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TYNDALL HEADLINE: HIGHLIGHTS FROM APRIL 10, 2009
Good Friday was enough of a holiday for the normal priorities of the news agenda to be set aside. There was not a single full report on either the economy or politics. Twin natural disasters headed all three newscasts: they each led with a line of tornadoes--the Story of the Day--that plowed through Arkansas and Tennessee; they followed up with wild brush fires that swept across the southern plains. In all, eight people were killed. ABC anchor Charles Gibson made it a long holiday weekend, taking the day off with his longtime morning co-anchor Diane Sawyer occupying the World News chair.
TYNDALL PICKS FOR APRIL 10, 2009: CLICK ON GRID ELEMENTS TO SEARCH FOR MATCHING ITEMS
POLITICS & ECONOMY TAKE LONG HOLIDAY WEEKEND Good Friday was enough of a holiday for the normal priorities of the news agenda to be set aside. There was not a single full report on either the economy or politics. Twin natural disasters headed all three newscasts: they each led with a line of tornadoes--the Story of the Day--that plowed through Arkansas and Tennessee; they followed up with wild brush fires that swept across the southern plains. In all, eight people were killed. ABC anchor Charles Gibson made it a long holiday weekend, taking the day off with his longtime morning co-anchor Diane Sawyer occupying the World News chair.
The killer twisters touched down in Mena Ark and Murfreesboro Tenn. ABC's Steve Osunsami and CBS' Kelly Cobiella both filed from Mena, where the tornado hit on Thursday evening. "Most of the injured were at the Masonic Lodge for a meeting," CBS' Cobiella told us as she displayed its debris. Residents recounted to ABC's Osunsami that "the sky turned green." NBC had Ron Mott in Cartersville Ga, which was in the path of further devastation. "It has been an awful day indeed," Mott declared. Hailstones, he reported, had been "the size of apples." Atlanta-based meteorologist Stephanie Abrams of the Weather Channel, a sibling network of NBC, counted 17 separate tornadoes in four states in a system that stretched from Kentucky to Alabama.
The drought-parched grasslands of Oklahoma and Texas provided fuel for brush fires; 70 mph winds provided energy. Together they scorched 100,000 acres. NBC's Jay Gray showed us the NASA satellite picture. At times, he reported, the flames leapt 100 feet in the air. "Flames and ash were carried high into the sky and rained down on more fields, fueling at least 30 dangerous wildfires," was how Don Teague described it on CBS. More than 100 homes were destroyed in a single suburb of Oklahoma City. "Another man's home was destroyed while he was attending his wife's funeral." ABC's Ryan Owens (at the tail of the Osunsami videostream) found relief at hand--"a 100% chance of rain on Easter Sunday."
L’AQUILA LOOKS LIKE A GHOST TOWN Natural disaster had started Holy Week too. NBC was the only network to assign a reporter to follow up on the earthquake in Abruzzo, where the death toll now stands at 289. Italy made Good Friday a national day of mourning and a mass funeral was held in L'Aquila attended by 5,000 worshippers. Martin Fletcher showed us displaced residents watching the ceremonies on television in their tents. "Even the clown took time off." The children looked forward to their Easter treats, "eggs, chocolate and toys--and pushing aside the trauma of the night the house fell down."
PIRATES COVERED FROM PENTAGON Covering the fate of Richard Phillips, master of the Maersk Line's Alabama, continues to be assigned to the network's Pentagon correspondents. Phillips is held hostage by four Somali pirates in his ship's lifeboat on the high seas of the Indian Ocean under the watchful eye of the USNavy destroyer Bainbridge. The Pentagon hands each recounted an overnight drama of a foiled escape attempt. The captain freed himself, dived into the ocean and tried to swim to safety, only to be dragged back.
Given that none of the correspondents was an eyewitness, they each rendered the escapade in vivid detail. NBC's Jim Miklaszewski called it "daring" as the hostage "jumped from the rear hatch…almost immediately one of the pirates fired one or more shots from an AK-47 at or near Phillips." ABC's Martha Raddatz told us that one of the pirates "jumped into the water and dragged the captain back to the boat." CBS' David Martin said that "sailors aboard the Bainbridge were close enough to see the whole thing but not to help."
That drama aside, NBC's Miklaszewski showed us that the lifeboat "is more like a capsule than a boat. It can be closed up watertight making an armed rescue mission almost impossible." ABC's Raddatz pointed to a pair of "pirate mother ships, previously hijacked vessels" heading for the scene. A trio of USNavy warships has been ordered to "stop the lifeboat from linking up with the pirate mother ships but that will not be easy. The navy vessels do not maneuver quickly." CBS' Martin commented that the United States "is the musclebound superpower. It has overwhelming military force but is unable to use it against a handful of pirates."
CONFICKER ONLY HAS EYES FOR WINDOWS TV Barn's Aaron Barnhart will be happy to learn that the feared Windows conspiracy of silence has been broken by CBS' Daniel Sieberg. In his update on the Conficker worm. Sieberg does not know--the worm "may be used" to send spam or to launch attacks on Websites or to steal passwords or to drain bank accounts, whatever. He listed various ways in which personal computer users with Windows systems could check if their machine has been invaded before reassuring the rest of us: "Conficker targets Microsoft computers not Apple. Now Microsoft is offering a $250,000 bounty for the capture of the cybercriminals responsible for this global assault."
DIANE DEBUNKS FIREARMS DEFENSE ABC substitute anchor Diane Sawyer carved out time to cross-promote her own 20/20 primetime documentary If I Only Had a Gun. Sawyer cited statistics that shooting sprees have killed 53 people nationwide just in the last month before raising the question: "Could an ordinary citizen count on being able to defend himself if he only had a gun?" She narrated footage of a simulation at Pennsylvania's Muhlenberg College--"Suddenly! The room under attack!"--that demonstrated how vulnerable one is even when carrying a concealed weapon. Then she offered a physiological explanation: "Your body undermines your decisions and your accuracy…Your hands have less blood. They are less dexterous. Your reactions are delayed."
MOTHER’S MILK AND FATHER’S SPERM Into the vacuum left by the lack of public policy stories entered--babies. CNN's Sanjay Gupta filed an Eye on Medicine feature for CBS about neonatal innovations to keep premature babies alive. Those at risk infants need to things: to put on weight quickly and to avoid illness, especially the life-threatening gastrointestinal infection called NEC. That is Necrotizing Entero-Colitis. A single solution addresses both problems: feed them mother's milk, "even babies who cannot swallow."
Stella Biblis, conceived by artificial insemination, was John McKenzie's baby story on ABC. Her father Christopher contracted leukemia when he was a teenager so he deposited healthy sperm into the bank before undergoing radiation therapy. The radiation saved his life but killed his sperm so the only babymakers he had left were those in deep freeze. Biblis was married last year. He made a sperm withdrawal and thawed out his 22-year-old squigglers. "Amazingly" on their first attempt they performed as required.
BAT-MITZVAH CHUTZPAH At the other end of the lifespan, CBS' Assignment America took us to a bat-mitzvah ceremony in Cleveland. Until the '60s, Steve Hartman reminded us, "no girl in their right mind would have had the chutzpah" even to consider such a ceremony. Their brothers were bar-mitzvah'd; a girl's job was to assist the boy. So an entire older generation of Jewish women is alive that has never officially come of age. Hartman was a witness at the Menorah Park synagogue as a class of great-grandmothers, minimum age 89, "finally became adults in their Jewish faith."
HUNDRED PERCENT HUSKIES ABC worked Diane Sawyer hard during her substitute anchor chores. In addition to her firearms feature, she was also responsible for the Persons of the Week, the winners of March Madness, the Lady Huskies of the University of Connecticut. Sawyer checked off a pair of stellar statistics for the NCAA Tournament champions: the basketball team completed its season undefeated, 39 wins and zero losses; and coach Geno Auriemma has never had a single player fail academically, a "100% graduation rate."
The killer twisters touched down in Mena Ark and Murfreesboro Tenn. ABC's Steve Osunsami and CBS' Kelly Cobiella both filed from Mena, where the tornado hit on Thursday evening. "Most of the injured were at the Masonic Lodge for a meeting," CBS' Cobiella told us as she displayed its debris. Residents recounted to ABC's Osunsami that "the sky turned green." NBC had Ron Mott in Cartersville Ga, which was in the path of further devastation. "It has been an awful day indeed," Mott declared. Hailstones, he reported, had been "the size of apples." Atlanta-based meteorologist Stephanie Abrams of the Weather Channel, a sibling network of NBC, counted 17 separate tornadoes in four states in a system that stretched from Kentucky to Alabama.
The drought-parched grasslands of Oklahoma and Texas provided fuel for brush fires; 70 mph winds provided energy. Together they scorched 100,000 acres. NBC's Jay Gray showed us the NASA satellite picture. At times, he reported, the flames leapt 100 feet in the air. "Flames and ash were carried high into the sky and rained down on more fields, fueling at least 30 dangerous wildfires," was how Don Teague described it on CBS. More than 100 homes were destroyed in a single suburb of Oklahoma City. "Another man's home was destroyed while he was attending his wife's funeral." ABC's Ryan Owens (at the tail of the Osunsami videostream) found relief at hand--"a 100% chance of rain on Easter Sunday."
L’AQUILA LOOKS LIKE A GHOST TOWN Natural disaster had started Holy Week too. NBC was the only network to assign a reporter to follow up on the earthquake in Abruzzo, where the death toll now stands at 289. Italy made Good Friday a national day of mourning and a mass funeral was held in L'Aquila attended by 5,000 worshippers. Martin Fletcher showed us displaced residents watching the ceremonies on television in their tents. "Even the clown took time off." The children looked forward to their Easter treats, "eggs, chocolate and toys--and pushing aside the trauma of the night the house fell down."
PIRATES COVERED FROM PENTAGON Covering the fate of Richard Phillips, master of the Maersk Line's Alabama, continues to be assigned to the network's Pentagon correspondents. Phillips is held hostage by four Somali pirates in his ship's lifeboat on the high seas of the Indian Ocean under the watchful eye of the USNavy destroyer Bainbridge. The Pentagon hands each recounted an overnight drama of a foiled escape attempt. The captain freed himself, dived into the ocean and tried to swim to safety, only to be dragged back.
Given that none of the correspondents was an eyewitness, they each rendered the escapade in vivid detail. NBC's Jim Miklaszewski called it "daring" as the hostage "jumped from the rear hatch…almost immediately one of the pirates fired one or more shots from an AK-47 at or near Phillips." ABC's Martha Raddatz told us that one of the pirates "jumped into the water and dragged the captain back to the boat." CBS' David Martin said that "sailors aboard the Bainbridge were close enough to see the whole thing but not to help."
That drama aside, NBC's Miklaszewski showed us that the lifeboat "is more like a capsule than a boat. It can be closed up watertight making an armed rescue mission almost impossible." ABC's Raddatz pointed to a pair of "pirate mother ships, previously hijacked vessels" heading for the scene. A trio of USNavy warships has been ordered to "stop the lifeboat from linking up with the pirate mother ships but that will not be easy. The navy vessels do not maneuver quickly." CBS' Martin commented that the United States "is the musclebound superpower. It has overwhelming military force but is unable to use it against a handful of pirates."
CONFICKER ONLY HAS EYES FOR WINDOWS TV Barn's Aaron Barnhart will be happy to learn that the feared Windows conspiracy of silence has been broken by CBS' Daniel Sieberg. In his update on the Conficker worm. Sieberg does not know--the worm "may be used" to send spam or to launch attacks on Websites or to steal passwords or to drain bank accounts, whatever. He listed various ways in which personal computer users with Windows systems could check if their machine has been invaded before reassuring the rest of us: "Conficker targets Microsoft computers not Apple. Now Microsoft is offering a $250,000 bounty for the capture of the cybercriminals responsible for this global assault."
DIANE DEBUNKS FIREARMS DEFENSE ABC substitute anchor Diane Sawyer carved out time to cross-promote her own 20/20 primetime documentary If I Only Had a Gun. Sawyer cited statistics that shooting sprees have killed 53 people nationwide just in the last month before raising the question: "Could an ordinary citizen count on being able to defend himself if he only had a gun?" She narrated footage of a simulation at Pennsylvania's Muhlenberg College--"Suddenly! The room under attack!"--that demonstrated how vulnerable one is even when carrying a concealed weapon. Then she offered a physiological explanation: "Your body undermines your decisions and your accuracy…Your hands have less blood. They are less dexterous. Your reactions are delayed."
MOTHER’S MILK AND FATHER’S SPERM Into the vacuum left by the lack of public policy stories entered--babies. CNN's Sanjay Gupta filed an Eye on Medicine feature for CBS about neonatal innovations to keep premature babies alive. Those at risk infants need to things: to put on weight quickly and to avoid illness, especially the life-threatening gastrointestinal infection called NEC. That is Necrotizing Entero-Colitis. A single solution addresses both problems: feed them mother's milk, "even babies who cannot swallow."
Stella Biblis, conceived by artificial insemination, was John McKenzie's baby story on ABC. Her father Christopher contracted leukemia when he was a teenager so he deposited healthy sperm into the bank before undergoing radiation therapy. The radiation saved his life but killed his sperm so the only babymakers he had left were those in deep freeze. Biblis was married last year. He made a sperm withdrawal and thawed out his 22-year-old squigglers. "Amazingly" on their first attempt they performed as required.
BAT-MITZVAH CHUTZPAH At the other end of the lifespan, CBS' Assignment America took us to a bat-mitzvah ceremony in Cleveland. Until the '60s, Steve Hartman reminded us, "no girl in their right mind would have had the chutzpah" even to consider such a ceremony. Their brothers were bar-mitzvah'd; a girl's job was to assist the boy. So an entire older generation of Jewish women is alive that has never officially come of age. Hartman was a witness at the Menorah Park synagogue as a class of great-grandmothers, minimum age 89, "finally became adults in their Jewish faith."
HUNDRED PERCENT HUSKIES ABC worked Diane Sawyer hard during her substitute anchor chores. In addition to her firearms feature, she was also responsible for the Persons of the Week, the winners of March Madness, the Lady Huskies of the University of Connecticut. Sawyer checked off a pair of stellar statistics for the NCAA Tournament champions: the basketball team completed its season undefeated, 39 wins and zero losses; and coach Geno Auriemma has never had a single player fail academically, a "100% graduation rate."
