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TYNDALL HEADLINE: HIGHLIGHTS FROM APRIL 21, 2009
Torture capped a heavy day of news. No less than four stories were deemed newsworthy enough to receive triple coverage--the assignment of a correspondent on all three network newscasts. All three brought us the arraignment of a medical student in Boston in the infamous Craigslist killing; all showed us the Somali teenager accused of piracy on the high seas brought into federal court in New York City; all told us about the Arizona teenager whose protest at being stripped by her school nurse and searched ended up at the Supreme Court. But the lead item on all three newscasts was the potential prosecution of Bush Administration lawyers for giving a green light to torture. President Barack Obama announced that he would let Attorney General Eric Holder decide whether or not to go to trial.
TYNDALL PICKS FOR APRIL 21, 2009: CLICK ON GRID ELEMENTS TO SEARCH FOR MATCHING ITEMS
ONLY ABC REMAINS A HOLDOUT AGAINST USING THE T-WORD Torture capped a heavy day of news. No less than four stories were deemed newsworthy enough to receive triple coverage--the assignment of a correspondent on all three network newscasts. All three brought us the arraignment of a medical student in Boston in the infamous Craigslist killing; all showed us the Somali teenager accused of piracy on the high seas brought into federal court in New York City; all told us about the Arizona teenager whose protest at being stripped by her school nurse and searched ended up at the Supreme Court. But the lead item on all three newscasts was the potential prosecution of Bush Administration lawyers for giving a green light to torture. President Barack Obama announced that he would let Attorney General Eric Holder decide whether or not to go to trial.
As the torture story inches forward, euphemism is slowly being stripped away. Thumbs up to CBS anchor Katie Couric for being forthright. "We begin tonight with the topic of torture," she declared. NBC anchor Brian Williams too called the abuse of prisoners by its name, although indirectly, as in the following sentence: "The White House says there will be no more torture on their watch and a while back, from the President on down, they seemed to close the book on going back and charging people in the Bush Administration who approved it." The it that they approved cannot refer to anything except torture. Charles Gibson remains the holdout on ABC: "harsh interrogation" was the form of words he used twice and would go no further.
The networks' correspondents were less plainspoken than their anchors. NBC's Andrea Mitchell did show progress compared with her colleague Savannah Guthrie on Monday. Guthrie referred to the "harshest interrogation tactics, which some call torture." Mitchell has shifted to the preferable "harsh interrogations that many people call torture." CBS' Bob Orr called the Justice Department's lawyering "so-called torture memos" and the demand by Senate Democrats for an investigation a "so-called Truth Commission." He chose some rather than many--as in "interrogations that some have labeled torture." On ABC, Jake Tapper, like his anchor, used "harsh interrogation."
CBS' Jeff Greenfield (at the tail of the Orr videostream) takes the cake. He called the possibility that the Bush Administration committed war crimes a "policy difference"--as in "it is so unusual to even think about one administration prosecuting a past administration for what Eric Holder called 'a policy difference.' I mean--bribery, sure; even Watergate was flat out obstruction of justice…" To Greenfield, torture is a milder offense than bribery or obstruction.
All three newscasts used the same Fox News Channel soundbite from former Vice President Dick Cheney complaining that the CIA had failed to declassify documents that justified criminal means by intelligence ends: "They did not put out the memos that showed the success of the effort." So will there be a prosecution? Or a Truth Commission? Or will former lawyer, now federal judge, Jay Bybee be impeached? From the White House, NBC's Chuck Todd foresaw action in the Senate: the President "is not going to stand in the way of Congress if they choose to do something."
GATES NEEDS CYBER DEFENDERS CBS anchor Katie Couric gave us a sneak preview of her 60 Minutes profile of Defense Secretary Robert Gates when she picked up on reports of espionage, possibly by the People's Republic of China, of design and electronics secrets in the new F-35 Lightning fighter jet. The spies, if successful, did so by hacking through the Pentagon's computer security. "We are under cyberattack virtually all the time, every day," Gates confessed. "Everyone else is under attack. Banks are under attack. Every country is under attack." In his new budget, Gates is requesting to increase his computer security staff fourfold.
TEENAGER MUSE IN A TON OF TROUBLE He is a teenager. He stands 5'2". He has a wounded hand. His three shipmates have been shot dead by commando snipers. Yet CBS' Armen Keteyian aggrandized the bedraggled figure of abdu-Wali Muse to the title of "suspected ringleader" of the speedboat crew that failed to hijack the Maersk Line's freighter Alabama off the coast of his native Somalia. He appeared in federal court accused of piracy. "The defense claims he is 16, a minor and therefore these proceedings should not be open to the public," reported NBC's Ron Allen. On ABC, John Berman used his network's newsgathering ties to the BBC to quote Muse's mother, interviewed by the World Service in his home village of Galka'yo. "He is 16. I sent him to school. He has gone missing…He has been used for that crime by other men." The judge decided that Muse is an adult. Now everybody knows his name.
FOR THE LOVE OF MONEY NOT EROTIC SERVICES Also appearing in court was Philip Markoff, a Boston University medical student, arraigned in the murder of Julissa Brisman, a 26-year-old masseuse, who advertised her services on Craigslist. CBS' Daniel Sieberg could not get Markoff's alleged motive straight. Initially he reported police allegations that the student is "a violent predator who stalked women in cold blood" but later that he "met her in a hotel room and killed her in a botched robbery." Sources for NBC's Jeff Rossen and ABC's Lisa Fletcher sided with the latter explanation. Both correspondents were told that money, not sex, was his motive: he needed to rob to pay gambling debts.
Sieberg and Rossen both concentrated on the crime itself, which is, after all, a local Massachusetts story and has little business being covered on a network newscast. ABC's Fletcher sought the national angle, repeating the same worries that her colleague Barbara Pinto had covered last month when the Cook County Sheriff in Illinois criticized Craigslist for facilitating prostitution. Brisman may have advertised massage but she placed her classified under "erotic services."
NO EASY FIXES, PLENTY OF LIKELY FRAUD Secretary Timothy Geithner appeared on Capitol Hill to update the Congressional Oversight Panel on the Treasury Department's TARP bailout of high finance. "Geithner conceded the government has had limited success getting banks to increase lending and improve the flow of credit," reported ABC's Betsy Stark, before following up with the really bad news from the International Monetary Fund: so far the global banking industry has written down losses of $900bn; the IMF's estimate of the total damage--$4.1tr. A possible remedy, Stark mentioned, would be for TARP funds to be converted into shares of ownership. "That helps the banks' bottom line but it is also bound to stir up fears of nationalization. No easy fixes."
From the White House, CBS' Chip Reid covered Neil Barofsky, a Geithner aide who is in charge of investigating bailout abuse, "everything from securities fraud to insider trading to public corruption." Barofsky's estimate is that TARP's losses to fraud could be "devastating," perhaps 10% of $3tr.
WE STRIP YOU NAKED TO KEEP YOU SAFE Savana Redding is the name of the thirteen-year-old middle-schooler whose case made it to the United States Supreme Court. Ibuprofen was the medicine that the school nurse failed to find hidden in her bra or in her panties. The court coverage by Wyatt Andrews offered strongest context to support the school's decision to intrude on the girl's privacy: "Prescription drug abuse is rampant," he stated. "More than 2m students admitted in 2006 they had used prescription painkillers or tranquilizers, most of it stolen from their parents…Most of the nation's school systems have asked the Court to keep the option of strip searches open."
NBC's Pete Williams gave strongest voice to the other side: "Her lawyers say schools need more than a vague tip to order an intrusive strip search…Even if the Court upholds strip searches, as it seems inclined to do, local school boards can still block them: three quarters of the school districts in Arizona, where this case comes from, already have."
On ABC, Jan Crawford Greenburg quoted Redding herself, now a 19-year-old college student: "They keep saying that: 'We are doing it to keep everyone safe.' What about me? You know? Like they did not help me any by doing that."
CLEAN COAL, PHONY BALONEY On the eve of Earth Day, only ABC filed an environmental feature. Brian Ross' Investigates was A Closer Look into the coal industry's $20m advertising blitz that "promises that coal can be clean." Ross was hard to persuade. He called coal "an environmental nightmare." He was doubtful about schemes to prevent greenhouse gases by capturing carbon dioxide and burying it deep inside the Earth. "There is no proof the dangerous gases stay buried." He reminded us of the fanfare when a clean coal prototype project for Illinois was unveiled by Gov Rod Blagojevich--"abandoned last year when the projected cost doubled to almost $2bn." Yet look at this year's federal spending: "Clean coal gets a new life, $3.4bn in stimulus money from President Barack Obama."
BY THE RIVERS OF BABYLON "Along the green Euphrates River the ruins of Babylon remain one of Iraq's historic treasures, 5,000-years-old, home of the Biblical Tower of Babel and the fabled Hanging Gardens." Thus Richard Engel showed us ancient marvels for NBC's In Depth. Yet the marvels were bereft of tourists. Instead, the site that attracted Iraqis was on the hill overlooking those treasures of antiquity. Saddam Hussein's palace offers tours for 85c per head and an overnight stay in the dictator's bedroom for $150. "It looks like it was decorated by Liberace," Engel exclaimed.
BACONFREE BACON CBS' Kelly Cobiella publicized The Grateful Palate last month in her feature on the joys of bacon. ABC's Neal Karlinsky selected the J&Ds, Justin Esch and Dave Lefkow. "With no marketing budget they began storming sporting events coast to coast dressed as bacon." They sell BaconSalt and Baconnaise and Bacon Lip Balm and, you never know, Bacon Beer: "A selling point that might come as a surprise--the ingredients do not actually include any bacon."
As the torture story inches forward, euphemism is slowly being stripped away. Thumbs up to CBS anchor Katie Couric for being forthright. "We begin tonight with the topic of torture," she declared. NBC anchor Brian Williams too called the abuse of prisoners by its name, although indirectly, as in the following sentence: "The White House says there will be no more torture on their watch and a while back, from the President on down, they seemed to close the book on going back and charging people in the Bush Administration who approved it." The it that they approved cannot refer to anything except torture. Charles Gibson remains the holdout on ABC: "harsh interrogation" was the form of words he used twice and would go no further.
The networks' correspondents were less plainspoken than their anchors. NBC's Andrea Mitchell did show progress compared with her colleague Savannah Guthrie on Monday. Guthrie referred to the "harshest interrogation tactics, which some call torture." Mitchell has shifted to the preferable "harsh interrogations that many people call torture." CBS' Bob Orr called the Justice Department's lawyering "so-called torture memos" and the demand by Senate Democrats for an investigation a "so-called Truth Commission." He chose some rather than many--as in "interrogations that some have labeled torture." On ABC, Jake Tapper, like his anchor, used "harsh interrogation."
CBS' Jeff Greenfield (at the tail of the Orr videostream) takes the cake. He called the possibility that the Bush Administration committed war crimes a "policy difference"--as in "it is so unusual to even think about one administration prosecuting a past administration for what Eric Holder called 'a policy difference.' I mean--bribery, sure; even Watergate was flat out obstruction of justice…" To Greenfield, torture is a milder offense than bribery or obstruction.
All three newscasts used the same Fox News Channel soundbite from former Vice President Dick Cheney complaining that the CIA had failed to declassify documents that justified criminal means by intelligence ends: "They did not put out the memos that showed the success of the effort." So will there be a prosecution? Or a Truth Commission? Or will former lawyer, now federal judge, Jay Bybee be impeached? From the White House, NBC's Chuck Todd foresaw action in the Senate: the President "is not going to stand in the way of Congress if they choose to do something."
GATES NEEDS CYBER DEFENDERS CBS anchor Katie Couric gave us a sneak preview of her 60 Minutes profile of Defense Secretary Robert Gates when she picked up on reports of espionage, possibly by the People's Republic of China, of design and electronics secrets in the new F-35 Lightning fighter jet. The spies, if successful, did so by hacking through the Pentagon's computer security. "We are under cyberattack virtually all the time, every day," Gates confessed. "Everyone else is under attack. Banks are under attack. Every country is under attack." In his new budget, Gates is requesting to increase his computer security staff fourfold.
TEENAGER MUSE IN A TON OF TROUBLE He is a teenager. He stands 5'2". He has a wounded hand. His three shipmates have been shot dead by commando snipers. Yet CBS' Armen Keteyian aggrandized the bedraggled figure of abdu-Wali Muse to the title of "suspected ringleader" of the speedboat crew that failed to hijack the Maersk Line's freighter Alabama off the coast of his native Somalia. He appeared in federal court accused of piracy. "The defense claims he is 16, a minor and therefore these proceedings should not be open to the public," reported NBC's Ron Allen. On ABC, John Berman used his network's newsgathering ties to the BBC to quote Muse's mother, interviewed by the World Service in his home village of Galka'yo. "He is 16. I sent him to school. He has gone missing…He has been used for that crime by other men." The judge decided that Muse is an adult. Now everybody knows his name.
FOR THE LOVE OF MONEY NOT EROTIC SERVICES Also appearing in court was Philip Markoff, a Boston University medical student, arraigned in the murder of Julissa Brisman, a 26-year-old masseuse, who advertised her services on Craigslist. CBS' Daniel Sieberg could not get Markoff's alleged motive straight. Initially he reported police allegations that the student is "a violent predator who stalked women in cold blood" but later that he "met her in a hotel room and killed her in a botched robbery." Sources for NBC's Jeff Rossen and ABC's Lisa Fletcher sided with the latter explanation. Both correspondents were told that money, not sex, was his motive: he needed to rob to pay gambling debts.
Sieberg and Rossen both concentrated on the crime itself, which is, after all, a local Massachusetts story and has little business being covered on a network newscast. ABC's Fletcher sought the national angle, repeating the same worries that her colleague Barbara Pinto had covered last month when the Cook County Sheriff in Illinois criticized Craigslist for facilitating prostitution. Brisman may have advertised massage but she placed her classified under "erotic services."
NO EASY FIXES, PLENTY OF LIKELY FRAUD Secretary Timothy Geithner appeared on Capitol Hill to update the Congressional Oversight Panel on the Treasury Department's TARP bailout of high finance. "Geithner conceded the government has had limited success getting banks to increase lending and improve the flow of credit," reported ABC's Betsy Stark, before following up with the really bad news from the International Monetary Fund: so far the global banking industry has written down losses of $900bn; the IMF's estimate of the total damage--$4.1tr. A possible remedy, Stark mentioned, would be for TARP funds to be converted into shares of ownership. "That helps the banks' bottom line but it is also bound to stir up fears of nationalization. No easy fixes."
From the White House, CBS' Chip Reid covered Neil Barofsky, a Geithner aide who is in charge of investigating bailout abuse, "everything from securities fraud to insider trading to public corruption." Barofsky's estimate is that TARP's losses to fraud could be "devastating," perhaps 10% of $3tr.
WE STRIP YOU NAKED TO KEEP YOU SAFE Savana Redding is the name of the thirteen-year-old middle-schooler whose case made it to the United States Supreme Court. Ibuprofen was the medicine that the school nurse failed to find hidden in her bra or in her panties. The court coverage by Wyatt Andrews offered strongest context to support the school's decision to intrude on the girl's privacy: "Prescription drug abuse is rampant," he stated. "More than 2m students admitted in 2006 they had used prescription painkillers or tranquilizers, most of it stolen from their parents…Most of the nation's school systems have asked the Court to keep the option of strip searches open."
NBC's Pete Williams gave strongest voice to the other side: "Her lawyers say schools need more than a vague tip to order an intrusive strip search…Even if the Court upholds strip searches, as it seems inclined to do, local school boards can still block them: three quarters of the school districts in Arizona, where this case comes from, already have."
On ABC, Jan Crawford Greenburg quoted Redding herself, now a 19-year-old college student: "They keep saying that: 'We are doing it to keep everyone safe.' What about me? You know? Like they did not help me any by doing that."
CLEAN COAL, PHONY BALONEY On the eve of Earth Day, only ABC filed an environmental feature. Brian Ross' Investigates was A Closer Look into the coal industry's $20m advertising blitz that "promises that coal can be clean." Ross was hard to persuade. He called coal "an environmental nightmare." He was doubtful about schemes to prevent greenhouse gases by capturing carbon dioxide and burying it deep inside the Earth. "There is no proof the dangerous gases stay buried." He reminded us of the fanfare when a clean coal prototype project for Illinois was unveiled by Gov Rod Blagojevich--"abandoned last year when the projected cost doubled to almost $2bn." Yet look at this year's federal spending: "Clean coal gets a new life, $3.4bn in stimulus money from President Barack Obama."
BY THE RIVERS OF BABYLON "Along the green Euphrates River the ruins of Babylon remain one of Iraq's historic treasures, 5,000-years-old, home of the Biblical Tower of Babel and the fabled Hanging Gardens." Thus Richard Engel showed us ancient marvels for NBC's In Depth. Yet the marvels were bereft of tourists. Instead, the site that attracted Iraqis was on the hill overlooking those treasures of antiquity. Saddam Hussein's palace offers tours for 85c per head and an overnight stay in the dictator's bedroom for $150. "It looks like it was decorated by Liberace," Engel exclaimed.
BACONFREE BACON CBS' Kelly Cobiella publicized The Grateful Palate last month in her feature on the joys of bacon. ABC's Neal Karlinsky selected the J&Ds, Justin Esch and Dave Lefkow. "With no marketing budget they began storming sporting events coast to coast dressed as bacon." They sell BaconSalt and Baconnaise and Bacon Lip Balm and, you never know, Bacon Beer: "A selling point that might come as a surprise--the ingredients do not actually include any bacon."
