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TYNDALL HEADLINE: HIGHLIGHTS FROM APRIL 16, 2009
Torture was the Story of the Day. The Justice Department published internal legal memoranda delivered to Central Intelligence Agency spies granting them permission to use brutal tactics during interrogation. Neither the memos nor network reporters actually called the techniques torture by name, it should be noted, relying instead on euphemism or attributed speech. Although the CIA story attracted the most time, it was not chosen as the lead on any of the three newscasts. ABC teased it at its intro as the lead but used a story about real estate foreclosures instead--for technical rather than editorial reasons. Both NBC and CBS really did bury the lead, as the saying goes: CBS chose Barack Obama's diplomacy in Mexico City, NBC economic indicators of continuing recession.
TYNDALL PICKS FOR APRIL 16, 2009: CLICK ON GRID ELEMENTS TO SEARCH FOR MATCHING ITEMS
TORTURE IS SUCH A DIFFICULT WORD FOR REPORTERS TO USE Torture was the Story of the Day. The Justice Department published internal legal memoranda delivered to Central Intelligence Agency spies granting them permission to use brutal tactics during interrogation. Neither the memos nor network reporters actually called the techniques torture by name, it should be noted, relying instead on euphemism or attributed speech. Although the CIA story attracted the most time, it was not chosen as the lead on any of the three newscasts. ABC teased it at its intro as the lead but used a story about real estate foreclosures instead--for technical rather than editorial reasons. Both NBC and CBS really did bury the lead, as the saying goes: CBS chose Barack Obama's diplomacy in Mexico City, NBC economic indicators of continuing recession.
Shackled in a way to keep you are awake for one week…Placed in a cramped confinement box with an insect…Repeatedly subjected to the terror of death by drowning…Slapped in the face with fingers slightly spaced…Doused with near freezing water from a hose. ABC's Jan Crawford Greenburg was the most detailed about the depravities exacted on prisoners with the permission of top Justice Department lawyer Jay Bybee. She quoted the American Civil Liberties Union's label for these outrages--"torture"--but could not manage to use the word herself.
ABC's Crawford Greenburg reconstructed the initial justification for the revised rules. In the "terrifying months" following the terrorist attacks of September 11th, 2001, the CIA believed that their prisoner, suspected al-Qaeda leader abu-Zubaydah, was aware of pending plots. He refused to inform so the spies wanted "an increased pressure phase." Yet, Crawford Greenburg pointed out, it was not just in the post-9/11 panic that these rules were promulgated. They were reiterated in the comparative calm of 2005. NBC's Pete Williams filed a brief stand-up on the memos. "It is important to point out that these memos, written during the Bush Administration, have now been repudiated." Waterboarding, according to Obama's Justice Department, is indeed torture.
On CBS, Bob Orr adopted a radically different angle. For him, the news was not the content of the memos but the decision by this Justice Department not to prosecute the spies who acted on them, because they were "following orders that were legal at the time." He called the memos "so-called torture memos" but he did not use the T-word for waterboarding and did not list the brutalities that the memos permitted. Instead they were "rough interrogations" and "various harsh treatments." Orr told us at first that the waterboarding occurred "in the months after 9/11" but then gave the dates of the waterboarding memos as the summer of 2002 and, like ABC's Crawford Greenburg, 2005.
Was ABC anchor Charles Gibson being ironically understated or callously indifferent when he asked This Week anchor George Stephanopoulos about the domestic political reaction to these "rather tough interrogation techniques"? I could not tell. Play the video and make up your own mind. Stephanopoulos observed that the details were inflammatory enough to spur opposition to the decision not to prosecute--and to raise fears that they would be used as anti-US propaganda by "al-Qaeda's media machine."
SMUGGLING FUELS MEXICAN FEUDS Forget immigration, NAFTA, the environment and Cuba--the news hook for Presidential diplomacy between Mexico and the United States is the narcoviolence between trafficking cartels in the border zone. NBC and CBS assigned their White House correspondents to the leaders' meeting in Mexico City. Felipe Calderon has committed his military to suppress the gang warfare that has killed more than 2,500 so far this year. For his part, Barack Obama has been unable to suppress the domestic demand for drugs that makes the trade so lucrative--$40bn annually according to CBS' Bill Plante; nor has he interdicted the southbound firearms that make the feud so lethal.
CBS' Plante called the firearms smuggling "a major sore point" for Mexico. NBC's Chuck Todd quoted Obama's argument that a renewed federal ban on sales of assault weapons is not necessary; their export is already illegal. Neither Plante nor Todd mentioned the National Rifle Association's argument, which NBC's Mark Potter quoted Tuesday, that it is untrue that 90% of the cartels' weapons were purchased in gun shops north of the border.
ABC had Nightline anchor Terry Moran preview the Obama-Calderon meeting on Wednesday so instead of having its White House correspondent cover the talks, it turned to investigative correspondent Brian Ross to explain the nuts and bolts of the Gulf Cartel's narcotics distribution system. He pointed to the interstate highway hub of Atlanta--with freeways headed to all points of the compass--as a distribution center for 18-wheeler tractor trailers with cocaine stored in hidden compartments. Ross ticked off the other major transshipment centers as Los Angeles, Phoenix, Houston, Chicago and Denver. "Each cartel stakes out its own territory like the Mafia families of old."
ABDUCTED IN CHINA & DISTRITO FEDERAL Both NBC and CBS filed lurid features about kidnapping. Seth Doane on CBS made a half-hearted attempt to tie the anxiety of Mexico City businessmen about being held for ransom with his newscast's lead story--the narcotrafficking wars in Mexico's northern border states. He used montage to create the impression of a link but stated no connection between the drug cartels and the kidnap gangs: "If people are not touched by crime itself, they are by fear," was his best effort. "As the drug war over turf and trafficking escalates here, so do jitters." From Beijing, NBC's Adrienne Mong told us that as many as 20,000 children are abducted from their parents each year in China. All of them happen to be boys, she explained. Because of China's one-child policy, wealthy parents of daughters are desperate for male heirs and rely on kidnap gangs to snatch a ready-born son from a poor family. Pricetag $2,000 per boy.
DUTY TO PREEN PROTESTED NBC's In Depth feature by Richard Engel Wednesday offered a chilling backgrounder on the depredations suffered by women in Afghan society at the hands of their husbands. Now ABC's Nick Schifrin files a news report on the matrimonial law passed by Hamid Karzai's government that requires Shiite Moslem wives to be sexually and economically subservient. He showed us hundreds of women protesting the law in Kabul as thousands of men denounced them as "whores and dogs."
UNION STRONG ABC claimed an Exclusive for Jim Sciutto's interview in Mombasa Wednesday with the First and Second Mates of the Maersk Line's Alabama. Now all of the Norfolk-based crew, save Captain Richard Phillips, have arrived back in the United States by air. NBC's Tom Costello and Jeff Glor of CBS' Early Show were able to collect other soundbites and illustrate them with animated computer graphics. Helmsman ATM Reza told CBS' Glor that the pirates only managed to grapple their way on board at the fourth attempt. He stabbed one of them in the hand. John Cronan, the Third Engineer, offered NBC's Costello the simplest explanation for their survival: "We are American seamen. We are union members. We stuck together."
THE SHUTTERING OF THE SHOPPING MALL NBC's lead story, assigned to CNBC's Diana Olick, was a potpourri of latest economic indicators: the pace of home foreclosures has picked up once more now that the banks' three-month moratorium has expired; consumer spending is declining leading to layoffs at retail chains; commercial real estate developers are going bankrupt without access to credit to roll over their mortgages. ABC's Betsy Stark picked up on the home foreclosure story as CBS' Anthony Mason had on Wednesday. CBS' Kelly Cobiella covered the problems at shopping malls. When landlord General Growth Properties went bust it was "the largest bankruptcy filing in the history of the American real estate business." Cobiella cited the International Council of Shopping Centers' two-year estimates of almost 300,000 shuttered retail stores nationwide, with $400bn in commercial mortgages at risk of foreclosure this year alone.
YOUTUBE HIGH & LOW In a week in which YouTube garnered publicity for its efforts in high culture on all three newscasts, ABC's A Closer Look chose a gross video clip instead to dramatize YouTube's vulgarity. David Muir was squeamish about showing a video close-up of Michael Setzer, a 32-year-old pizza counterman at a Domino's franchise in North Carolina, stuffing cheese up his nose before putting it on a pie. Muir tried to reassure putative pizza eaters that the franchise has been disinfected and the counterman fired--but not before more than a million people viewed the stunt.
As for high culture, the YouTube Symphony played to plaudits under Michael Tilson Thomas' baton. ABC's John Berman and NBC's Chris Jansing had offered previews. Now CBS' Michelle Miller covers the concert itself. "How do you get to Carnegie Hall?" "Upload! Upload! Upload!"
Shackled in a way to keep you are awake for one week…Placed in a cramped confinement box with an insect…Repeatedly subjected to the terror of death by drowning…Slapped in the face with fingers slightly spaced…Doused with near freezing water from a hose. ABC's Jan Crawford Greenburg was the most detailed about the depravities exacted on prisoners with the permission of top Justice Department lawyer Jay Bybee. She quoted the American Civil Liberties Union's label for these outrages--"torture"--but could not manage to use the word herself.
ABC's Crawford Greenburg reconstructed the initial justification for the revised rules. In the "terrifying months" following the terrorist attacks of September 11th, 2001, the CIA believed that their prisoner, suspected al-Qaeda leader abu-Zubaydah, was aware of pending plots. He refused to inform so the spies wanted "an increased pressure phase." Yet, Crawford Greenburg pointed out, it was not just in the post-9/11 panic that these rules were promulgated. They were reiterated in the comparative calm of 2005. NBC's Pete Williams filed a brief stand-up on the memos. "It is important to point out that these memos, written during the Bush Administration, have now been repudiated." Waterboarding, according to Obama's Justice Department, is indeed torture.
On CBS, Bob Orr adopted a radically different angle. For him, the news was not the content of the memos but the decision by this Justice Department not to prosecute the spies who acted on them, because they were "following orders that were legal at the time." He called the memos "so-called torture memos" but he did not use the T-word for waterboarding and did not list the brutalities that the memos permitted. Instead they were "rough interrogations" and "various harsh treatments." Orr told us at first that the waterboarding occurred "in the months after 9/11" but then gave the dates of the waterboarding memos as the summer of 2002 and, like ABC's Crawford Greenburg, 2005.
Was ABC anchor Charles Gibson being ironically understated or callously indifferent when he asked This Week anchor George Stephanopoulos about the domestic political reaction to these "rather tough interrogation techniques"? I could not tell. Play the video and make up your own mind. Stephanopoulos observed that the details were inflammatory enough to spur opposition to the decision not to prosecute--and to raise fears that they would be used as anti-US propaganda by "al-Qaeda's media machine."
SMUGGLING FUELS MEXICAN FEUDS Forget immigration, NAFTA, the environment and Cuba--the news hook for Presidential diplomacy between Mexico and the United States is the narcoviolence between trafficking cartels in the border zone. NBC and CBS assigned their White House correspondents to the leaders' meeting in Mexico City. Felipe Calderon has committed his military to suppress the gang warfare that has killed more than 2,500 so far this year. For his part, Barack Obama has been unable to suppress the domestic demand for drugs that makes the trade so lucrative--$40bn annually according to CBS' Bill Plante; nor has he interdicted the southbound firearms that make the feud so lethal.
CBS' Plante called the firearms smuggling "a major sore point" for Mexico. NBC's Chuck Todd quoted Obama's argument that a renewed federal ban on sales of assault weapons is not necessary; their export is already illegal. Neither Plante nor Todd mentioned the National Rifle Association's argument, which NBC's Mark Potter quoted Tuesday, that it is untrue that 90% of the cartels' weapons were purchased in gun shops north of the border.
ABC had Nightline anchor Terry Moran preview the Obama-Calderon meeting on Wednesday so instead of having its White House correspondent cover the talks, it turned to investigative correspondent Brian Ross to explain the nuts and bolts of the Gulf Cartel's narcotics distribution system. He pointed to the interstate highway hub of Atlanta--with freeways headed to all points of the compass--as a distribution center for 18-wheeler tractor trailers with cocaine stored in hidden compartments. Ross ticked off the other major transshipment centers as Los Angeles, Phoenix, Houston, Chicago and Denver. "Each cartel stakes out its own territory like the Mafia families of old."
ABDUCTED IN CHINA & DISTRITO FEDERAL Both NBC and CBS filed lurid features about kidnapping. Seth Doane on CBS made a half-hearted attempt to tie the anxiety of Mexico City businessmen about being held for ransom with his newscast's lead story--the narcotrafficking wars in Mexico's northern border states. He used montage to create the impression of a link but stated no connection between the drug cartels and the kidnap gangs: "If people are not touched by crime itself, they are by fear," was his best effort. "As the drug war over turf and trafficking escalates here, so do jitters." From Beijing, NBC's Adrienne Mong told us that as many as 20,000 children are abducted from their parents each year in China. All of them happen to be boys, she explained. Because of China's one-child policy, wealthy parents of daughters are desperate for male heirs and rely on kidnap gangs to snatch a ready-born son from a poor family. Pricetag $2,000 per boy.
DUTY TO PREEN PROTESTED NBC's In Depth feature by Richard Engel Wednesday offered a chilling backgrounder on the depredations suffered by women in Afghan society at the hands of their husbands. Now ABC's Nick Schifrin files a news report on the matrimonial law passed by Hamid Karzai's government that requires Shiite Moslem wives to be sexually and economically subservient. He showed us hundreds of women protesting the law in Kabul as thousands of men denounced them as "whores and dogs."
UNION STRONG ABC claimed an Exclusive for Jim Sciutto's interview in Mombasa Wednesday with the First and Second Mates of the Maersk Line's Alabama. Now all of the Norfolk-based crew, save Captain Richard Phillips, have arrived back in the United States by air. NBC's Tom Costello and Jeff Glor of CBS' Early Show were able to collect other soundbites and illustrate them with animated computer graphics. Helmsman ATM Reza told CBS' Glor that the pirates only managed to grapple their way on board at the fourth attempt. He stabbed one of them in the hand. John Cronan, the Third Engineer, offered NBC's Costello the simplest explanation for their survival: "We are American seamen. We are union members. We stuck together."
THE SHUTTERING OF THE SHOPPING MALL NBC's lead story, assigned to CNBC's Diana Olick, was a potpourri of latest economic indicators: the pace of home foreclosures has picked up once more now that the banks' three-month moratorium has expired; consumer spending is declining leading to layoffs at retail chains; commercial real estate developers are going bankrupt without access to credit to roll over their mortgages. ABC's Betsy Stark picked up on the home foreclosure story as CBS' Anthony Mason had on Wednesday. CBS' Kelly Cobiella covered the problems at shopping malls. When landlord General Growth Properties went bust it was "the largest bankruptcy filing in the history of the American real estate business." Cobiella cited the International Council of Shopping Centers' two-year estimates of almost 300,000 shuttered retail stores nationwide, with $400bn in commercial mortgages at risk of foreclosure this year alone.
YOUTUBE HIGH & LOW In a week in which YouTube garnered publicity for its efforts in high culture on all three newscasts, ABC's A Closer Look chose a gross video clip instead to dramatize YouTube's vulgarity. David Muir was squeamish about showing a video close-up of Michael Setzer, a 32-year-old pizza counterman at a Domino's franchise in North Carolina, stuffing cheese up his nose before putting it on a pie. Muir tried to reassure putative pizza eaters that the franchise has been disinfected and the counterman fired--but not before more than a million people viewed the stunt.
As for high culture, the YouTube Symphony played to plaudits under Michael Tilson Thomas' baton. ABC's John Berman and NBC's Chris Jansing had offered previews. Now CBS' Michelle Miller covers the concert itself. "How do you get to Carnegie Hall?" "Upload! Upload! Upload!"
