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TYNDALL HEADLINE: HIGHLIGHTS FROM MARCH 31, 2009
The three network news anchors and the President of the United States arrived in London. Barack Obama was there for the G20 Financial Summit, a meeting of world leaders on global economic stimulus and financial regulation convened by Prime Minister Gordon Brown. The anchors were there to cover the talks. The run-up to anti-capitalist protests in the City of London on April Fool's Day and Thursday's one-day summit was the Story of the Day and the lead item on ABC and CBS. NBC led from Detroit, where General Motors grapples with its looming bankruptcy.
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NETWORK ANCHORS BIGFOOT LONDON SUMMIT The three network news anchors and the President of the United States arrived in London. Barack Obama was there for the G20 Financial Summit, a meeting of world leaders on global economic stimulus and financial regulation convened by Prime Minister Gordon Brown. The anchors were there to cover the talks. The run-up to anti-capitalist protests in the City of London on April Fool's Day and Thursday's one-day summit was the Story of the Day and the lead item on ABC and CBS. NBC led from Detroit, where General Motors grapples with its looming bankruptcy.
The White House press corps went along on the London trip too. CBS' Chip Reid and NBC's Chuck Todd both itemized Obama's agenda. Todd called it Obama's "first overseas trip" as President, presumably relying on the technicality that one does not travel over a sea when one goes abroad to Canada. "Obama hopes to use his immense popularity with the European public to persuade European leaders," was how Todd put it. CBS' Reid concurred that the President is "enormously popular here in London and all throughout Europe."
ABC's man at the White House focused on the G20 agenda. "A showdown awaits," Jake Tapper warned. "Germany and other European countries are leading the pushback" against the President's proposal for a coordinated stimulus for the global economy. Tapper quoted an unidentified White House aide as "invoking the Great Depression as an example of what can happen when the world's industrialized nations do not come to an agreement to combat an economic crisis." The European counterargument was that they had "already passed stimulus packages and with more extensive social spending programs these countries do not want to take on even more debt." On CBS, anchor Katie Couric reminded us of the contrasting history lessons of the C20th: the United States remembers the Great Depression and seeks government stimulus; Germany remembers pumping "massive amounts of cash into the economy…they fear inflation more than almost anything."
ABC's Tapper also listed the protests by President Nicolas Sarkozy of France that the Obama-Brown plan to regulate financial capitalism is not strong enough and a proposal that a new international currency replace the "once almighty" dollar as the global standard. CBS' Couric predicted that Obama's meetings with the leaders of China and Russia may be "the most challenging and delicate task for a President with limited foreign policy experience." She concluded that the United States "is watching its importance in the world decline significantly."
STREET FIGHTING MEN Amid the gloom of global crisis and the jockeying for global leadership, ABC's Nick Watt allowed himself some fun as London's bobbies geared up for Financial Fool's Day. Thousands of opponents of capitalism are expected to picket the capital's financial center. Scotland Yard has advised the City's bankers "to go to work incognito." The dapper Watt decided to offer a tongue-in-cheek show-&-tell: "Obviously lose the handmade suit and the extremely expensive tie"--Watt's was a tasteful shade of silver--"but what does a dressed-down banker actually look like? He would probably look a bit like this"--Ralph Lauren tennis shirt and chinos--"and I think I am still a target. Now I just look like I am on Nantucket spending my fabulous wealth!"
ROLLING RECESSION As Tyndall Report commented last month, "you know the economic news is bad whenever ABC rolls out its wheel format to tell you about it." In February, its wheels covered domestic unemployment. From London, we were introduced to a global rotation of female ABCNewsers to share the penury the G20 is supposed to remedy. Clarissa Ward kicked off from Tokyo where "losing your job means losing your company housing"…on to Sydney and Margaret Conley where garment work is being outsourced to China…next Karen Russo in India's diamond center where demand has dried up and hundreds of factories have been closed…the slump in safari tourism in Kenya means that wildlife reserves will no longer be protected from poachers, Dana Hughes warned…and Lama Hasan concluded the tour in Budapest where the forint's devaluation threatens the entire nation of Hungary with bankruptcy.
By coincidence, NBC's one-man European recession report by Jim Maceda happened to begin with Hungary's looming bankruptcy, before he moved on to the bursting of the construction bubble in Spain, "the Florida of Europe." So many laid-off construction workers have been forced back to agricultural labor that the Spanish government is offering migrant workers $14,000 each to return to their homelands to free up farm jobs.
JACQUI’S HUSBAND LIKES TO WATCH JACQUI SEXY CBS filed a couple of English backgrounders to break the gloomy economic mood. Sheila MacVicar covered an expense account scandal at the House of Commons, where padded claims by Members of Parliament have been leaked. Amid all the double dipping and inflated mileage, sex was bound to qualify for headlines. The husband of Home Secretary Jacqui Smith put in a reimbursement claim for a couple of hardcore movie rentals: "I do not mind him watching. I do mind him spending my taxes," commented the civic-minded X-rated star, whose name just happened to be Jacqui Smith too.
Anchor Katie Couric previewed Barack Obama's visit to Buckingham Palace to assess the odds of his stumbling into a breach of protocol with Her Majesty. Queen Elizabeth II has met in person with ten of the last eleven Presidents of the United States--odd man out LBJ--and Couric ran down a sedate blooper reel. Gerald Ford's state dinner in 1976 stood out: "Just as the Queen began to dance, the Marine Band struck up The Lady is a Tramp."
THE HAGUE IS THE WORLD’S BACK CHANNEL The day's heavy foreign policy news agenda continued in The Hague, where Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton convened a conference on the reconstruction of Afghanistan. CBS' Lara Logan and NBC's Andrea Mitchell covered the proceedings, although, as Logan put it, it was "supposed to be all about Afghanistan and ended up being about much more." There were informal talks between the United States and Iran and feelers from Russia to the State Department about possible progress on terrorism, Iran, Afghanistan and "even their biggest disagreement, missile defense," NBC's Mitchell reported. CBS' Logan noted that Madame Secretary was even negotiating on North Korea."
And Afghanistan? Its "illegal opium trade provides 90% of the world's supply," CBS' Logan reminded us.
DETROIT MUST DOWNSIZE The day's major domestic story was the follow-up to Monday's federal deadlines for General Motors and Chrysler to put their business plans in order. Both ABC and NBC followed GM's new boss Frederick Henderson back to Detroit. "The old GM is dead and a new one is emerging," CNBC's Phil LeBeau announced on NBC, "the goal--a smaller, leaner and profitable company." LeBeau envisioned a GM comprising of just two divisions--Cadillac and Chevrolet--with hundreds of dealerships dropped and European operations scaled back. ABC's Chris Bury heard the "bankruptcy timebomb ticking" in Motor City. He saw "more plant closings, more cuts in wages and healthcare."
ABC's Bury cautioned that "none of the frantic efforts under way matter much if Americans do not start buying more cars." In 2005, CBS' Anthony Mason reminded us, the nationwide market for new vehicles was almost 17m units; it is now on track for a 9m annual rate. Mason summarized "a new package of buyer incentives" including protection in the event of layoffs, guaranteed trade-in values when new purchases are made, tax deductions and a possible plan to subsidize the exchange of "old gas-guzzling clunkers for new fuel-efficient cars."
GOING TO SCHOOL CAN DAMAGE YOUR BRAIN NBC's Rehema Ellis reported that the Environmental Protection Agency has identified 62 public school buildings that stand in the shadow of industrial polluters. The EPA is embarking on a three-month project to monitor the air quality at these sites, on the look out for toxic levels of benzene, manganese and chromium. Ellis warned of the chemicals' dangers in children because their bodies are still developing: "Risks include organ damage, cancer or impaired brain development."
YOUR WORLD ON CONFICKER ABC's Elisabeth Leamy found a personal computer whose virus protection had not been updated and went surfing around the World Wide Web. Within 15 minutes the Conficker worm had contacted her via a computer in Alabama; after 40 minutes the worm turned up from China. Next she tried opening an e-mail attachment from an unknown source. "Immediately a malicious program lodged itself on our computer, turned off our security system to clear a path for itself, then tried to communicate with its master." Leamy was now cog in the machine, a mere component in a botnet supercomputer, ready "to send 80% of the world's spam, to steal people's financial IDs, and to crack codes that make massive data breaches."
UPDATE: Tyndall Report's old friend Aaron Barnhart at TV Barn (hat tip TVNewser) points out that when Lesley Stahl covered the Conficker on 60 Minutes, she failed to mention that only Windows-operated personal computers were vulnerable to the worm. ABC's Leamy committed the same sin of omission.
The White House press corps went along on the London trip too. CBS' Chip Reid and NBC's Chuck Todd both itemized Obama's agenda. Todd called it Obama's "first overseas trip" as President, presumably relying on the technicality that one does not travel over a sea when one goes abroad to Canada. "Obama hopes to use his immense popularity with the European public to persuade European leaders," was how Todd put it. CBS' Reid concurred that the President is "enormously popular here in London and all throughout Europe."
ABC's man at the White House focused on the G20 agenda. "A showdown awaits," Jake Tapper warned. "Germany and other European countries are leading the pushback" against the President's proposal for a coordinated stimulus for the global economy. Tapper quoted an unidentified White House aide as "invoking the Great Depression as an example of what can happen when the world's industrialized nations do not come to an agreement to combat an economic crisis." The European counterargument was that they had "already passed stimulus packages and with more extensive social spending programs these countries do not want to take on even more debt." On CBS, anchor Katie Couric reminded us of the contrasting history lessons of the C20th: the United States remembers the Great Depression and seeks government stimulus; Germany remembers pumping "massive amounts of cash into the economy…they fear inflation more than almost anything."
ABC's Tapper also listed the protests by President Nicolas Sarkozy of France that the Obama-Brown plan to regulate financial capitalism is not strong enough and a proposal that a new international currency replace the "once almighty" dollar as the global standard. CBS' Couric predicted that Obama's meetings with the leaders of China and Russia may be "the most challenging and delicate task for a President with limited foreign policy experience." She concluded that the United States "is watching its importance in the world decline significantly."
STREET FIGHTING MEN Amid the gloom of global crisis and the jockeying for global leadership, ABC's Nick Watt allowed himself some fun as London's bobbies geared up for Financial Fool's Day. Thousands of opponents of capitalism are expected to picket the capital's financial center. Scotland Yard has advised the City's bankers "to go to work incognito." The dapper Watt decided to offer a tongue-in-cheek show-&-tell: "Obviously lose the handmade suit and the extremely expensive tie"--Watt's was a tasteful shade of silver--"but what does a dressed-down banker actually look like? He would probably look a bit like this"--Ralph Lauren tennis shirt and chinos--"and I think I am still a target. Now I just look like I am on Nantucket spending my fabulous wealth!"
ROLLING RECESSION As Tyndall Report commented last month, "you know the economic news is bad whenever ABC rolls out its wheel format to tell you about it." In February, its wheels covered domestic unemployment. From London, we were introduced to a global rotation of female ABCNewsers to share the penury the G20 is supposed to remedy. Clarissa Ward kicked off from Tokyo where "losing your job means losing your company housing"…on to Sydney and Margaret Conley where garment work is being outsourced to China…next Karen Russo in India's diamond center where demand has dried up and hundreds of factories have been closed…the slump in safari tourism in Kenya means that wildlife reserves will no longer be protected from poachers, Dana Hughes warned…and Lama Hasan concluded the tour in Budapest where the forint's devaluation threatens the entire nation of Hungary with bankruptcy.
By coincidence, NBC's one-man European recession report by Jim Maceda happened to begin with Hungary's looming bankruptcy, before he moved on to the bursting of the construction bubble in Spain, "the Florida of Europe." So many laid-off construction workers have been forced back to agricultural labor that the Spanish government is offering migrant workers $14,000 each to return to their homelands to free up farm jobs.
JACQUI’S HUSBAND LIKES TO WATCH JACQUI SEXY CBS filed a couple of English backgrounders to break the gloomy economic mood. Sheila MacVicar covered an expense account scandal at the House of Commons, where padded claims by Members of Parliament have been leaked. Amid all the double dipping and inflated mileage, sex was bound to qualify for headlines. The husband of Home Secretary Jacqui Smith put in a reimbursement claim for a couple of hardcore movie rentals: "I do not mind him watching. I do mind him spending my taxes," commented the civic-minded X-rated star, whose name just happened to be Jacqui Smith too.
Anchor Katie Couric previewed Barack Obama's visit to Buckingham Palace to assess the odds of his stumbling into a breach of protocol with Her Majesty. Queen Elizabeth II has met in person with ten of the last eleven Presidents of the United States--odd man out LBJ--and Couric ran down a sedate blooper reel. Gerald Ford's state dinner in 1976 stood out: "Just as the Queen began to dance, the Marine Band struck up The Lady is a Tramp."
THE HAGUE IS THE WORLD’S BACK CHANNEL The day's heavy foreign policy news agenda continued in The Hague, where Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton convened a conference on the reconstruction of Afghanistan. CBS' Lara Logan and NBC's Andrea Mitchell covered the proceedings, although, as Logan put it, it was "supposed to be all about Afghanistan and ended up being about much more." There were informal talks between the United States and Iran and feelers from Russia to the State Department about possible progress on terrorism, Iran, Afghanistan and "even their biggest disagreement, missile defense," NBC's Mitchell reported. CBS' Logan noted that Madame Secretary was even negotiating on North Korea."
And Afghanistan? Its "illegal opium trade provides 90% of the world's supply," CBS' Logan reminded us.
DETROIT MUST DOWNSIZE The day's major domestic story was the follow-up to Monday's federal deadlines for General Motors and Chrysler to put their business plans in order. Both ABC and NBC followed GM's new boss Frederick Henderson back to Detroit. "The old GM is dead and a new one is emerging," CNBC's Phil LeBeau announced on NBC, "the goal--a smaller, leaner and profitable company." LeBeau envisioned a GM comprising of just two divisions--Cadillac and Chevrolet--with hundreds of dealerships dropped and European operations scaled back. ABC's Chris Bury heard the "bankruptcy timebomb ticking" in Motor City. He saw "more plant closings, more cuts in wages and healthcare."
ABC's Bury cautioned that "none of the frantic efforts under way matter much if Americans do not start buying more cars." In 2005, CBS' Anthony Mason reminded us, the nationwide market for new vehicles was almost 17m units; it is now on track for a 9m annual rate. Mason summarized "a new package of buyer incentives" including protection in the event of layoffs, guaranteed trade-in values when new purchases are made, tax deductions and a possible plan to subsidize the exchange of "old gas-guzzling clunkers for new fuel-efficient cars."
GOING TO SCHOOL CAN DAMAGE YOUR BRAIN NBC's Rehema Ellis reported that the Environmental Protection Agency has identified 62 public school buildings that stand in the shadow of industrial polluters. The EPA is embarking on a three-month project to monitor the air quality at these sites, on the look out for toxic levels of benzene, manganese and chromium. Ellis warned of the chemicals' dangers in children because their bodies are still developing: "Risks include organ damage, cancer or impaired brain development."
YOUR WORLD ON CONFICKER ABC's Elisabeth Leamy found a personal computer whose virus protection had not been updated and went surfing around the World Wide Web. Within 15 minutes the Conficker worm had contacted her via a computer in Alabama; after 40 minutes the worm turned up from China. Next she tried opening an e-mail attachment from an unknown source. "Immediately a malicious program lodged itself on our computer, turned off our security system to clear a path for itself, then tried to communicate with its master." Leamy was now cog in the machine, a mere component in a botnet supercomputer, ready "to send 80% of the world's spam, to steal people's financial IDs, and to crack codes that make massive data breaches."
UPDATE: Tyndall Report's old friend Aaron Barnhart at TV Barn (hat tip TVNewser) points out that when Lesley Stahl covered the Conficker on 60 Minutes, she failed to mention that only Windows-operated personal computers were vulnerable to the worm. ABC's Leamy committed the same sin of omission.
