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TYNDALL HEADLINE: HIGHLIGHTS FROM MARCH 23, 2009
It has been six weeks since Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner announced the outline of his plan to reliquify the financial system by buying so-called toxic assets from major banks. Now come the details of his Public-Private Investment Program. It was the lead item on each of the three newscasts and the Story of the Day. Curiously all three networks treated the PPIP primarily as a political story rather than an economic one. They each led with their White House correspondent, using money reporters as follow-ups. For the second time this month, ABC took a road trip with Charles Gibson anchoring this time from Houston.
TYNDALL PICKS FOR MARCH 23, 2009: CLICK ON GRID ELEMENTS TO SEARCH FOR MATCHING ITEMS
GEITHNER’S PPIP TREATED AS POLITICAL NOT ECONOMIC It has been six weeks since Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner announced the outline of his plan to reliquify the financial system by buying so-called toxic assets from major banks. Now come the details of his Public-Private Investment Program. It was the lead item on each of the three newscasts and the Story of the Day. Curiously all three networks treated the PPIP primarily as a political story rather than an economic one. They each led with their White House correspondent, using money reporters as follow-ups. For the second time this month, ABC took a road trip with Charles Gibson anchoring this time from Houston.
NBC's Savannah Guthrie explained that most of the capital to buy the banks' assets would come from the federal government: "To buy $100 in bad loans, private investors would put up $7; the government would match it; and the remaining $86 would be covered by a government-backed loan." The reason for private capital, she explained, is that "the private market helps ensure a more accurate price." Calling that statement an "explanation" is generous. It is more like an article of faith. Guthrie offered no evidence that the pricing mechanism of the financial markets is functioning efficiently at present.
Why is the Treasury Department offering such a big subsidy? ABC's Jake Tapper used the word "entice" as its approach to private equity firms and hedge funds. In all, Treasury's TARP fund is willing to pony up $100bn in capital with $1tr in loan guarantees coming from elsewhere in the federal system. CBS' Chip Reid depicted the White House as "desperately" needing the participation of private capital. Reid picked up on President Barack Obama's endorsement of Secretary Geithner on his own network's 60 Minutes. What if Geithner offered to resign? "I would say: 'Sorry Buddy, you have still got the job.'"
THE STREET CHEERS "Wall Street cheered the toxic mortgage plan because what it means for the investors who might buy the mortgages is one very sweet deal," concluded Wyatt Andrews in a What It Means explainer on CBS. His evidence of Wall Street's approval was the fact that the Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 497 points to close at 7775 in a single day. ABC's Betsy Stark (no link) concurred that the buying on Wall Street represented "an enthusiastic vote of confidence." What about the banks? Will they be willing to sell their paper to the PPIP? "It is premature to comment"--Wells Fargo; "studying the details"--Bank of America; "too early to speculate"--Citigroup. ABC's George Stephanopoulos advised us to wait until April when the Treasury Department's stress tests of the major banks is complete: "We will find out how much more capital if any those banks will need."
Liz Ann Sonders, the chief investor at Charles Schwab, came up with a different explanation for the bullishness on Wall Street in an interview with CBS anchor Katie Couric. PPIP "effectively takes nationalization, full-blown nationalization, off the table--which I think is good." On NBC, Steve Liesman, CNBC's economist, repeated what he was told by both the Treasury Department and the FDIC, which happened to confirm Sonders' take: "The alternative is even worse, the government owning these assets outright." Yet he then quoted them contradicting themselves: "The taxpayer could benefit on the upside when it comes to these assets profiting." If that should happen, why would we want to share those benefits with private capital? Why not keep it all for ourselves?
CBS NEWS POLL KEEPS AIG STORY ALIVE Only CBS had a reporter file a follow-up to the story that dominated the news all five weekdays last week--te $165m in bonuses paid to the traders at AIG whose recklessness forced the insurance conglomerate into near-nationalization. Dean Reynolds traveled to Peoria to find vox pop soundbites to illustrate a CBS News opinion poll on the bonus scandal. AIG "is at the tip of the spear of dissatisfaction," Reynolds told us. "Americans apparently want a harder line" against the millionaire recipients. The poll showed that fully 57% of the population had been "paying a lot of attention to the AIG case"--no surprise considering its ubiquity in the headlines. Reynolds added that allowing the bonuses to go ahead has been the first policy initiative of Barack Obama's young Presidency to attract more public disapproval than approval.
HOUSTON IS HAPPIER THAN THE CITY OF ANGELS ABC anchor Charles Gibson was more cheerful about his road trip to Houston--"You do not see many signs of recession"--than he had been earlier this month in Los Angeles. California, Gibson told us back then, was losing its population of United States citizens at the rate of 1.5m each decade. Not so Houston--along with Austin and San Antonio. Texas contains the only three cities among the 39 largest nationwide to increase its labor force in 2008. "People are moving here from all over the country in search of jobs." Gibson introduced us to economic migrants from Long Island and Michigan and Illinois.
DEAD IN THE CEMETERY A small plane crash in Montana attracted the attention of correspondents on all three newscasts because the 14 dead included such a large number of children. Three families--seven children, six parents, one pilot--were flying in a single-engine Pilatus PC-12 propeller plane from Oroville Cal to a ski break in Bozeman Mont when the plane tried to make an emergency landing in Butte. The plane was designed to seat ten, so six of the children would have been doubling up. "Extra weight can cause a plane to stall," suggested ABC's Lisa Fletcher. Both NBC's Lee Cowan and Hattie Kauffman of CBS' Early Show noted that the crash site was the Holy Cross Cemetery on the approach to the Butte runway. "Eerie," Kauffman called the scene…Cowan called it "eerie." He showed us "the new row of crosses outside the cemetery fence."
ARM STRONG, BONE BROKEN "In the world of bicycle racing it was little more than a fenderbender," ABC's Miguel Marquez reassured us from London. So why was a crash during a race in Spain worthy of coverage on an American network nightly newscast? Because the cyclist who went over his handlebars and broke his collarbone was Lance Armstrong. Until then he had "never had a serious accident in 17 years as a professional rider." His comeback bid for this summer's Tour de France is now "in question."
I GOT YOU BABE Spring break already made news this season when semi-serious stories were filed from Cancun by CBS' Seth Doane and NBC's Mark Potter, contrasting the carefree revels of drunken students on the resort strip with the gun violence of narcotics gangs in the city proper. Now Ben Tracy strips away such half-assed pretense at sober journalism and goes the Full Monty to present us with the pure joy of cavorting coeds on CBS. Count a montage of 20 different shots of scantily-clad babes in Palm Springs.
Tracy took us back in time to 1963 with clips from the movie Palm Springs Weekend to show its origin as a spring break mecca. "In the '80s things got ugly. Alcohol-fueled riots cost the city millions." The police had a slogan--Come on Vacation. Leave on Probation--to deter youth and Mayor Sonny Bono enacted a ban on string bikinis. They were dubbed Bono's No-No's. "The students left. Palm Springs got quiet. Too quiet." Hotel occupancy declined--until this year when the city's tourism bureau seized the opportunity afforded by the cancelations of trips to Mexico. And what do those oldies feel about swimming among string bikinis once more? "They do not seem to mind."
NBC ON NARCOMEXWATCH NBC is leading the way in serious coverage of Mexico's narcoviolence. Of the twelve stories filed on the three network newscasts so for this year, six have been aired by NBC (CBS 4, ABC 2) and four of them have been filed by Mark Potter. For NBC's In Depth Potter now finds himself in Juarez where as recently as last month murders were being committed at the rate of ten a day. A corrupt police force seems to have been the problem, Potter found. Mayor Jose Reyes Ferriz called in federal soldiers, whose "first mission was to take over the police department." Warring drug cartels have left town and "almost immediately the crime rate plummeted."
FROM ANALYST TO JOURNALIST TO ADVOCATE News anchor Laurie Ott left her TV job at Channel 12 in Augusta Ga after covering the rehab unit for combat casualties at the local VA Medical Center. The facility at Augusta is the only one in the VA system that cares for those military disabled who are still on active duty as well as veterans. The ex-journalist Ott is now the program's full-time publicist, activist and fundraiser. Her program caught the eye of Col Jack Jacobs, the Medal of Honor recipient who is now an NBC News analyst. Jacobs switched roles from analyst to reporter for NBC's Making a Difference feature--although he, like Ott, turned into more of an advocate. The VA-Pentagon combo "should be a model for military rehab centers across the country," Jacobs editorialized.
As a journalist, Jacobs makes a fine soldier. His report lacked those indispensable ingredients of explaining the pros and cons of the set-up he was content merely to depict and recommend.
THE LOST TREASURE OF REFUGIO ABC's road trip to Houston gave Ryan Owens the opportunity to profile Nathan Smith, a singing treasure hunter who is suing for the opportunity "to unearth whatever it is he saw on Google Earth." Inspired by a tale of sunken Spanish bullion he read in Lost Treasures & American History, Smith searched satellite pictures of Refugio on the Gulf Coast of Texas for the site of a hurricane-caused C19th wreck. Smith's lawyers believe maritime law allows him to take a boat up any navigable waterway in search of salvage. The Refugio ranchers who own the dried up lake bed when the treasure might be buried are blocking him. A federal court will decide.
NBC's Savannah Guthrie explained that most of the capital to buy the banks' assets would come from the federal government: "To buy $100 in bad loans, private investors would put up $7; the government would match it; and the remaining $86 would be covered by a government-backed loan." The reason for private capital, she explained, is that "the private market helps ensure a more accurate price." Calling that statement an "explanation" is generous. It is more like an article of faith. Guthrie offered no evidence that the pricing mechanism of the financial markets is functioning efficiently at present.
Why is the Treasury Department offering such a big subsidy? ABC's Jake Tapper used the word "entice" as its approach to private equity firms and hedge funds. In all, Treasury's TARP fund is willing to pony up $100bn in capital with $1tr in loan guarantees coming from elsewhere in the federal system. CBS' Chip Reid depicted the White House as "desperately" needing the participation of private capital. Reid picked up on President Barack Obama's endorsement of Secretary Geithner on his own network's 60 Minutes. What if Geithner offered to resign? "I would say: 'Sorry Buddy, you have still got the job.'"
THE STREET CHEERS "Wall Street cheered the toxic mortgage plan because what it means for the investors who might buy the mortgages is one very sweet deal," concluded Wyatt Andrews in a What It Means explainer on CBS. His evidence of Wall Street's approval was the fact that the Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 497 points to close at 7775 in a single day. ABC's Betsy Stark (no link) concurred that the buying on Wall Street represented "an enthusiastic vote of confidence." What about the banks? Will they be willing to sell their paper to the PPIP? "It is premature to comment"--Wells Fargo; "studying the details"--Bank of America; "too early to speculate"--Citigroup. ABC's George Stephanopoulos advised us to wait until April when the Treasury Department's stress tests of the major banks is complete: "We will find out how much more capital if any those banks will need."
Liz Ann Sonders, the chief investor at Charles Schwab, came up with a different explanation for the bullishness on Wall Street in an interview with CBS anchor Katie Couric. PPIP "effectively takes nationalization, full-blown nationalization, off the table--which I think is good." On NBC, Steve Liesman, CNBC's economist, repeated what he was told by both the Treasury Department and the FDIC, which happened to confirm Sonders' take: "The alternative is even worse, the government owning these assets outright." Yet he then quoted them contradicting themselves: "The taxpayer could benefit on the upside when it comes to these assets profiting." If that should happen, why would we want to share those benefits with private capital? Why not keep it all for ourselves?
CBS NEWS POLL KEEPS AIG STORY ALIVE Only CBS had a reporter file a follow-up to the story that dominated the news all five weekdays last week--te $165m in bonuses paid to the traders at AIG whose recklessness forced the insurance conglomerate into near-nationalization. Dean Reynolds traveled to Peoria to find vox pop soundbites to illustrate a CBS News opinion poll on the bonus scandal. AIG "is at the tip of the spear of dissatisfaction," Reynolds told us. "Americans apparently want a harder line" against the millionaire recipients. The poll showed that fully 57% of the population had been "paying a lot of attention to the AIG case"--no surprise considering its ubiquity in the headlines. Reynolds added that allowing the bonuses to go ahead has been the first policy initiative of Barack Obama's young Presidency to attract more public disapproval than approval.
HOUSTON IS HAPPIER THAN THE CITY OF ANGELS ABC anchor Charles Gibson was more cheerful about his road trip to Houston--"You do not see many signs of recession"--than he had been earlier this month in Los Angeles. California, Gibson told us back then, was losing its population of United States citizens at the rate of 1.5m each decade. Not so Houston--along with Austin and San Antonio. Texas contains the only three cities among the 39 largest nationwide to increase its labor force in 2008. "People are moving here from all over the country in search of jobs." Gibson introduced us to economic migrants from Long Island and Michigan and Illinois.
DEAD IN THE CEMETERY A small plane crash in Montana attracted the attention of correspondents on all three newscasts because the 14 dead included such a large number of children. Three families--seven children, six parents, one pilot--were flying in a single-engine Pilatus PC-12 propeller plane from Oroville Cal to a ski break in Bozeman Mont when the plane tried to make an emergency landing in Butte. The plane was designed to seat ten, so six of the children would have been doubling up. "Extra weight can cause a plane to stall," suggested ABC's Lisa Fletcher. Both NBC's Lee Cowan and Hattie Kauffman of CBS' Early Show noted that the crash site was the Holy Cross Cemetery on the approach to the Butte runway. "Eerie," Kauffman called the scene…Cowan called it "eerie." He showed us "the new row of crosses outside the cemetery fence."
ARM STRONG, BONE BROKEN "In the world of bicycle racing it was little more than a fenderbender," ABC's Miguel Marquez reassured us from London. So why was a crash during a race in Spain worthy of coverage on an American network nightly newscast? Because the cyclist who went over his handlebars and broke his collarbone was Lance Armstrong. Until then he had "never had a serious accident in 17 years as a professional rider." His comeback bid for this summer's Tour de France is now "in question."
I GOT YOU BABE Spring break already made news this season when semi-serious stories were filed from Cancun by CBS' Seth Doane and NBC's Mark Potter, contrasting the carefree revels of drunken students on the resort strip with the gun violence of narcotics gangs in the city proper. Now Ben Tracy strips away such half-assed pretense at sober journalism and goes the Full Monty to present us with the pure joy of cavorting coeds on CBS. Count a montage of 20 different shots of scantily-clad babes in Palm Springs.
Tracy took us back in time to 1963 with clips from the movie Palm Springs Weekend to show its origin as a spring break mecca. "In the '80s things got ugly. Alcohol-fueled riots cost the city millions." The police had a slogan--Come on Vacation. Leave on Probation--to deter youth and Mayor Sonny Bono enacted a ban on string bikinis. They were dubbed Bono's No-No's. "The students left. Palm Springs got quiet. Too quiet." Hotel occupancy declined--until this year when the city's tourism bureau seized the opportunity afforded by the cancelations of trips to Mexico. And what do those oldies feel about swimming among string bikinis once more? "They do not seem to mind."
NBC ON NARCOMEXWATCH NBC is leading the way in serious coverage of Mexico's narcoviolence. Of the twelve stories filed on the three network newscasts so for this year, six have been aired by NBC (CBS 4, ABC 2) and four of them have been filed by Mark Potter. For NBC's In Depth Potter now finds himself in Juarez where as recently as last month murders were being committed at the rate of ten a day. A corrupt police force seems to have been the problem, Potter found. Mayor Jose Reyes Ferriz called in federal soldiers, whose "first mission was to take over the police department." Warring drug cartels have left town and "almost immediately the crime rate plummeted."
FROM ANALYST TO JOURNALIST TO ADVOCATE News anchor Laurie Ott left her TV job at Channel 12 in Augusta Ga after covering the rehab unit for combat casualties at the local VA Medical Center. The facility at Augusta is the only one in the VA system that cares for those military disabled who are still on active duty as well as veterans. The ex-journalist Ott is now the program's full-time publicist, activist and fundraiser. Her program caught the eye of Col Jack Jacobs, the Medal of Honor recipient who is now an NBC News analyst. Jacobs switched roles from analyst to reporter for NBC's Making a Difference feature--although he, like Ott, turned into more of an advocate. The VA-Pentagon combo "should be a model for military rehab centers across the country," Jacobs editorialized.
As a journalist, Jacobs makes a fine soldier. His report lacked those indispensable ingredients of explaining the pros and cons of the set-up he was content merely to depict and recommend.
THE LOST TREASURE OF REFUGIO ABC's road trip to Houston gave Ryan Owens the opportunity to profile Nathan Smith, a singing treasure hunter who is suing for the opportunity "to unearth whatever it is he saw on Google Earth." Inspired by a tale of sunken Spanish bullion he read in Lost Treasures & American History, Smith searched satellite pictures of Refugio on the Gulf Coast of Texas for the site of a hurricane-caused C19th wreck. Smith's lawyers believe maritime law allows him to take a boat up any navigable waterway in search of salvage. The Refugio ranchers who own the dried up lake bed when the treasure might be buried are blocking him. A federal court will decide.
