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TYNDALL HEADLINE: HIGHLIGHTS FROM MARCH 26, 2009
The historic floods along the Red River between Minnesota and North Dakota are serious enough to warrant Story of the Day treatment for the second straight day. The sandbag dikes along twelve miles of riverbank around Fargo are 43-feet tall. The problem is that the forecast for this weekend's flood crest is a 43-foot high water. With such a minimal margin of error, the city of 92,000 has prepared evacuation plans. NBC and CBS both led with the sandbagging effort. Oddly, ABC chose to kick off with another natural disaster, a tornado that touched down overnight in the small Mississippi town of Magee. The reason it was odd to convert a local storm into a national lead was that the twister killed nobody.
TYNDALL PICKS FOR MARCH 26, 2009: CLICK ON GRID ELEMENTS TO SEARCH FOR MATCHING ITEMS
FARGO’S FUTURE MAY BE A MATTER OF INCHES The historic floods along the Red River between Minnesota and North Dakota are serious enough to warrant Story of the Day treatment for the second straight day. The sandbag dikes along twelve miles of riverbank around Fargo are 43-feet tall. The problem is that the forecast for this weekend's flood crest is a 43-foot high water. With such a minimal margin of error, the city of 92,000 has prepared evacuation plans. NBC and CBS both led with the sandbagging effort. Oddly, ABC chose to kick off with another natural disaster, a tornado that touched down overnight in the small Mississippi town of Magee. The reason it was odd to convert a local storm into a national lead was that the twister killed nobody.
"Too much water everywhere," muttered ABC's Barbara Pinto. "The rising river forced the city to call on thousands of additional volunteers in a race to build the levees even higher." On NBC, Kevin Tibbles felt "a growing sense of urgency--the news the Red River will crest at higher than expected levels is pushing volunteers to their limits." CBS' Dean Reynolds explained that all that water was melting snow. It was "a winter with almost 25" more snow than usual, 67% above average."
Early Show weathercaster Dave Price boated into the countryside beyond the levees for CBS. "What is so difficult about navigating the waters at this point is that the current is normally just 2 mph but we are floating through someone's backyard and the current is coming at us at 20 mph, making getting people out of homes a job that only the Coast Guard can do." A case in point was the Frei household, who explained their plight from their roof: "Our dike broke at 6:45am--and big bang--and within 45 seconds there was water coming in the front door and it was up to waist level on the main floor within a matter of four or five minutes." A helicopter lifted the Freis to dry land.
NOT IN KANSAS The tornado that ABC chose to lead with was hardly headline fare even though Stephanie Sy showed us some stunning pictures of "cars smashed, about half a dozen homes behind me completely decimated. There were debris sightings from the tornado miles away in the next county." Anchor Brian Williams called up NBC's corporate sibling Weather Channel for a forecast. Stephanie Abrams showed us a map with a threat of tornadoes on Friday in a band across the Deep South from Oklahoma to the Florida Panhandle.
TURNING AWAY FROM TALIBAN Commander-in-Chief Barack Obama is ready to unveil his new strategy for Afghanistan and both NBC and CBS offered a preview. CBS had Chip Reid file from the White House, where he focused on plans to expand Afghan security forces to more than 210,000 by 2011. He quoted the President on 60 Minutes as insisting that "there has got to be an exit strategy" and countered with his skeptical unidentified sources: "They are not expecting any timetables for withdrawal." At the Pentagon, NBC's Jim Miklaszewski concentrated on the plan to refocus the military mission "to deter, disrupt and destroy al-Qaeda and its allies" in both Afghanistan and Pakistan. Miklaszewski was left to wonder: "What about the larger war against the Taliban?"
SHOULD AMERICAN NETWORKS QUOTE HAMAS? When Martin Fletcher covered allegations by Israeli soldiers for NBC last week that the Israel Defense Force engaged in atrocities during the fighting in the Gaza Strip over the New Year, he deviated from normal network news practice and included a soundbite from Hamas. Now ABC's Simon McGregor-Wood covers the same allegations--an old woman machine-gunned down in cold blood; officers' orders to kill unarmed pedestrians--but he explains why he considered Hamas unworthy of quoting. "Israelis expected accusations from the Palestinians, even from human rights groups, and they came: the army had used disproportionate force, had targeted civilians, even committed war crimes. The army denied it and the public accepted the denial."
Now that the IDF's official word is being challenged as mendacious, will ABC afford Hamas more credibility in the future?
GEITHNER CHANNELS THE MARQUIS OF QUEENSBURY Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner continues his busy week. Monday saw his PPIP plan to subsidize the purchase of toxic assets from banks. Tuesday he testified on Capitol Hill with Chairman Benjamin Bernanke. Now he unveils his outline for a financial "superregulator," as Nancy Cordes put it in her What It Means explainer on CBS, "a new entity to identify and oversee large financial institutions whose failure would pose a risk to the entire economic system." NBC's Tom Costello summed up Geithner's proposal as "policing risk across the entire system, with the authority to supervise and take over at-risk institutions" such as insurance companies, hedge funds, derivatives traders and private equity firms. He quoted Geithner as calling for an end to institutions that "cherry pick among competing regulators" and even found an approving word from Bill Seidman, a CNBC commentator and a committed "deregulator" during the Presidencies for Gerald Ford, Ronald Reagan and George Bush pere: "It is the difference between a prize fight and a barroom brawl--you have got to have some rules."
OBAMA DISSES STONER NETROOTS ABC was the only newscast to treat Barack Obama's so-called virtual town hall meeting as newsworthy--the q-&-a held at the White House with an online national audience. "In lieu of boarding carbon-unfriendly Air Force One to hold town hall meetings around the country, the President brought the mountain to Mohammed," was how Jake Tapper put it. Some 93,000 citizens submitted questions as e-mails or as videostreams. The session's major news was made by marijuana advocates, proposing legalization and taxation as an economic stimulus. Tapper quoted Obama's supercilious response: "I do not know what this says about the online audience. The answer is no."
In a week when Mexico's narcoviolence has been covered by six separate reports, we are still waiting serious coverage of the pros and cons of marijuana decriminalization on the nightly newscasts.
THE WIRE ABC's Justice Department correspondent Pierre Thomas tried to attach the news hook of federal fiscal stimulus spending to undercover videotapes he obtained from the FBI. A Closer Look suggested that graft will increase as municipalities have more funds to disburse. His trio of examples out of 2430 corruption cases nationwide did little to support that conjecture. There was only one example of kickbacks--for a school construction project in Maryland's Prince George's County--and that amounted to a mere $1,000 payment. A second non-stimulus-related example involved a Louisiana judge bribed to shorten prison sentences. The star turn involved a sting operation by a pretend moneylaunderer not an actual criminal. The informant nailed a Tennessee sheriff named Billy Long but, watching the video, he seemed to be auditioning for a sequel to The Wire more than posing as a hardened narco. "The Lord is my shepherd," he joked about all the dollars he was pretending to handle. "He makes me lie down in green pastures."
ADULTERATED GYPSUM Drywall is the latest import from China to be a target of the Consumer Product Safety Commission. Adulterated construction wallboard--not fabricated from pure gypsum--is suspected of causing indoor air pollution in as many as 60,000 homes nationwide. NBC's Mark Potter, filing from Miami, told us that most of the complaints are from Florida, where hurricane repairs and a building boom combined to create a drywall shortage between 2004 and 2007. The shortage, in turn, led to a surge of imports, especially from Knauf Plasterboard, based in Tianjin. CBS labeled Armen Keteyian's report on the same problem an Investigation. The addition of sulfurous chemicals to the inert gypsum can lead to corrosion of electrical wiring inside walls and the emission of noxious fumes. Yet, Keteyian told us, "there are no federal standards for how drywall is manufactured." Let the lawsuits flow.
SEX & THE JUNGLE Lucky Dan Harris landed a trip for ABC with the World Wildlife Fund to the jungles of the Congo where a colony of bonobo apes--maybe 2,000 of them--has recently been discovered. "Hippie chimpanzees," was the nickname Harris repeated. "Bonobos are believed to resolve many of their conflicts over things like food and territory not through violence but through sex. The common chimpanzee can be ferociously violent but bonobos, who let females run the show, are much more peaceful."
BRINGING HOME AUDIO TASTE TESTS Yes, she trotted out some pigging-out lines--"the lowly pork belly product is suddenly riding high on the hog"--but the most fun about Kelly Cobiella's report on the newfound popularity of bacon for CBS was the placement of her microphone. Her taste test at The Grateful Palate, the gourmet bacon mail order firm in California, fairly crackled as she crunched into a crispy rasher. Demand for bacon is apparently sizzling, including bacon cupcakes, bacon doughnuts, bacon candy, bacon popcorn, bacon brittle--"even bacon soap."
"Too much water everywhere," muttered ABC's Barbara Pinto. "The rising river forced the city to call on thousands of additional volunteers in a race to build the levees even higher." On NBC, Kevin Tibbles felt "a growing sense of urgency--the news the Red River will crest at higher than expected levels is pushing volunteers to their limits." CBS' Dean Reynolds explained that all that water was melting snow. It was "a winter with almost 25" more snow than usual, 67% above average."
Early Show weathercaster Dave Price boated into the countryside beyond the levees for CBS. "What is so difficult about navigating the waters at this point is that the current is normally just 2 mph but we are floating through someone's backyard and the current is coming at us at 20 mph, making getting people out of homes a job that only the Coast Guard can do." A case in point was the Frei household, who explained their plight from their roof: "Our dike broke at 6:45am--and big bang--and within 45 seconds there was water coming in the front door and it was up to waist level on the main floor within a matter of four or five minutes." A helicopter lifted the Freis to dry land.
NOT IN KANSAS The tornado that ABC chose to lead with was hardly headline fare even though Stephanie Sy showed us some stunning pictures of "cars smashed, about half a dozen homes behind me completely decimated. There were debris sightings from the tornado miles away in the next county." Anchor Brian Williams called up NBC's corporate sibling Weather Channel for a forecast. Stephanie Abrams showed us a map with a threat of tornadoes on Friday in a band across the Deep South from Oklahoma to the Florida Panhandle.
TURNING AWAY FROM TALIBAN Commander-in-Chief Barack Obama is ready to unveil his new strategy for Afghanistan and both NBC and CBS offered a preview. CBS had Chip Reid file from the White House, where he focused on plans to expand Afghan security forces to more than 210,000 by 2011. He quoted the President on 60 Minutes as insisting that "there has got to be an exit strategy" and countered with his skeptical unidentified sources: "They are not expecting any timetables for withdrawal." At the Pentagon, NBC's Jim Miklaszewski concentrated on the plan to refocus the military mission "to deter, disrupt and destroy al-Qaeda and its allies" in both Afghanistan and Pakistan. Miklaszewski was left to wonder: "What about the larger war against the Taliban?"
SHOULD AMERICAN NETWORKS QUOTE HAMAS? When Martin Fletcher covered allegations by Israeli soldiers for NBC last week that the Israel Defense Force engaged in atrocities during the fighting in the Gaza Strip over the New Year, he deviated from normal network news practice and included a soundbite from Hamas. Now ABC's Simon McGregor-Wood covers the same allegations--an old woman machine-gunned down in cold blood; officers' orders to kill unarmed pedestrians--but he explains why he considered Hamas unworthy of quoting. "Israelis expected accusations from the Palestinians, even from human rights groups, and they came: the army had used disproportionate force, had targeted civilians, even committed war crimes. The army denied it and the public accepted the denial."
Now that the IDF's official word is being challenged as mendacious, will ABC afford Hamas more credibility in the future?
GEITHNER CHANNELS THE MARQUIS OF QUEENSBURY Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner continues his busy week. Monday saw his PPIP plan to subsidize the purchase of toxic assets from banks. Tuesday he testified on Capitol Hill with Chairman Benjamin Bernanke. Now he unveils his outline for a financial "superregulator," as Nancy Cordes put it in her What It Means explainer on CBS, "a new entity to identify and oversee large financial institutions whose failure would pose a risk to the entire economic system." NBC's Tom Costello summed up Geithner's proposal as "policing risk across the entire system, with the authority to supervise and take over at-risk institutions" such as insurance companies, hedge funds, derivatives traders and private equity firms. He quoted Geithner as calling for an end to institutions that "cherry pick among competing regulators" and even found an approving word from Bill Seidman, a CNBC commentator and a committed "deregulator" during the Presidencies for Gerald Ford, Ronald Reagan and George Bush pere: "It is the difference between a prize fight and a barroom brawl--you have got to have some rules."
OBAMA DISSES STONER NETROOTS ABC was the only newscast to treat Barack Obama's so-called virtual town hall meeting as newsworthy--the q-&-a held at the White House with an online national audience. "In lieu of boarding carbon-unfriendly Air Force One to hold town hall meetings around the country, the President brought the mountain to Mohammed," was how Jake Tapper put it. Some 93,000 citizens submitted questions as e-mails or as videostreams. The session's major news was made by marijuana advocates, proposing legalization and taxation as an economic stimulus. Tapper quoted Obama's supercilious response: "I do not know what this says about the online audience. The answer is no."
In a week when Mexico's narcoviolence has been covered by six separate reports, we are still waiting serious coverage of the pros and cons of marijuana decriminalization on the nightly newscasts.
THE WIRE ABC's Justice Department correspondent Pierre Thomas tried to attach the news hook of federal fiscal stimulus spending to undercover videotapes he obtained from the FBI. A Closer Look suggested that graft will increase as municipalities have more funds to disburse. His trio of examples out of 2430 corruption cases nationwide did little to support that conjecture. There was only one example of kickbacks--for a school construction project in Maryland's Prince George's County--and that amounted to a mere $1,000 payment. A second non-stimulus-related example involved a Louisiana judge bribed to shorten prison sentences. The star turn involved a sting operation by a pretend moneylaunderer not an actual criminal. The informant nailed a Tennessee sheriff named Billy Long but, watching the video, he seemed to be auditioning for a sequel to The Wire more than posing as a hardened narco. "The Lord is my shepherd," he joked about all the dollars he was pretending to handle. "He makes me lie down in green pastures."
ADULTERATED GYPSUM Drywall is the latest import from China to be a target of the Consumer Product Safety Commission. Adulterated construction wallboard--not fabricated from pure gypsum--is suspected of causing indoor air pollution in as many as 60,000 homes nationwide. NBC's Mark Potter, filing from Miami, told us that most of the complaints are from Florida, where hurricane repairs and a building boom combined to create a drywall shortage between 2004 and 2007. The shortage, in turn, led to a surge of imports, especially from Knauf Plasterboard, based in Tianjin. CBS labeled Armen Keteyian's report on the same problem an Investigation. The addition of sulfurous chemicals to the inert gypsum can lead to corrosion of electrical wiring inside walls and the emission of noxious fumes. Yet, Keteyian told us, "there are no federal standards for how drywall is manufactured." Let the lawsuits flow.
SEX & THE JUNGLE Lucky Dan Harris landed a trip for ABC with the World Wildlife Fund to the jungles of the Congo where a colony of bonobo apes--maybe 2,000 of them--has recently been discovered. "Hippie chimpanzees," was the nickname Harris repeated. "Bonobos are believed to resolve many of their conflicts over things like food and territory not through violence but through sex. The common chimpanzee can be ferociously violent but bonobos, who let females run the show, are much more peaceful."
BRINGING HOME AUDIO TASTE TESTS Yes, she trotted out some pigging-out lines--"the lowly pork belly product is suddenly riding high on the hog"--but the most fun about Kelly Cobiella's report on the newfound popularity of bacon for CBS was the placement of her microphone. Her taste test at The Grateful Palate, the gourmet bacon mail order firm in California, fairly crackled as she crunched into a crispy rasher. Demand for bacon is apparently sizzling, including bacon cupcakes, bacon doughnuts, bacon candy, bacon popcorn, bacon brittle--"even bacon soap."
