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TYNDALL HEADLINE: HIGHLIGHTS FROM MARCH 25, 2009
Barack Obama tried to make his government's actions to revive the economy dominate the news agenda for the third straight day. Both CBS and NBC cooperated, leading their newscasts from the White House as the President traveled to Capitol Hill to negotiate the federal budget with Senate Democrats. Mother Nature prevailed, however. ABC decided to lead from Fargo where sandbags are being piled high, even as fresh snow falls, to try to contain the Red River. Its waters are expected to crest at the weekend some 23 feet higher than flood stage. North Dakota's twelve miles of improvised dikes qualified as Story of the Day.
TYNDALL PICKS FOR MARCH 25, 2009: CLICK ON GRID ELEMENTS TO SEARCH FOR MATCHING ITEMS
RED RIVER MORE NEWSWORTHY THAN RED INK Barack Obama tried to make his government's actions to revive the economy dominate the news agenda for the third straight day. Both CBS and NBC cooperated, leading their newscasts from the White House as the President traveled to Capitol Hill to negotiate the federal budget with Senate Democrats. Mother Nature prevailed, however. ABC decided to lead from Fargo where sandbags are being piled high, even as fresh snow falls, to try to contain the Red River. Its waters are expected to crest at the weekend some 23 feet higher than flood stage. North Dakota's twelve miles of improvised dikes qualified as Story of the Day.
ABC's Barbara Pinto warned that bitter cold temperatures can make sandbags less effective at holding back flood waters so the levees may not work even if they turn out to be tall enough. Nevertheless, "local universities canceled classes; high schools did too. The city needs the manpower." On CBS, Early Show weathercaster Dave Price added prison inmates and National Guardsmen to the effort. Price has become CBS Evening News' go-to guy for weather disasters--floods, blizzards, icestorms, hurricanes, wildfire, tornadoes--for almost the past year now, more than Today's Al Roker on NBC or Good Morning America's Sam Champion on ABC.
NBC put its focus on sandbagging volunteers, treating Fargo's crisis as an inspirational Making a Difference feature rather than a hard news story. Kevin Tibbles introduced us to out-of-towners from Duluth and St Paul and Iowa. Some were rounded up by craigslist.com; others put the call out on Facebook; a Fargo native who returned home to help out "followed the volunteer efforts on Twitter."
DEMOCRATS DEMUR, REPUBLICANS REJECT Among Democrats, the news on the federal budget was half-full, half-empty. Those in the Senate may disagree with their man in the White House but how fatal are those disagreements? Barack Obama's "core priorities…remained intact," was how NBC's Savannah Guthrie reported the half-full part. CBS' Chip Reid found that "his top three priorities"--healthcare, renewable energy, education funding--"are on track." ABC's George Stephanopoulos repeated White House spin that the two budgets are "98% similar." And the half-empty? CBS' Reid focused on the rejection of permanent tax cuts for middle-income households, which would not be renewed in two years when they expire if the Senate has its way. NBC's Guthrie noted the disappearance of the "controversial plan to combat global warming." ABC's Stephanopoulos mentioned as missing a pair of reserve funds to cover healthcare reform and the financial bailout.
As CBS' Reid pointed out, the back-and-forth between Democrats stands in stark contrast to the lack of dialogue between President and House Republicans. Reid replayed "a buzzsaw of criticism" while NBC's Guthrie heard "a drumbeat of opposition"--spends too much, taxes too much, borrows too much.
CLUTCHING AT HOUSING STRAWS IN THE WIND The fact that the housing market was marginally busier in February than it had been in January--even though it was still much slower than it had been twelve months previously--was enough for all three newscasts to assign a reporter to trends in residential real estate. "The worst housing market in memory may be thawing," were Betsy Stark's words of encouragement on ABC. CNBC's Scott Cohn suggested on NBC that "it is hard to resist" prices that are 15% lower than they were a year ago, especially with "interest rates at historic lows," although he did caution that most of the applications for new lower-rate mortgages "are for refinancing." Priya David was assigned to CBS' Bright Spots series, whose role it is to find glimmers of growth amid the recession. "The glut of unsold homes is being reduced," was how she put it, inspiring condominium construction in New York City and possible rehiring of laid-off construction crews in Oregon.
Let's not get carried away. "Prices are still falling, meaning the market has not hit bottom"--CNBC's Cohn. "With prices still falling many buyers are waiting on the sidelines hoping for what they hope will be even better deals"--ABC's Stark.
CHARRED CARS The charred hulks of automobiles strewn across the Nevada desert had a sculptural beauty in Mark Strassmann's report on CBS but his topic was property crime not conceptual art. "The desert is a dumping ground for a red-hot scam," he explained, as car owners try to collect fraudulent claims from auto insurers. Strassmann showed us surveillance videotape of amateur arsonists at work--one had problems torching his Toyota; another was too successful with his Cadillac, setting himself on fire as well. The tip-off that a burned car is the work of an arsonist owner not a professional larcenist is that only amateurs leave valuable components inside the car. No self-respecting thief would leave the radio or the airbag or the electronics or the seats in the car before lighting the match.
THE WHITE HOUSE & THE BIG HOUSE NBC explicitly contradicted the optics of an African-American occupant of the Oval Office by assigning Ron Mott to cover The State of Black America, the annual report by the Urban League. Taking society as a whole--rather than its President alone--Mott delivered the dire news of a "slow but steady widening of the gap between whites and blacks" over the last eight years. The economy is an obvious source of disparity, with a black unemployment rate of 13.4% and a poverty rate three times higher than that for whites. Penal policy is the worst: African-Americans are "more than six times" as likely to be in prison than Caucasians.
PATHWAY TO FAILURE--OR MERELY WEAKENED BY FEAR & CORRUPTION? A couple of leftover questions from Tuesday's coverage of Mexico's War on Drugs were addressed by reporting on Secretary Hillary Rodham Clinton's diplomatic visit to Mexico City. The volume of annual narcotics imports from Mexico remains a puzzlement: Tuesday CBS' Seth Doane put the figure at between $18bn and $39bn; ABC's Brian Ross used $65bn; now NBC's Andrea Mitchell leans towards Doane's high end with $38bn. ABC's Ross also mentioned a federal law enforcement publication that warned that Mexico was on The Pathway to a Failed State. This is what CBS' Lara Logan found in response: "In the capital, authorities were eager to send another message, that Mexico is not in danger of becoming a failed state" before she added that "the safety of the capital is in stark contrast to the chaos and bloodshed in Mexico's border cities."
NBC's Mitchell quoted the Secretary of State as acknowledging that the United States "has to take responsibility for the insatiable appetite for drugs that is fueling the illegal trade." CBS' Logan, meanwhile, talked to Patricia Espinosa, the Foreign Minister of Mexico, who understated: "Militarizing the border is something that is seen as a very delicate issue." Logan talked to unidentified critics of President Felipe Calderon who interpreted his violent military crackdown against narcotraffickers as a sign that Calderon "has stirred up a hornets' nest and is only now discovering that the Mexican state is too weakened by fear and corruption to bring the situation under control."
JETS FOR JOBS The F-22 Raptor jet fleet "is as high as hi-tech gets," CBS' David Martin found as he tried out the cockpit simulator for Lockheed Martin's stealth fighter. The Pentagon has spent $262bn so far on the USAF fleet of 183 planes--"$339m for each one"--yet none has seen combat in either Iraq or Afghanistan. If the plane is not being used why is it not being canceled? "Political engineering," was Martin's explanation. Lockheed Martin parcels out contracts so that the production line includes 95,000 workers in 44 states. Martin showed us one example, Arc Technologies, which manufactures radar-proof coating in an old mill town in New England. "What started out as a fighter for the C21st has turned into an economic stimulus package."
RECREATIONAL VEHICLE IS PROMOTIONAL VEHICLE If you see a Recreational Vehicle custom-painted to display thousands of names on the road from San Marcos Tex to Fort Drum NY during the next few weeks, ABC's Bob Woodruff has the back story. The 4,000 names are those of the US military dead in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. The RV is a promotional vehicle for The American Widow Project, a documentary movie made by Taryn Davis, the widow of one of those 4,000. "Davis is hitting the open road, going door-to-door in military towns" to network with her fellow war widows.
HONOR ONCE ATTRACTED PROTESTS Observances for Medal of Honor Day at Arlington Cemetery inspired the closing feature on CBS and NBC. NBC anchor Brian Williams focused on John Finn, who will celebrate his hundredth birthday this July. Finn won his medal defending Pearl Harbor on that Date Which Will Live in Infamy. It was awarded in Hawaii, so when Finn attended the ceremonies along with 37 other medalists, it was his first visit to the White House. CBS' David Martin--in his second appearance in a single newscast--showed us White House pictures of Robert Howard's awards ceremony with Richard Nixon for his exploits during the Vietnam War. That event attracted protests: "He was a war at a time when Americans did not believe in either the war or its heroes."
CHARLES GIBSON, NASA FLACK "At the risk of sacrificing all objectivity it really is pretty cool," ABC anchor Charles Gibson gushed. Risk is an understatement. It is an absolute certainty that his puff piece for NASA at the end of his road trip to Houston was pure cheerleading. As Gibson reported Tuesday, NASA's voyage to the moon in 2020 is so far purely imaginary. Yet the space agency has already developed a prototype of the rover it wants to use there. The only plausible motive for building a vehicle for a potential trip eleven years in the fture is to use it for publicity and promotion. Enter anchor Gibson and his pitch for "the ultimate off-road vehicle."
"You are looking at one nervous television guy here, let me tell you," he exclaimed in excitement. "Push the stick to go forward. Twist the stick to turn. Stop and push the stick to the side and the wheels rotate in just seconds, allowing you to turn 90 degrees left or right. It can turn on a dime and, if you wondered, it does have cup holders."
ABC's Barbara Pinto warned that bitter cold temperatures can make sandbags less effective at holding back flood waters so the levees may not work even if they turn out to be tall enough. Nevertheless, "local universities canceled classes; high schools did too. The city needs the manpower." On CBS, Early Show weathercaster Dave Price added prison inmates and National Guardsmen to the effort. Price has become CBS Evening News' go-to guy for weather disasters--floods, blizzards, icestorms, hurricanes, wildfire, tornadoes--for almost the past year now, more than Today's Al Roker on NBC or Good Morning America's Sam Champion on ABC.
NBC put its focus on sandbagging volunteers, treating Fargo's crisis as an inspirational Making a Difference feature rather than a hard news story. Kevin Tibbles introduced us to out-of-towners from Duluth and St Paul and Iowa. Some were rounded up by craigslist.com; others put the call out on Facebook; a Fargo native who returned home to help out "followed the volunteer efforts on Twitter."
DEMOCRATS DEMUR, REPUBLICANS REJECT Among Democrats, the news on the federal budget was half-full, half-empty. Those in the Senate may disagree with their man in the White House but how fatal are those disagreements? Barack Obama's "core priorities…remained intact," was how NBC's Savannah Guthrie reported the half-full part. CBS' Chip Reid found that "his top three priorities"--healthcare, renewable energy, education funding--"are on track." ABC's George Stephanopoulos repeated White House spin that the two budgets are "98% similar." And the half-empty? CBS' Reid focused on the rejection of permanent tax cuts for middle-income households, which would not be renewed in two years when they expire if the Senate has its way. NBC's Guthrie noted the disappearance of the "controversial plan to combat global warming." ABC's Stephanopoulos mentioned as missing a pair of reserve funds to cover healthcare reform and the financial bailout.
As CBS' Reid pointed out, the back-and-forth between Democrats stands in stark contrast to the lack of dialogue between President and House Republicans. Reid replayed "a buzzsaw of criticism" while NBC's Guthrie heard "a drumbeat of opposition"--spends too much, taxes too much, borrows too much.
CLUTCHING AT HOUSING STRAWS IN THE WIND The fact that the housing market was marginally busier in February than it had been in January--even though it was still much slower than it had been twelve months previously--was enough for all three newscasts to assign a reporter to trends in residential real estate. "The worst housing market in memory may be thawing," were Betsy Stark's words of encouragement on ABC. CNBC's Scott Cohn suggested on NBC that "it is hard to resist" prices that are 15% lower than they were a year ago, especially with "interest rates at historic lows," although he did caution that most of the applications for new lower-rate mortgages "are for refinancing." Priya David was assigned to CBS' Bright Spots series, whose role it is to find glimmers of growth amid the recession. "The glut of unsold homes is being reduced," was how she put it, inspiring condominium construction in New York City and possible rehiring of laid-off construction crews in Oregon.
Let's not get carried away. "Prices are still falling, meaning the market has not hit bottom"--CNBC's Cohn. "With prices still falling many buyers are waiting on the sidelines hoping for what they hope will be even better deals"--ABC's Stark.
CHARRED CARS The charred hulks of automobiles strewn across the Nevada desert had a sculptural beauty in Mark Strassmann's report on CBS but his topic was property crime not conceptual art. "The desert is a dumping ground for a red-hot scam," he explained, as car owners try to collect fraudulent claims from auto insurers. Strassmann showed us surveillance videotape of amateur arsonists at work--one had problems torching his Toyota; another was too successful with his Cadillac, setting himself on fire as well. The tip-off that a burned car is the work of an arsonist owner not a professional larcenist is that only amateurs leave valuable components inside the car. No self-respecting thief would leave the radio or the airbag or the electronics or the seats in the car before lighting the match.
THE WHITE HOUSE & THE BIG HOUSE NBC explicitly contradicted the optics of an African-American occupant of the Oval Office by assigning Ron Mott to cover The State of Black America, the annual report by the Urban League. Taking society as a whole--rather than its President alone--Mott delivered the dire news of a "slow but steady widening of the gap between whites and blacks" over the last eight years. The economy is an obvious source of disparity, with a black unemployment rate of 13.4% and a poverty rate three times higher than that for whites. Penal policy is the worst: African-Americans are "more than six times" as likely to be in prison than Caucasians.
PATHWAY TO FAILURE--OR MERELY WEAKENED BY FEAR & CORRUPTION? A couple of leftover questions from Tuesday's coverage of Mexico's War on Drugs were addressed by reporting on Secretary Hillary Rodham Clinton's diplomatic visit to Mexico City. The volume of annual narcotics imports from Mexico remains a puzzlement: Tuesday CBS' Seth Doane put the figure at between $18bn and $39bn; ABC's Brian Ross used $65bn; now NBC's Andrea Mitchell leans towards Doane's high end with $38bn. ABC's Ross also mentioned a federal law enforcement publication that warned that Mexico was on The Pathway to a Failed State. This is what CBS' Lara Logan found in response: "In the capital, authorities were eager to send another message, that Mexico is not in danger of becoming a failed state" before she added that "the safety of the capital is in stark contrast to the chaos and bloodshed in Mexico's border cities."
NBC's Mitchell quoted the Secretary of State as acknowledging that the United States "has to take responsibility for the insatiable appetite for drugs that is fueling the illegal trade." CBS' Logan, meanwhile, talked to Patricia Espinosa, the Foreign Minister of Mexico, who understated: "Militarizing the border is something that is seen as a very delicate issue." Logan talked to unidentified critics of President Felipe Calderon who interpreted his violent military crackdown against narcotraffickers as a sign that Calderon "has stirred up a hornets' nest and is only now discovering that the Mexican state is too weakened by fear and corruption to bring the situation under control."
JETS FOR JOBS The F-22 Raptor jet fleet "is as high as hi-tech gets," CBS' David Martin found as he tried out the cockpit simulator for Lockheed Martin's stealth fighter. The Pentagon has spent $262bn so far on the USAF fleet of 183 planes--"$339m for each one"--yet none has seen combat in either Iraq or Afghanistan. If the plane is not being used why is it not being canceled? "Political engineering," was Martin's explanation. Lockheed Martin parcels out contracts so that the production line includes 95,000 workers in 44 states. Martin showed us one example, Arc Technologies, which manufactures radar-proof coating in an old mill town in New England. "What started out as a fighter for the C21st has turned into an economic stimulus package."
RECREATIONAL VEHICLE IS PROMOTIONAL VEHICLE If you see a Recreational Vehicle custom-painted to display thousands of names on the road from San Marcos Tex to Fort Drum NY during the next few weeks, ABC's Bob Woodruff has the back story. The 4,000 names are those of the US military dead in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. The RV is a promotional vehicle for The American Widow Project, a documentary movie made by Taryn Davis, the widow of one of those 4,000. "Davis is hitting the open road, going door-to-door in military towns" to network with her fellow war widows.
HONOR ONCE ATTRACTED PROTESTS Observances for Medal of Honor Day at Arlington Cemetery inspired the closing feature on CBS and NBC. NBC anchor Brian Williams focused on John Finn, who will celebrate his hundredth birthday this July. Finn won his medal defending Pearl Harbor on that Date Which Will Live in Infamy. It was awarded in Hawaii, so when Finn attended the ceremonies along with 37 other medalists, it was his first visit to the White House. CBS' David Martin--in his second appearance in a single newscast--showed us White House pictures of Robert Howard's awards ceremony with Richard Nixon for his exploits during the Vietnam War. That event attracted protests: "He was a war at a time when Americans did not believe in either the war or its heroes."
CHARLES GIBSON, NASA FLACK "At the risk of sacrificing all objectivity it really is pretty cool," ABC anchor Charles Gibson gushed. Risk is an understatement. It is an absolute certainty that his puff piece for NASA at the end of his road trip to Houston was pure cheerleading. As Gibson reported Tuesday, NASA's voyage to the moon in 2020 is so far purely imaginary. Yet the space agency has already developed a prototype of the rover it wants to use there. The only plausible motive for building a vehicle for a potential trip eleven years in the fture is to use it for publicity and promotion. Enter anchor Gibson and his pitch for "the ultimate off-road vehicle."
"You are looking at one nervous television guy here, let me tell you," he exclaimed in excitement. "Push the stick to go forward. Twist the stick to turn. Stop and push the stick to the side and the wheels rotate in just seconds, allowing you to turn 90 degrees left or right. It can turn on a dime and, if you wondered, it does have cup holders."
