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TYNDALL HEADLINE: HIGHLIGHTS FROM MARCH 20, 2009
There was no new development in the scandal surrounding the $165m in bonuses paid to traders at American International Group. Yet the coverage has been so dominant that it was the Story of the Day anyway, as reporters took stock of the political, economic and legal fallout from the weeklong surge of populist outrage. Thus AIG completes a clean sweep, being the most heavily covered story on all five days this week. CBS, with substitute anchor Russ Mitchell, led with White House attempts at AIG damage control. The other two newscasts found other news to lead with. ABC also started at the White House but chose projections for a decade of ballooning federal deficit spending. NBC, with Natalie Morales as substitute anchor, kicked off from the State Department on Barack Obama's diplomatic outreach to Iran.
TYNDALL PICKS FOR MARCH 20, 2009: CLICK ON GRID ELEMENTS TO SEARCH FOR MATCHING ITEMS
AIG COMPLETES A WEEKLONG CLEAN SWEEP There was no new development in the scandal surrounding the $165m in bonuses paid to traders at American International Group. Yet the coverage has been so dominant that it was the Story of the Day anyway, as reporters took stock of the political, economic and legal fallout from the weeklong surge of populist outrage. Thus AIG completes a clean sweep, being the most heavily covered story on all five days this week. CBS, with substitute anchor Russ Mitchell, led with White House attempts at AIG damage control. The other two newscasts found other news to lead with. ABC also started at the White House but chose projections for a decade of ballooning federal deficit spending. NBC, with Natalie Morales as substitute anchor, kicked off from the State Department on Barack Obama's diplomatic outreach to Iran.
A political post mortem on the AIG affair was filed by Chip Reid (no link) on CBS. He concluded that Barack Obama "had difficulty finding his footing" as his administration switched from declaring that it had no control over the bonus payments to pledging action to have them rescinded. His "change of course threw fuel on a fire already raging on Capitol Hill." ABC's George Stephanopoulos concluded that the issue "overwhelmed the White House" as Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner spent "all week long trying to explain his involvement." CBS' Reid reckoned that "explanations of what Geithner knew and when changed by the day."
CAPITAL’S BACKLASH AGAINST CAPITOL’S TAX PLAN As for the proposal that passed the House of Representatives to claw back bankers' bonuses by levying a 90% retroactive tax, ABC's John Berman was skeptical that it would pass Constitutional muster: "Congress is targeting a handful and it is not talking about revenue but retribution"--the very activity prohibited in the ban on Bills of Attainder. Berman also wondered whether the attacks on Wall Street might be counterproductive. "This kind of scrutiny, this kind of scorn might alienate private investors at the very time when the government is trying to get them to buy up toxic assets." A similar point was made by banking industry lobbyists and Wall Street hedge fund managers to CBS' Wyatt Andrews: "The Treasury and Federal Reserve are now trying to lure that money into public partnerships."
ABC's George Stephanopoulos too predicted a backlash from private capital if the House's 90% tax were to become law: "Everything the administration is trying to do to shore up the financial system would fall apart." He expected the bill to fail: "The Senate will not vote on it next week. They will not take it up for two weeks at least." CBS' Andrews pointed out that the President "will not commit to signing it. Call this one an outrage vote but not much else."
PAYING BILLIONS TO MAKE WALL STREET WHOLE Yet the outrage against AIG's reckless behavior and the federal government's reaction to it persists. NBC assigned Tom Costello to go over much of the ground CBS' Elizabeth Palmer covered Thursday in detailing the catastrophic consequences of AIG's Credit Default Swap trading at its London office, which was run by Joseph Cassano. In 1998, as Costello put it, Cassano "dramatically changed AIG's business, taking on huge risk, insuring other banks' debts, corporate investments, bonds, real estate deals and subprime mortgages, $2.7tr in so-called derivative contracts." That is what he said, two-point-seven trillion dollars.
It is that difference between the millions paid out in bonuses and the billions in federal bailouts caused by the trillions in contracts that Jeff Greenfield zeroed in on at CBS. Bailout funds were "paid out to some of the world's biggest financial players whose risky investments were insured by AIG and they were paid off in full--100c on the $1. Why?" To many of Barack Obama's centrist and liberal critics, Greenfield judged, his administration's financial bailout policy seems to have a "frame of assumptions" that is "kind of pin-striped, that Wall Street, the big shots, have to be protected." Thus Greenfield's reading of last week's 60 Minutes profile of Chairman Benjamin Bernanke of the Federal Reserve Board, in which he returned to his hometown of Dillon SC. It was "not on a whim--it was to show that he was not of Wall Street."
MY INCOME IS WHAT I STATE IT TO BE NBC's primetime magazine Dateline is airing a documentary on subprime mortgage lending Sunday called Inside the Financial Fiasco. Chris Hansen filed a preview on People's Choice Home Loan, a Los Angeles lender run by James LaLiberte, that specialized in Stated Income Loans, so-called because borrowers merely had to state their income, rather than prove it. Hansen showed us records of a massage therapist's stated monthly income of $15,000, a carpenter stating $12,700 a month and a house cleaner stating $11,500. Dolores Parker Jackson, a day care provider, stated an annual income of $180,000 and ended up with $1.3m in loans, from People's Choice and "from a company owned at the time by NBC's parent General Electric." At the time Parker Jackson's tax returns to the IRS "reported negative income."
TWO TRILLION DOLLARS OF OPTIMISM ABC led from the White House with Jake Tapper's report on a difference of opinion about the outlook for the economy for the next ten years. Both the Office of Management & Budget and the Congressional Budget Office make projections about the economy's rate of growth over the next decade, the likely collection of taxes and expected government spending. They disagree by $2.3tr: OMB projects $7.0tr in federal borrowing through 2019; CBS's number is $9.3tr. NBC's White House correspondent Chuck Todd filed a brief stand-up on the discrepancy. CBO is "basically labeling the President's numbers as a bit too optimistic," he understated.
HAPPY NOWRUZ All three newscasts covered Barack Obama's videotape message to wish Iran a Happy New Year. NBC's Andrea Mitchell even played the President's greeting in Farsi. ABC's Jim Sciutto, who filed from Qom--"known as Iran's Vatican"--made note of "one more sign of respect," the fact that Obama concluded with the words of Sadi, "a revered Iranian poet." The videotape message was not broadcast on Iranian television, but it was available via satellite television and via online videostreams. NBC's Mitchell called Obama's tone "conciliatory" and "respectful." ABC's Sciutto pointed to his use of the nation's formal name, the Islamic Republic of Iran, and CBS' Lara Logan picked up on "a change in tone, with the President citing differences rather than regime change."
From her base at the State Department, NBC's Mitchell noted that Secretary Hillary Rodham Clinton has invited Iran to a conference on Afghanistan in less than two weeks: "That could mark the start of real diplomacy."
WANNABE NEWSCASTERS IN THE NAVY Martha Raddatz had to resort to ABC's Virtual View video graphics to depict the collision in the Strait of Hormuz between two USNavy vessels. USS New Orleans was on the surface and the USS Hartford was shallowly submerged. The submarine "was either run over or rammed into the ship," Raddatz explained, but either way the submarine was invisible to the ship so it was the underwater crew's responsibility to monitor the surface. "Likely human error," she concluded. Some 15 sailors were injured by the crash.
CBS' David Martin had videotape instead of computer animation. He filed a successful Freedom of Information Act request to obtain USNavy pictures of the incident in the South China Sea two weeks ago when USNS Impeccable, an unarmed "surveillance" ship, was challenged by a pair of Chinese trawlers in international waters 80 miles south of Hainan Island. "You can hear someone giving the order to destroy classified equipment," Martin narrated. Hainan Island, he reminded us, was where a USNavy spy plane was forced to land in 2001, in the early days of the last administration.
The matelots pose as budding Wolf Blitzers
FIRST VEGETABLES The First Lady's public relations effort continues to fire on all cylinders. Thursday, CBS' Nancy Cordes covered Michelle Obama's outreach to Washington DC's public high schools as she organized celebrity appearances by 21 famous women at eleven area schools. Now ABC's Yunji de Nies files from the White House grounds as the President's wife breaks ground on its first vegetable patch since Eleanor Roosevelt's victory garden during World War II. "The Obamas will plant 55 varieties of organic vegetables," de Nies announced. NBC's Chris Jansing used the First Vegetables as a news hook to survey a nationwide gardening resurgence. "Community gardens are sprouting new pots in record numbers," she declared, as she visited Irish Eyes Garden Seeds in Washington State, whose catalogue business is booming. The recession helps sales, Jansing pointed out. A $2.50 package of lettuce seeds, grown right, can produce 800 heads.
A political post mortem on the AIG affair was filed by Chip Reid (no link) on CBS. He concluded that Barack Obama "had difficulty finding his footing" as his administration switched from declaring that it had no control over the bonus payments to pledging action to have them rescinded. His "change of course threw fuel on a fire already raging on Capitol Hill." ABC's George Stephanopoulos concluded that the issue "overwhelmed the White House" as Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner spent "all week long trying to explain his involvement." CBS' Reid reckoned that "explanations of what Geithner knew and when changed by the day."
CAPITAL’S BACKLASH AGAINST CAPITOL’S TAX PLAN As for the proposal that passed the House of Representatives to claw back bankers' bonuses by levying a 90% retroactive tax, ABC's John Berman was skeptical that it would pass Constitutional muster: "Congress is targeting a handful and it is not talking about revenue but retribution"--the very activity prohibited in the ban on Bills of Attainder. Berman also wondered whether the attacks on Wall Street might be counterproductive. "This kind of scrutiny, this kind of scorn might alienate private investors at the very time when the government is trying to get them to buy up toxic assets." A similar point was made by banking industry lobbyists and Wall Street hedge fund managers to CBS' Wyatt Andrews: "The Treasury and Federal Reserve are now trying to lure that money into public partnerships."
ABC's George Stephanopoulos too predicted a backlash from private capital if the House's 90% tax were to become law: "Everything the administration is trying to do to shore up the financial system would fall apart." He expected the bill to fail: "The Senate will not vote on it next week. They will not take it up for two weeks at least." CBS' Andrews pointed out that the President "will not commit to signing it. Call this one an outrage vote but not much else."
PAYING BILLIONS TO MAKE WALL STREET WHOLE Yet the outrage against AIG's reckless behavior and the federal government's reaction to it persists. NBC assigned Tom Costello to go over much of the ground CBS' Elizabeth Palmer covered Thursday in detailing the catastrophic consequences of AIG's Credit Default Swap trading at its London office, which was run by Joseph Cassano. In 1998, as Costello put it, Cassano "dramatically changed AIG's business, taking on huge risk, insuring other banks' debts, corporate investments, bonds, real estate deals and subprime mortgages, $2.7tr in so-called derivative contracts." That is what he said, two-point-seven trillion dollars.
It is that difference between the millions paid out in bonuses and the billions in federal bailouts caused by the trillions in contracts that Jeff Greenfield zeroed in on at CBS. Bailout funds were "paid out to some of the world's biggest financial players whose risky investments were insured by AIG and they were paid off in full--100c on the $1. Why?" To many of Barack Obama's centrist and liberal critics, Greenfield judged, his administration's financial bailout policy seems to have a "frame of assumptions" that is "kind of pin-striped, that Wall Street, the big shots, have to be protected." Thus Greenfield's reading of last week's 60 Minutes profile of Chairman Benjamin Bernanke of the Federal Reserve Board, in which he returned to his hometown of Dillon SC. It was "not on a whim--it was to show that he was not of Wall Street."
MY INCOME IS WHAT I STATE IT TO BE NBC's primetime magazine Dateline is airing a documentary on subprime mortgage lending Sunday called Inside the Financial Fiasco. Chris Hansen filed a preview on People's Choice Home Loan, a Los Angeles lender run by James LaLiberte, that specialized in Stated Income Loans, so-called because borrowers merely had to state their income, rather than prove it. Hansen showed us records of a massage therapist's stated monthly income of $15,000, a carpenter stating $12,700 a month and a house cleaner stating $11,500. Dolores Parker Jackson, a day care provider, stated an annual income of $180,000 and ended up with $1.3m in loans, from People's Choice and "from a company owned at the time by NBC's parent General Electric." At the time Parker Jackson's tax returns to the IRS "reported negative income."
TWO TRILLION DOLLARS OF OPTIMISM ABC led from the White House with Jake Tapper's report on a difference of opinion about the outlook for the economy for the next ten years. Both the Office of Management & Budget and the Congressional Budget Office make projections about the economy's rate of growth over the next decade, the likely collection of taxes and expected government spending. They disagree by $2.3tr: OMB projects $7.0tr in federal borrowing through 2019; CBS's number is $9.3tr. NBC's White House correspondent Chuck Todd filed a brief stand-up on the discrepancy. CBO is "basically labeling the President's numbers as a bit too optimistic," he understated.
HAPPY NOWRUZ All three newscasts covered Barack Obama's videotape message to wish Iran a Happy New Year. NBC's Andrea Mitchell even played the President's greeting in Farsi. ABC's Jim Sciutto, who filed from Qom--"known as Iran's Vatican"--made note of "one more sign of respect," the fact that Obama concluded with the words of Sadi, "a revered Iranian poet." The videotape message was not broadcast on Iranian television, but it was available via satellite television and via online videostreams. NBC's Mitchell called Obama's tone "conciliatory" and "respectful." ABC's Sciutto pointed to his use of the nation's formal name, the Islamic Republic of Iran, and CBS' Lara Logan picked up on "a change in tone, with the President citing differences rather than regime change."
From her base at the State Department, NBC's Mitchell noted that Secretary Hillary Rodham Clinton has invited Iran to a conference on Afghanistan in less than two weeks: "That could mark the start of real diplomacy."
WANNABE NEWSCASTERS IN THE NAVY Martha Raddatz had to resort to ABC's Virtual View video graphics to depict the collision in the Strait of Hormuz between two USNavy vessels. USS New Orleans was on the surface and the USS Hartford was shallowly submerged. The submarine "was either run over or rammed into the ship," Raddatz explained, but either way the submarine was invisible to the ship so it was the underwater crew's responsibility to monitor the surface. "Likely human error," she concluded. Some 15 sailors were injured by the crash.
CBS' David Martin had videotape instead of computer animation. He filed a successful Freedom of Information Act request to obtain USNavy pictures of the incident in the South China Sea two weeks ago when USNS Impeccable, an unarmed "surveillance" ship, was challenged by a pair of Chinese trawlers in international waters 80 miles south of Hainan Island. "You can hear someone giving the order to destroy classified equipment," Martin narrated. Hainan Island, he reminded us, was where a USNavy spy plane was forced to land in 2001, in the early days of the last administration.
The matelots pose as budding Wolf Blitzers
FIRST VEGETABLES The First Lady's public relations effort continues to fire on all cylinders. Thursday, CBS' Nancy Cordes covered Michelle Obama's outreach to Washington DC's public high schools as she organized celebrity appearances by 21 famous women at eleven area schools. Now ABC's Yunji de Nies files from the White House grounds as the President's wife breaks ground on its first vegetable patch since Eleanor Roosevelt's victory garden during World War II. "The Obamas will plant 55 varieties of organic vegetables," de Nies announced. NBC's Chris Jansing used the First Vegetables as a news hook to survey a nationwide gardening resurgence. "Community gardens are sprouting new pots in record numbers," she declared, as she visited Irish Eyes Garden Seeds in Washington State, whose catalogue business is booming. The recession helps sales, Jansing pointed out. A $2.50 package of lettuce seeds, grown right, can produce 800 heads.
