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TYNDALL HEADLINE: HIGHLIGHTS FROM APRIL 14, 2009
Barack Obama's critics may be stocking up on teabags in preparation for the IRS' annual income tax filing deadline, but the President managed to maintain full control of the networks' news agenda. None of the three newscasts mentioned the looming tea party; all of them led with Obama's own words on the economy in a speech at Georgetown University--and for those without a taste for the dry abstractions of the macroeconomy, the First Family leavened the mood by showing off Bo, its new puppy. The "glimmers of hope" about an eventual end to the recession were Story of the Day. CBS had Harry Smith from its Early Show perform substitute anchor duties.
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PRESIDENT PREEMPTS PREVIEW FOR TEATIME Barack Obama's critics may be stocking up on teabags in preparation for the IRS' annual income tax filing deadline, but the President managed to maintain full control of the networks' news agenda. None of the three newscasts mentioned the looming tea party; all of them led with Obama's own words on the economy in a speech at Georgetown University--and for those without a taste for the dry abstractions of the macroeconomy, the First Family leavened the mood by showing off Bo, its new puppy. The "glimmers of hope" about an eventual end to the recession were Story of the Day. CBS had Harry Smith from its Early Show perform substitute anchor duties.
The White House correspondent was assigned the lead spot to cover the Georgetown speech on each newscast. CBS' Bill Plante offered dueling economists--Lakshman Achuthan forecasting a revival of economic growth before the end of 2009; Peter Morici forecasting no "sustainable growth path" while the banks remain dysfunctional and trade deficits with oil producers and China persist.
ABC's Jake Tapper got Biblical in explaining the title of Obama's speech, The New Foundation. It is an allusion to the Sermon on the Mount, which contrasts the soundness of a house built on rock with the instability of a house built on sand. The pillars of a sound foundation, Tapper told us, consist of regulation of high finance; investments in education, healthcare and energy; and deficit reduction--"even though the proposed budget will double total debt." In what may have been an allusion to those teabags, Tapper quoted Obama as calling critics of deficit spending "disingenuous" if they fail to address Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security.
NBC's Savannah Guthrie wallowed in synergy. The economist she chose was Steve Liesman from CNBC: "It is going to be a rough and rocky road back." Her evidence that the speech was a major one was that it was carried live on cable news channels. Her political analysis came from her own boss, DC bureau chief Mark Whitaker, on MSNBC: "There was a moment of church in that speech but the rest of it was pure law school."
ABC and CBS both followed up with in studio crosstalk with their business correspondents. Is it true that there are signs that the recession is ending? "Conflicting numbers," answered Anthony Mason (at the tail of the Plante videostream) on CBS; "mixed messages," replied Betsy Stark on ABC.
BANKS JUSTIFY PREDATORY PROFITS NBC's Lisa Myers followed up on Sharyl Attkisson's report on CBS on Monday about the skyrocketing interest rates and consumer fees charged by the major banks that received federal bailout funds through the Treasury Department's TARP fund. A blizzard of consumer complaints has led to momentum in Congress to crack down on "predatory practices," as the critics call it. "Bank executives acknowledge that they now borrow money from the Fed at an effective interest rate of 0%. They say other costs and risks have gone up and they say they are eager to repay the bailout"--thus their need for those extra profits.
JOLLY ROGER Piracy off the coast of Somalia, Monday's Story of the Day, saw follow-ups from Mombasa by both NBC and ABC. That port is where the Maersk Line's Alabama is docked and where her crew awaits a reunion with their captain, the onetime hostage Richard Phillips. ABC's Jim Sciutto showed us how easy it is for pirates to board a freighter: "Even very large ships are very low in the water," he explained, with the deck no higher than 15 feet above the water line. "Some rely on homemade defenses, even greasing the sides. We saw one ship ringed with mannequins dressed as security guards." NBC's Keith Miller narrated footage from Somalia where "there is no lack of recruits to join in the plunder…Everything on land has already been looted." CBS had Lara Logan cover the pirate story from Washington DC. The zone of danger is 1.2m square miles, she showed us--the size of a rectangle bounded by Houston, Chicago, New York and Jacksonville. Her Pentagon sources told her that military planners are "looking at every option, even striking pirate dens onshore."
POTTER STAGES NRA-BATF FACEOFF NBC's Mark Potter continues to make the narcotrafficking gang wars in Mexico his signature story. Of the 14 reports that he has filed so far in 2009, half have been just on the narcotics beat. His latest feature was an In Depth report from the border at Laredo where customs officials are now inspecting traffic as it leaves the country heading south, looking for firearms and cash. Potter set up dueling soundbites between the National Rifle Association and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco & Firearms. The NRA claims that suspicions that the drug cartels are armed by weapons purchased in the United States and smuggled south are "exaggerated to support more gun control." The BATF counters that 90% of firearms found in Mexico are "US sourced."
UPDATE: In his latest PressThink post, entitled Lame Formula in the Land of the Active User, Jay Rosen, an old friend of Tyndall Report, skewers the type of presentation of the NRA-BATF argument that Potter used. Rosen argues that He Said-She Said must be followed by We Said--what does NBC News conclude, having heard both sides? Is the focus on gun smuggling a mere pretext for a domestic gun control political agenda? Or do Second Amendment freedoms in this country truly enable mayhem south of the border?
FLOGGING IN SWAT London-based Elizabeth Palmer on CBS obtained online video from the Swat Valley of Pakistan to illustrate her story about the central government ceding control of the province to Taliban guerrillas. Her grainy footage showed a public flogging, the punishment for a female teenager accused of adultery under "their harsh interpretation of Islamic justice." Palmer quoted President Asif Ali Zardari: "The Taliban are not going to be in control of any part of my country." Scoffed Palmer: "They already are."
JOHN DUE PROCESS DEMJANJUK It was 30 years ago that John Demjanjuk was stripped of his United States citizenship for "lying about working in Nazi concentration camps," CBS' Cynthia Bowers pointed out. Prosecutors still want to put him on trial. The latest attempt is in the form of an arrest warrant issued in Germany last month. The wheelchairbound 89-year-old Ukrainian native had been carried bodily out of his Cleveland home to stand trial when an appeals court blocked his deportation. Bowers reminded us that Demjanjuk had already been deported to Israel, prosecuted, convicted and sentenced--only to have an appeals court there release him. CBS' in-house legal analyst Andrew Cohen declared: "He has got more due process than any American has gotten, living or dead, in the history of this country."
JOLTS & VOLTS The insurance industry's Institute for Highway Safety can always be relied upon to deliver crash video to send viewers a scary jolt under the guise of solicitude for their safety. The cars being wiped out this time were minis: the Smart Car from Daimler, the Fit from Honda, the Yaris from Toyota. NBC's Tom Costello narrated the carnage. On CBS, Dean Reynolds took a sardonic look at Chevrolet's attempt to interest him in the Volt. He was invited along for a test drive only to find that the car was not available. "The rush to showcase the technology was clearly designed to generate publicity for the car and public support for the federal money General Motors needs to stay afloat." He ended up driving a conventional Cruise with a Volt powertrain.
BO IS NO NAME FOR AN ANCHOR CBS previewed the arrival of First Dog Bo on Monday with Nancy Cordes. NBC's Norah O'Donnell and ABC's John Berman both waited for the Portuguese water puppy's formal introduction to the White House press corps. Both dutifully recorded the Obama family's soundbites about Bo's love for the First Lady's tomatoes and his inability to swim yet and his being barred from sleeping in the First Bedroom. Channeling Harry Truman, Barack Obama announced: "I finally got a friend." ABC's Berman slyly sucked up to his anchor, noting that Bo was not the puppy's first name. "His first owner called him Charlie. Now that is a nice name."
The White House correspondent was assigned the lead spot to cover the Georgetown speech on each newscast. CBS' Bill Plante offered dueling economists--Lakshman Achuthan forecasting a revival of economic growth before the end of 2009; Peter Morici forecasting no "sustainable growth path" while the banks remain dysfunctional and trade deficits with oil producers and China persist.
ABC's Jake Tapper got Biblical in explaining the title of Obama's speech, The New Foundation. It is an allusion to the Sermon on the Mount, which contrasts the soundness of a house built on rock with the instability of a house built on sand. The pillars of a sound foundation, Tapper told us, consist of regulation of high finance; investments in education, healthcare and energy; and deficit reduction--"even though the proposed budget will double total debt." In what may have been an allusion to those teabags, Tapper quoted Obama as calling critics of deficit spending "disingenuous" if they fail to address Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security.
NBC's Savannah Guthrie wallowed in synergy. The economist she chose was Steve Liesman from CNBC: "It is going to be a rough and rocky road back." Her evidence that the speech was a major one was that it was carried live on cable news channels. Her political analysis came from her own boss, DC bureau chief Mark Whitaker, on MSNBC: "There was a moment of church in that speech but the rest of it was pure law school."
ABC and CBS both followed up with in studio crosstalk with their business correspondents. Is it true that there are signs that the recession is ending? "Conflicting numbers," answered Anthony Mason (at the tail of the Plante videostream) on CBS; "mixed messages," replied Betsy Stark on ABC.
BANKS JUSTIFY PREDATORY PROFITS NBC's Lisa Myers followed up on Sharyl Attkisson's report on CBS on Monday about the skyrocketing interest rates and consumer fees charged by the major banks that received federal bailout funds through the Treasury Department's TARP fund. A blizzard of consumer complaints has led to momentum in Congress to crack down on "predatory practices," as the critics call it. "Bank executives acknowledge that they now borrow money from the Fed at an effective interest rate of 0%. They say other costs and risks have gone up and they say they are eager to repay the bailout"--thus their need for those extra profits.
JOLLY ROGER Piracy off the coast of Somalia, Monday's Story of the Day, saw follow-ups from Mombasa by both NBC and ABC. That port is where the Maersk Line's Alabama is docked and where her crew awaits a reunion with their captain, the onetime hostage Richard Phillips. ABC's Jim Sciutto showed us how easy it is for pirates to board a freighter: "Even very large ships are very low in the water," he explained, with the deck no higher than 15 feet above the water line. "Some rely on homemade defenses, even greasing the sides. We saw one ship ringed with mannequins dressed as security guards." NBC's Keith Miller narrated footage from Somalia where "there is no lack of recruits to join in the plunder…Everything on land has already been looted." CBS had Lara Logan cover the pirate story from Washington DC. The zone of danger is 1.2m square miles, she showed us--the size of a rectangle bounded by Houston, Chicago, New York and Jacksonville. Her Pentagon sources told her that military planners are "looking at every option, even striking pirate dens onshore."
POTTER STAGES NRA-BATF FACEOFF NBC's Mark Potter continues to make the narcotrafficking gang wars in Mexico his signature story. Of the 14 reports that he has filed so far in 2009, half have been just on the narcotics beat. His latest feature was an In Depth report from the border at Laredo where customs officials are now inspecting traffic as it leaves the country heading south, looking for firearms and cash. Potter set up dueling soundbites between the National Rifle Association and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco & Firearms. The NRA claims that suspicions that the drug cartels are armed by weapons purchased in the United States and smuggled south are "exaggerated to support more gun control." The BATF counters that 90% of firearms found in Mexico are "US sourced."
UPDATE: In his latest PressThink post, entitled Lame Formula in the Land of the Active User, Jay Rosen, an old friend of Tyndall Report, skewers the type of presentation of the NRA-BATF argument that Potter used. Rosen argues that He Said-She Said must be followed by We Said--what does NBC News conclude, having heard both sides? Is the focus on gun smuggling a mere pretext for a domestic gun control political agenda? Or do Second Amendment freedoms in this country truly enable mayhem south of the border?
FLOGGING IN SWAT London-based Elizabeth Palmer on CBS obtained online video from the Swat Valley of Pakistan to illustrate her story about the central government ceding control of the province to Taliban guerrillas. Her grainy footage showed a public flogging, the punishment for a female teenager accused of adultery under "their harsh interpretation of Islamic justice." Palmer quoted President Asif Ali Zardari: "The Taliban are not going to be in control of any part of my country." Scoffed Palmer: "They already are."
JOHN DUE PROCESS DEMJANJUK It was 30 years ago that John Demjanjuk was stripped of his United States citizenship for "lying about working in Nazi concentration camps," CBS' Cynthia Bowers pointed out. Prosecutors still want to put him on trial. The latest attempt is in the form of an arrest warrant issued in Germany last month. The wheelchairbound 89-year-old Ukrainian native had been carried bodily out of his Cleveland home to stand trial when an appeals court blocked his deportation. Bowers reminded us that Demjanjuk had already been deported to Israel, prosecuted, convicted and sentenced--only to have an appeals court there release him. CBS' in-house legal analyst Andrew Cohen declared: "He has got more due process than any American has gotten, living or dead, in the history of this country."
JOLTS & VOLTS The insurance industry's Institute for Highway Safety can always be relied upon to deliver crash video to send viewers a scary jolt under the guise of solicitude for their safety. The cars being wiped out this time were minis: the Smart Car from Daimler, the Fit from Honda, the Yaris from Toyota. NBC's Tom Costello narrated the carnage. On CBS, Dean Reynolds took a sardonic look at Chevrolet's attempt to interest him in the Volt. He was invited along for a test drive only to find that the car was not available. "The rush to showcase the technology was clearly designed to generate publicity for the car and public support for the federal money General Motors needs to stay afloat." He ended up driving a conventional Cruise with a Volt powertrain.
BO IS NO NAME FOR AN ANCHOR CBS previewed the arrival of First Dog Bo on Monday with Nancy Cordes. NBC's Norah O'Donnell and ABC's John Berman both waited for the Portuguese water puppy's formal introduction to the White House press corps. Both dutifully recorded the Obama family's soundbites about Bo's love for the First Lady's tomatoes and his inability to swim yet and his being barred from sleeping in the First Bedroom. Channeling Harry Truman, Barack Obama announced: "I finally got a friend." ABC's Berman slyly sucked up to his anchor, noting that Bo was not the puppy's first name. "His first owner called him Charlie. Now that is a nice name."
