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TYNDALL HEADLINE: HIGHLIGHTS FROM MARCH 17, 2009
The political outrage against the millions of dollars paid in bonuses to traders at American International Group--even as the government bailed out the insurance conglomerate with billions of federal dollars--continued unabated. Monday the Story of the Day was Barack Obama's objection. Tuesday turned to Capitol Hill where various ideas were floated to recoup the $165m, out of which 73 millionaire staffers received seven-figure lump sums. All three newscasts led with AIG. CBS used Maggie Rodriguez as substitute anchor. NBC expanded its newshole (23 min v ABC 18, CBS 19) with limited commercials courtesy of Fidelity Investments, its sole sponsor.
TYNDALL PICKS FOR MARCH 17, 2009: CLICK ON GRID ELEMENTS TO SEARCH FOR MATCHING ITEMS
THOSE AIG BONUSES STILL RANKLE The political outrage against the millions of dollars paid in bonuses to traders at American International Group--even as the government bailed out the insurance conglomerate with billions of federal dollars--continued unabated. Monday the Story of the Day was Barack Obama's objection. Tuesday turned to Capitol Hill where various ideas were floated to recoup the $165m, out of which 73 millionaire staffers received seven-figure lump sums. All three newscasts led with AIG. CBS used Maggie Rodriguez as substitute anchor. NBC expanded its newshole (23 min v ABC 18, CBS 19) with limited commercials courtesy of Fidelity Investments, its sole sponsor.
"Congress is busy throwing its weight around," NBC's Kelly O'Donnell remarked, with some members trying to "shame and embarrass" AIG bonus recipients into returning the money; others to tax it away from them; others to renege on the supposedly guaranteed contracts. O'Donnell asked about the Charles Grassley radio soundbite to AIG execs that CBS' Chip Reid used Monday: "Resign or go commit suicide." The Iowa Republican explained what he meant by that: "I am not suggesting that anybody in America commit suicide."
CBS' Congressional correspondent Nancy Cordes picked up on a likely clawback tax proposal that may "pass legal muster" to assess 35% of the bonus from the recipient and 35% from AIG itself. Jonathan Karl, ABC's man on Capitol Hill, looked at AIG's campaign contributions during 2008. "Even as the company was crumbling," hundreds of thousands of dollars were donated to "power broker" senators Christopher Dodd, Barack Obama John McCain, Hillary Rodham Clinton, Max Baucus, Joe Biden.
From New York, ABC's David Muir followed the investigation into the bonuses by Andrew Cuomo, that state's Attorney General. He found they were "so-called retention bonuses, meant to keep good talent at the company--but eleven of those recipients no longer even work there." As for "good talent," most were working at the Financial Products Division in London, "the unit that engineered the company's downfall," as CBS' Cordes put it. ABC's Betsy Stark (at the tail of the Karl videostream) characterized AIG as "a giant conglomerate--several traditional insurance companies and one rogue unit that really is at the source of the problem."
At the White House, CBS' Reid did double duty, filing highlights of his network's latest opinion poll on the state of the economy--a "grim" 84% believe the recession has a year to run--and following questions about the "embattled" Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner. "He did not learn about the bonuses until exactly a week ago," according to his department's timeline. The official White House line was that the AIG bonuses "would be even bigger if Geithner had not intervened." For a heartland dose of populist ire at the entire affair, NBC's Kevin Tibbles filed a vox pop from an Illinois barbershop and an Iowa diner.
INVESTIGATING AIG EXECS ABC's Pierre Thomas reported on the investigation into AIG by the Securities & Exchange Commission and the FBI. He went chapter and verse through a series of official reassurances by executives. August 2007--"AIG is financially sound." December 2007--"Exposure levels are manageable." March 2008--"Do not expect significant losses." August 2008--"AIG is a great company." Thomas told us that investigators "have subpoenaed AIG documents to see if the facts matched company rhetoric."
NBC's Tom Costello reconstructed the role of Hank Greenberg, who was AIG's boss for 40 years before "retiring" in 2005 "amid an accounting scandal." It was Greenberg who opened the "special office in London to insure other banks and their risky loans, so-called swaps, as a way to make quick money." Costello quoted Greenberg as insisting that the London office's woes only began after he left the firm: "We had a very strong risk management department." Greenberg is now suing AIG for the fortune he lost when AIG's stock price collapsed. "Since taxpayers own AIG, Greenberg is suing you and me."
INVESTIGATING MURTHA’S EARMARKS A separate FBI probe caught the eye of Sharyl Attkisson for CBS' Investigation. Rep John Murtha, the Pennsylvania Democrat who runs Defense Department appropriations, "has the power to steer hundreds of millions of tax dollars to companies of his choice." Attkisson told us that the feds are investigating a trio of defense contractors--Concurrent Technologies, Kunchera Defense Systems, Electro-Optics Center--in Murtha's Johnstown Pa district, plus the lobbying firm PMA Group, run by "a Capitol Hill staffer who worked closely with Murtha." She reported that just days before Murtha finalized his earmarks last year, he received six campaign contributions on a single day from donors "linked" to Electro-Optics. What does the congressman have to say? He quoted the Constitution: "The Congress of the United States appropriates the money. Got that?"
COURIC CLAIMS RAMPANT RAPE, BACKS IT WITH SKETCHY STATISTICS The CBS anchor took time off from her chair but she still had a Katie Couric Reports feature in the can. Couric claimed an Exclusive for her report on the incidence of sexual assaults against military women by their comrades in arms even though NBC's Pentagon correspondent Jim Miklaszewski covered the same story. The bare bones of the story are straightforward: more than 2,900 complaints of sexual assault were filed in 2008 compared with 2,200-or-so in 2007 and almost 3,000 in 2006. Of those complaints, approximately 10% result in a court martial. "Often most offenders only get a reduction in rank, or reduced pay," Couric generalized.
Couric claimed that rape and sexual assault in the armed forces are rampant, with a military woman being twice as likely to be sexually assaulted than a female civilian. It is a shocking assertion yet the statistics she used are sketchy.
Couric told us that 200,000 women are on active duty and that a scandalous one third of them "experience sexual assault" at some time during their service in uniform. That would be a staggering 66,000-or-so women. So how does Couric account for the statistic that there are only 2,900 sexual assaults alleged each year? "The Pentagon acknowledges that some 80% of rapes are never reported."
Even then the numbers makes little sense. For the sake of argument, let's accept the Pentagon's underreported estimate. So instead of 2,900 assaults annually, the true number is 14,500. For the 14,500 assaults to multiply to 66,000 molested women--if each woman was molested once--the average tour of duty for all women in the military would have to be 4.5 years. Yet Couric profiled Jessica Nehek, a 24-year-old in a helicopter maintenance crew, who was assaulted once and raped once during her service. For Nehek to be typical, the average tour would need to be nine years. Miklaszewski offered an alternate estimate that "only 10% of the attacks ever get reported." Maybe that is how the numbers add up.
FREAKY, FOR SURE. NEWSWORTHY, NOT REALLY It was an unusual choice for both ABC and NBC to assign a correspondent to a celebrity story. The beat is almost always reserved for the network's morning news programs, or the syndicated shobiz newscasts--extra, Access Hollywood, Entertainment Tonight, The Insider--that abound after the nightly newscasts. It is not clear what was so important about actress Natasha Richardson falling and hitting her head on a ski slope in Quebec that NBC's Robert Bazell and ABC's John Berman should have to report on it.
It did sound freaky, though. The 45-year-old was on a beginner's slope without a helmet. She fell. An hour later she had a headache. She was admitted to a local hospital. She was rushed to a medical center in Montreal. She was medevaced to New York City. "We have no definite word from the family or the hospital on what happened," shrugged NBC's Bazell. It "seemed like such a harmless event," ABC's Berman commented.
TRY SHARING THE NEWS Chris Jansing mourned the death of the print edition of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer on NBC Monday. Now Neal Karlinsky performs last rites on ABC. Karlinsky pointed to a couple of ideas for cutting newsgathering costs: in New York City's New Jersey suburbs, newspapers are sharing stories; and on Capitol Hill, Speaker Nancy Pelosi has floated the trial balloon of repealing antitrust laws that prohibit such sharing between rivals. The P-I has now switched to a bare-bones online-only version that will be "under a microscope as a test case" for owner Hearst Newspapers. "The industry is fighting for its life and looking for a moneymaking model."
BAGHDAD BOOSTER The first part of Terry McCarthy's Where Things Stand series on ABC Monday played like a promotional feature from the Iraq Tourist Board as he traveled round the country. Part two, from the capital city, seems like a production of the Baghdad Chamber of Commerce. Granted, McCarthy offered a one sentence disclaimer: "There is still poverty in Baghdad, still shortages of electricity and water." Apart from that, just look at the "city reborn. Speed! Light! Style!" The pretty girls no longer covering their heads…fancy restaurants serve global cuisine…cheering crowds flock to soccer games…awesome antiquarian treasures are on display at the renovated museum…drag races thrill young men along the banks of the Tigris River…for night life, enjoy a rock concert. Check out that $2,000 chandelier.
HAPPY ST PATRICK’S DAY ABC's anchor, styling himself as Colin O'Gibson, observed that "much that is mulled and fermented is consumed on this day." When the President styled himself Barack O'Bama, O'Gibson called that "a bit of a stretch." A multicultural theme extended to CBS' closer too, where Kelly Wallace introduced us to the African-American-Indian-Latino Keltic Dreams stepdance troupe at PS 59 in The Bronx. NBC sent Dawna Friesen to Dublin where a decade of Celtic Tiger growth has gone bust "with startling speed." She stood on a derelict dockside to show us a "massive high-rise, the tallest building in Ireland, with $1m apartments and a penthouse recording studio for the band U2. You can see. Nothing has happened."
"It is not a recession," a Dubliner told Friesen. "It is a pre-boom."
"Congress is busy throwing its weight around," NBC's Kelly O'Donnell remarked, with some members trying to "shame and embarrass" AIG bonus recipients into returning the money; others to tax it away from them; others to renege on the supposedly guaranteed contracts. O'Donnell asked about the Charles Grassley radio soundbite to AIG execs that CBS' Chip Reid used Monday: "Resign or go commit suicide." The Iowa Republican explained what he meant by that: "I am not suggesting that anybody in America commit suicide."
CBS' Congressional correspondent Nancy Cordes picked up on a likely clawback tax proposal that may "pass legal muster" to assess 35% of the bonus from the recipient and 35% from AIG itself. Jonathan Karl, ABC's man on Capitol Hill, looked at AIG's campaign contributions during 2008. "Even as the company was crumbling," hundreds of thousands of dollars were donated to "power broker" senators Christopher Dodd, Barack Obama John McCain, Hillary Rodham Clinton, Max Baucus, Joe Biden.
From New York, ABC's David Muir followed the investigation into the bonuses by Andrew Cuomo, that state's Attorney General. He found they were "so-called retention bonuses, meant to keep good talent at the company--but eleven of those recipients no longer even work there." As for "good talent," most were working at the Financial Products Division in London, "the unit that engineered the company's downfall," as CBS' Cordes put it. ABC's Betsy Stark (at the tail of the Karl videostream) characterized AIG as "a giant conglomerate--several traditional insurance companies and one rogue unit that really is at the source of the problem."
At the White House, CBS' Reid did double duty, filing highlights of his network's latest opinion poll on the state of the economy--a "grim" 84% believe the recession has a year to run--and following questions about the "embattled" Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner. "He did not learn about the bonuses until exactly a week ago," according to his department's timeline. The official White House line was that the AIG bonuses "would be even bigger if Geithner had not intervened." For a heartland dose of populist ire at the entire affair, NBC's Kevin Tibbles filed a vox pop from an Illinois barbershop and an Iowa diner.
INVESTIGATING AIG EXECS ABC's Pierre Thomas reported on the investigation into AIG by the Securities & Exchange Commission and the FBI. He went chapter and verse through a series of official reassurances by executives. August 2007--"AIG is financially sound." December 2007--"Exposure levels are manageable." March 2008--"Do not expect significant losses." August 2008--"AIG is a great company." Thomas told us that investigators "have subpoenaed AIG documents to see if the facts matched company rhetoric."
NBC's Tom Costello reconstructed the role of Hank Greenberg, who was AIG's boss for 40 years before "retiring" in 2005 "amid an accounting scandal." It was Greenberg who opened the "special office in London to insure other banks and their risky loans, so-called swaps, as a way to make quick money." Costello quoted Greenberg as insisting that the London office's woes only began after he left the firm: "We had a very strong risk management department." Greenberg is now suing AIG for the fortune he lost when AIG's stock price collapsed. "Since taxpayers own AIG, Greenberg is suing you and me."
INVESTIGATING MURTHA’S EARMARKS A separate FBI probe caught the eye of Sharyl Attkisson for CBS' Investigation. Rep John Murtha, the Pennsylvania Democrat who runs Defense Department appropriations, "has the power to steer hundreds of millions of tax dollars to companies of his choice." Attkisson told us that the feds are investigating a trio of defense contractors--Concurrent Technologies, Kunchera Defense Systems, Electro-Optics Center--in Murtha's Johnstown Pa district, plus the lobbying firm PMA Group, run by "a Capitol Hill staffer who worked closely with Murtha." She reported that just days before Murtha finalized his earmarks last year, he received six campaign contributions on a single day from donors "linked" to Electro-Optics. What does the congressman have to say? He quoted the Constitution: "The Congress of the United States appropriates the money. Got that?"
COURIC CLAIMS RAMPANT RAPE, BACKS IT WITH SKETCHY STATISTICS The CBS anchor took time off from her chair but she still had a Katie Couric Reports feature in the can. Couric claimed an Exclusive for her report on the incidence of sexual assaults against military women by their comrades in arms even though NBC's Pentagon correspondent Jim Miklaszewski covered the same story. The bare bones of the story are straightforward: more than 2,900 complaints of sexual assault were filed in 2008 compared with 2,200-or-so in 2007 and almost 3,000 in 2006. Of those complaints, approximately 10% result in a court martial. "Often most offenders only get a reduction in rank, or reduced pay," Couric generalized.
Couric claimed that rape and sexual assault in the armed forces are rampant, with a military woman being twice as likely to be sexually assaulted than a female civilian. It is a shocking assertion yet the statistics she used are sketchy.
Couric told us that 200,000 women are on active duty and that a scandalous one third of them "experience sexual assault" at some time during their service in uniform. That would be a staggering 66,000-or-so women. So how does Couric account for the statistic that there are only 2,900 sexual assaults alleged each year? "The Pentagon acknowledges that some 80% of rapes are never reported."
Even then the numbers makes little sense. For the sake of argument, let's accept the Pentagon's underreported estimate. So instead of 2,900 assaults annually, the true number is 14,500. For the 14,500 assaults to multiply to 66,000 molested women--if each woman was molested once--the average tour of duty for all women in the military would have to be 4.5 years. Yet Couric profiled Jessica Nehek, a 24-year-old in a helicopter maintenance crew, who was assaulted once and raped once during her service. For Nehek to be typical, the average tour would need to be nine years. Miklaszewski offered an alternate estimate that "only 10% of the attacks ever get reported." Maybe that is how the numbers add up.
FREAKY, FOR SURE. NEWSWORTHY, NOT REALLY It was an unusual choice for both ABC and NBC to assign a correspondent to a celebrity story. The beat is almost always reserved for the network's morning news programs, or the syndicated shobiz newscasts--extra, Access Hollywood, Entertainment Tonight, The Insider--that abound after the nightly newscasts. It is not clear what was so important about actress Natasha Richardson falling and hitting her head on a ski slope in Quebec that NBC's Robert Bazell and ABC's John Berman should have to report on it.
It did sound freaky, though. The 45-year-old was on a beginner's slope without a helmet. She fell. An hour later she had a headache. She was admitted to a local hospital. She was rushed to a medical center in Montreal. She was medevaced to New York City. "We have no definite word from the family or the hospital on what happened," shrugged NBC's Bazell. It "seemed like such a harmless event," ABC's Berman commented.
TRY SHARING THE NEWS Chris Jansing mourned the death of the print edition of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer on NBC Monday. Now Neal Karlinsky performs last rites on ABC. Karlinsky pointed to a couple of ideas for cutting newsgathering costs: in New York City's New Jersey suburbs, newspapers are sharing stories; and on Capitol Hill, Speaker Nancy Pelosi has floated the trial balloon of repealing antitrust laws that prohibit such sharing between rivals. The P-I has now switched to a bare-bones online-only version that will be "under a microscope as a test case" for owner Hearst Newspapers. "The industry is fighting for its life and looking for a moneymaking model."
BAGHDAD BOOSTER The first part of Terry McCarthy's Where Things Stand series on ABC Monday played like a promotional feature from the Iraq Tourist Board as he traveled round the country. Part two, from the capital city, seems like a production of the Baghdad Chamber of Commerce. Granted, McCarthy offered a one sentence disclaimer: "There is still poverty in Baghdad, still shortages of electricity and water." Apart from that, just look at the "city reborn. Speed! Light! Style!" The pretty girls no longer covering their heads…fancy restaurants serve global cuisine…cheering crowds flock to soccer games…awesome antiquarian treasures are on display at the renovated museum…drag races thrill young men along the banks of the Tigris River…for night life, enjoy a rock concert. Check out that $2,000 chandelier.
HAPPY ST PATRICK’S DAY ABC's anchor, styling himself as Colin O'Gibson, observed that "much that is mulled and fermented is consumed on this day." When the President styled himself Barack O'Bama, O'Gibson called that "a bit of a stretch." A multicultural theme extended to CBS' closer too, where Kelly Wallace introduced us to the African-American-Indian-Latino Keltic Dreams stepdance troupe at PS 59 in The Bronx. NBC sent Dawna Friesen to Dublin where a decade of Celtic Tiger growth has gone bust "with startling speed." She stood on a derelict dockside to show us a "massive high-rise, the tallest building in Ireland, with $1m apartments and a penthouse recording studio for the band U2. You can see. Nothing has happened."
"It is not a recession," a Dubliner told Friesen. "It is a pre-boom."
