O'Neil, kicked off NBC's weeklong Making a Difference series, which will feature anecdotes about acts of kindness in the recession submitted by viewers. So All May Eat is the slogan of Denver's SAME Cafe, a restaurant-cum-soup-kitchen, where those who can afford to are encouraged to pay a little extra for their meals and those who cannot do the dishes or sweep the floor or bus the tables in exchange for victuals. SAME's menu posts no prices.
Chris Jansing filed shocking images "hauntingly reminiscent of the iconic photos of the '30s" in her report from the shadow of California's statehouse. "Along the railroad tracks in Sacramento a modern day shantytown is swelling," she showed us. Tent cities of the newly homeless are springing up in Seattle and Reno too. About 300 people live in the Sacramento Hooverville, "with more arriving every day."
SECOND AMENDMENT RIGHTS ABC's Brian Ross and NBC's Mark Potter have both already covered the north-to-south angle of the Mexican narcoviolence story--not the drugs heading north from Mexico but the firearms heading south from the United States. Now Ben Tracy on CBS covers the trial of George Iknadosian, a Phoenix firearms dealer accused of knowingly selling more than 700 guns to so-called straw buyers for export to Mexico. Each straw buyer allegedly gets paid $100 for acting as a conduit. Tracy cited an estimate by the Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco & Firearms that up to 2,000 guns are smuggled across the border daily. Mexico has no Second Amendment: its law "makes it nearly impossible to buy a gun there legally."
THE IRRELIGIOUS & THE BORN-AGAIN All three networks assigned a reporter to the latest American Religious Identification Survey. Godlessness was the top line. Here is Anne Thompson's lead at NBC: "A shrinking percentage of Americans identify themselves as members of organized religions." Mark Strassmann at CBS put it this way: "Across American denominations, the faithful are fleeing." For ABC's A Closer Look, Dan Harris acknowledged that America "is still a predominantly Christian country but it has apparently become both less Christian and less religious."
Specifically, the proportion of non-believers has almost doubled since 1990 from 8% to 15%. We irreligious are expanding our ranks at the same speed as born-again Christians. ABC's Harris called them the "one major growth area in American Christianity." Evangelicals, during the same period, grew from 5% to 12% of the population.
BARBIE, THE ANTI-TOMBOY CBS and ABC both chose the same closer, Barbara Millicent Roberts. That is the full name Mattel gave to the doll the toy firm launched 50 years ago. CBS anchor Katie Couric greeted her fellow babyboomer: "Even without plastic surgery, Barbie is still buff and wrinklefree." ABC's Robert Krulwich told the story of Barbie's creation at a time when "almost every doll in America was a little baby--so girls could pretend to be mommies." Mattel's Ruth Handler "was convinced that little girls wanted to imagine being grown-ups, fill-figured grown-ups."
When '50s mothers complained that Barbie was too sexy and provocative for their girls, Mattel advertising team rose to the challenge, Krulwich recounted. The ads described Barbie as a teaching tool: "If your daughter is a little too tomboyish, this doll will teach her what to wear, how to catch a guy."
