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TYNDALL HEADLINE: HIGHLIGHTS FROM MARCH 24, 2009
The Treasury Department's bailout of high finance was Story of the Day again. Monday's lead had been Secretary Timothy Geithner's Public-Private Investment Program to purchase sub-par securities from major banks. Now Geithner appears on Capitol Hill with Chairman Benjamin Bernanke to lobby for an expansion of the Treasury Department's power to enable it to nationalize those failing financial institutions that are not banks. ABC led with proposed financial regulatory reform from the White House; NBC from Capitol Hill. CBS chose Barack Obama's push to get his budget passed, instead, as the three newscasts selected varying angles in anticipation of the President's primetime press conference. ABC anchor Charles Gibson continued his road trip, broadcasting from Houston for the second night in a row.
TYNDALL PICKS FOR MARCH 24, 2009: CLICK ON GRID ELEMENTS TO SEARCH FOR MATCHING ITEMS
GEITHNER SEEKS POWERS AS PREXY PREPS PRESSER The Treasury Department's bailout of high finance was Story of the Day again. Monday's lead had been Secretary Timothy Geithner's Public-Private Investment Program to purchase sub-par securities from major banks. Now Geithner appears on Capitol Hill with Chairman Benjamin Bernanke to lobby for an expansion of the Treasury Department's power to enable it to nationalize those failing financial institutions that are not banks. ABC led with proposed financial regulatory reform from the White House; NBC from Capitol Hill. CBS chose Barack Obama's push to get his budget passed, instead, as the three newscasts selected varying angles in anticipation of the President's primetime press conference. ABC anchor Charles Gibson continued his road trip, broadcasting from Houston for the second night in a row.
Both Geithner and Bernanke used last week's scandal over the bonuses paid to rogue traders at American International Group to argue that the Treasury Department should be able to take financial firms such as insurance companies into conservatorship, in the same way that the FDIC can take over banks. "Would it help taxpayers to feel more secure that greedy practices would not get in the way?" wondered NBC's Kelly O'Donnell. "Or would it be too much control in the hands of Treasury, already in the middle of this financial mess?" When Chairman Bernanke testified that the Federal Reserve Board had decided not to block the AIG bonuses because it would likely have been struck down by Connecticut law, CBS' Nancy Cordes checked with that state's Attorney General Richard Blumenthal. He disagreed: "If the Fed had called we would have given the green light to sue."
MORE OBAMA FACE TIME "The President's job is not just to announce new policies but to explain and interpret them for the public," thus NBC's Savannah Guthrie repeated the White House line on why Barack Obama is spending so much time in public view. His Tuesday primetime press conference would already be the second of his short Presidency. "Something of a publicity blitz," Guthrie understated, citing "town halls in California, an appearance on The Tonight Show, an interview on 60 Minutes and an opinion piece published in 30 newspapers around the globe." CBS' Chip Reid inquired of his White House sources whether Obama runs the risk of overexposure: "They have no choice but to put the President out there again and again and again because he is, by far, their best salesman."
With the stimulus plan passed and the details of the financial bailout nailed down, ABC's Jake Tapper reported that regulatory reform is "the next key part of economic recovery," referring to Secretary Geithner's testimony. "The President is seeking more power for the government to take over large financial institutions." CBS' Reid disagreed. His analysis was that the President's "pivot to the next big economic battle" is his push to get his budget passed, including "expensive initiatives in educational renewable energy and an ambitious overhaul of the healthcare system. Republicans are already up in arms."
GET SHORTY All three networks had a correspondent cover the rising tide of narcoviolence in Mexico. CBS' Seth Doane filed from Mexico City where Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton's diplomacy is expected to "hammer home the message that both countries will stop the guns, stop the drugs and stop the bleeding." ABC had Brian Ross file from New York on the Department of Homeland Security's decision to spend $700m to beef up border security. That budget seems tiny compared with the threat as described by Ross. His sources told him "the cartels have become a criminal insurgency using roadside bombs, guerrilla tactics, threatening to turn Mexico into another Iraq or Afghanistan." An official federal law enforcement report sports the title The Pathway to a Failed State.
NBC's Mark Potter maintained his role as this year's lead network reporter on the Mexican drug wars with his profile of El Chapo--Spanish for Shorty--the fugitive leader of the Sinaloa Cartel. His name is Joaquin Guzman, aged 51, a member of Forbes magazine's list of global billionaires, his bandit exploits glorified in music videos. Guzman escaped from a maximum security prison in a laundry truck eight years ago, "never again to be touched by authorities."
By the way, how much money do Americans spend each year on narcotics imported from Mexico? CBS' Doane's voiceover suggested $18m to $39m, although he must have meant $18bn to $39bn, which was the amount displayed on the accompanying graphic. ABC's Ross had an estimate that was almost twice Doane's amount: $65bn annually.
THE LONG GOODBYE The Alzheimer's Association put out its annual report on the incidence and costs of dementia in the elderly. ABC's John McKenzie filed a human interest feature on the toll the disease takes on "each of those families in the midst of its own Long Goodbye." NBC's Robert Bazell repeated the hard numbers: 5.3m patients nationwide; 500,000 more diagnosed each year; $148bn in healthcare costs annually--and no cure in sight. "There are six drugs on the market that provide a few months' relief, at best."
RED RIVER RISING Both NBC's Kevin Tibbles and CBS' Cynthia Bowers reminded us of the great Red River flood of 1997 that wiped out downtown Grand Forks. NBC's Janet Shamlian revisited the site of that devastation a couple of years ago. The reminder came because history may be repeating itself. Heavy rains and melting snow are swelling the Red River once more. Water levels have risen five feet in just 24 hours. The crest is forecast for the end of the week in Fargo ND at around 40 feet, "more than double flood stage," as NBC's Tibbles put it. "Here in the Red River valley the threat of spring floods means all hands on deck," CBS' Bowers observed, as Fargo deployed "armies of college students filling sandbags."
CBS SETS THE BIDEN RECORD STRAIGHT CBS did the right thing in taking the time to go back to a 1972 car crash that killed a young mother and her baby daughter. The woman happened to be the wife of Joseph Biden, the newly-elected Senator from Delaware. As recently as 2007, Bob Orr told us, CBS had reported Biden's claim that Curtis Dunn, the truck driver involved in the fatal collision, "allegedly drank his lunch." Dunn died in 1999. His daughter insists that alcohol was no factor in the accident. Orr quoted the official correction from the Vice President's office: "Biden fully accepts the Dunn family's word that these rumors were false."
PITTS’ CANCER PICTURES AIRED ON CAPITOL HILL CBS' Byron Pitts revisited the harrowing deathbed scene he first told us about 15 months ago. Back then he was about to interview Carmelo Rodriguez, a Marine Corps sergeant, about the medical malpractice that failed to treat his skin cancer for eight years after it was diagnosed. While Pitts was waiting for his soundbite, Rodriguez died. The pictures of his melanoma-ravaged body were the shocking highlight of his report, which was re-aired at a Congressional hearing.
Pitts attended the hearing for a CBS News Investigation as Rodriguez' kin testified that the Supreme Court ruling from 1950 known as the Feres Doctrine should be overturned. Feres immunizes the military healthcare system against lawsuits for malpractice. "In nearly 60 years no one has successfully challenged the Feres Doctrine--but no one has ever made it this far before."
FLY ME TO THE MOON The second day of Charles Gibson's road trip to Houston took the ABC anchor to NASA headquarters. There he reported on the space agency's plan to "go back to the future" when Space Shuttle flights are discontinued in 18 months. Relying on NASA's computer-generated animation to depict an imaginary adventure, Gibsone told us that astronauts will land once more on the moon in 2020, where they will build a base from which to launch trips to Mars "10 to 15 years later." Gibson made the entire enterprise sound highly speculative--"the rockets have not even been tested yet"--and he did not even venture a pricetag. "With ten years between retiring the Shuttle and getting to the moon again, will the public continue to support space exploration? And will the Congress, which will have to appropriate billions to make it all happen?"
Both Geithner and Bernanke used last week's scandal over the bonuses paid to rogue traders at American International Group to argue that the Treasury Department should be able to take financial firms such as insurance companies into conservatorship, in the same way that the FDIC can take over banks. "Would it help taxpayers to feel more secure that greedy practices would not get in the way?" wondered NBC's Kelly O'Donnell. "Or would it be too much control in the hands of Treasury, already in the middle of this financial mess?" When Chairman Bernanke testified that the Federal Reserve Board had decided not to block the AIG bonuses because it would likely have been struck down by Connecticut law, CBS' Nancy Cordes checked with that state's Attorney General Richard Blumenthal. He disagreed: "If the Fed had called we would have given the green light to sue."
MORE OBAMA FACE TIME "The President's job is not just to announce new policies but to explain and interpret them for the public," thus NBC's Savannah Guthrie repeated the White House line on why Barack Obama is spending so much time in public view. His Tuesday primetime press conference would already be the second of his short Presidency. "Something of a publicity blitz," Guthrie understated, citing "town halls in California, an appearance on The Tonight Show, an interview on 60 Minutes and an opinion piece published in 30 newspapers around the globe." CBS' Chip Reid inquired of his White House sources whether Obama runs the risk of overexposure: "They have no choice but to put the President out there again and again and again because he is, by far, their best salesman."
With the stimulus plan passed and the details of the financial bailout nailed down, ABC's Jake Tapper reported that regulatory reform is "the next key part of economic recovery," referring to Secretary Geithner's testimony. "The President is seeking more power for the government to take over large financial institutions." CBS' Reid disagreed. His analysis was that the President's "pivot to the next big economic battle" is his push to get his budget passed, including "expensive initiatives in educational renewable energy and an ambitious overhaul of the healthcare system. Republicans are already up in arms."
GET SHORTY All three networks had a correspondent cover the rising tide of narcoviolence in Mexico. CBS' Seth Doane filed from Mexico City where Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton's diplomacy is expected to "hammer home the message that both countries will stop the guns, stop the drugs and stop the bleeding." ABC had Brian Ross file from New York on the Department of Homeland Security's decision to spend $700m to beef up border security. That budget seems tiny compared with the threat as described by Ross. His sources told him "the cartels have become a criminal insurgency using roadside bombs, guerrilla tactics, threatening to turn Mexico into another Iraq or Afghanistan." An official federal law enforcement report sports the title The Pathway to a Failed State.
NBC's Mark Potter maintained his role as this year's lead network reporter on the Mexican drug wars with his profile of El Chapo--Spanish for Shorty--the fugitive leader of the Sinaloa Cartel. His name is Joaquin Guzman, aged 51, a member of Forbes magazine's list of global billionaires, his bandit exploits glorified in music videos. Guzman escaped from a maximum security prison in a laundry truck eight years ago, "never again to be touched by authorities."
By the way, how much money do Americans spend each year on narcotics imported from Mexico? CBS' Doane's voiceover suggested $18m to $39m, although he must have meant $18bn to $39bn, which was the amount displayed on the accompanying graphic. ABC's Ross had an estimate that was almost twice Doane's amount: $65bn annually.
THE LONG GOODBYE The Alzheimer's Association put out its annual report on the incidence and costs of dementia in the elderly. ABC's John McKenzie filed a human interest feature on the toll the disease takes on "each of those families in the midst of its own Long Goodbye." NBC's Robert Bazell repeated the hard numbers: 5.3m patients nationwide; 500,000 more diagnosed each year; $148bn in healthcare costs annually--and no cure in sight. "There are six drugs on the market that provide a few months' relief, at best."
RED RIVER RISING Both NBC's Kevin Tibbles and CBS' Cynthia Bowers reminded us of the great Red River flood of 1997 that wiped out downtown Grand Forks. NBC's Janet Shamlian revisited the site of that devastation a couple of years ago. The reminder came because history may be repeating itself. Heavy rains and melting snow are swelling the Red River once more. Water levels have risen five feet in just 24 hours. The crest is forecast for the end of the week in Fargo ND at around 40 feet, "more than double flood stage," as NBC's Tibbles put it. "Here in the Red River valley the threat of spring floods means all hands on deck," CBS' Bowers observed, as Fargo deployed "armies of college students filling sandbags."
CBS SETS THE BIDEN RECORD STRAIGHT CBS did the right thing in taking the time to go back to a 1972 car crash that killed a young mother and her baby daughter. The woman happened to be the wife of Joseph Biden, the newly-elected Senator from Delaware. As recently as 2007, Bob Orr told us, CBS had reported Biden's claim that Curtis Dunn, the truck driver involved in the fatal collision, "allegedly drank his lunch." Dunn died in 1999. His daughter insists that alcohol was no factor in the accident. Orr quoted the official correction from the Vice President's office: "Biden fully accepts the Dunn family's word that these rumors were false."
PITTS’ CANCER PICTURES AIRED ON CAPITOL HILL CBS' Byron Pitts revisited the harrowing deathbed scene he first told us about 15 months ago. Back then he was about to interview Carmelo Rodriguez, a Marine Corps sergeant, about the medical malpractice that failed to treat his skin cancer for eight years after it was diagnosed. While Pitts was waiting for his soundbite, Rodriguez died. The pictures of his melanoma-ravaged body were the shocking highlight of his report, which was re-aired at a Congressional hearing.
Pitts attended the hearing for a CBS News Investigation as Rodriguez' kin testified that the Supreme Court ruling from 1950 known as the Feres Doctrine should be overturned. Feres immunizes the military healthcare system against lawsuits for malpractice. "In nearly 60 years no one has successfully challenged the Feres Doctrine--but no one has ever made it this far before."
FLY ME TO THE MOON The second day of Charles Gibson's road trip to Houston took the ABC anchor to NASA headquarters. There he reported on the space agency's plan to "go back to the future" when Space Shuttle flights are discontinued in 18 months. Relying on NASA's computer-generated animation to depict an imaginary adventure, Gibsone told us that astronauts will land once more on the moon in 2020, where they will build a base from which to launch trips to Mars "10 to 15 years later." Gibson made the entire enterprise sound highly speculative--"the rockets have not even been tested yet"--and he did not even venture a pricetag. "With ten years between retiring the Shuttle and getting to the moon again, will the public continue to support space exploration? And will the Congress, which will have to appropriate billions to make it all happen?"
