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TYNDALL HEADLINE: HIGHLIGHTS FROM APRIL 28, 2009
For the third straight weekday the Mexican swine 'flu was Story of the Day, although the feverish pace of coverage abated somewhat (9 min Friday, 34 min Monday, 21 min Tuesday). The allocation of $1.5bn in extra funds to the Centers for Disease Control led all three newscasts. Influenza still accounted for more than a third (36% of 58 min) of the three-network newshole. High marks go to Jeffrey Kofman at ABC who traveled to a remote village in Veracruz to find the five-year-old boy who was the first patient on the globe to fall ill with the brand new virus. Edgar Hernandez survived his fever.
TYNDALL PICKS FOR APRIL 28, 2009: CLICK ON GRID ELEMENTS TO SEARCH FOR MATCHING ITEMS
SWINE ‘FLU BREAKS FEVER--SLIGHTLY For the third straight weekday the Mexican swine 'flu was Story of the Day, although the feverish pace of coverage abated somewhat (9 min Friday, 34 min Monday, 21 min Tuesday). The allocation of $1.5bn in extra funds to the Centers for Disease Control led all three newscasts. Influenza still accounted for more than a third (36% of 58 min) of the three-network newshole. High marks go to Jeffrey Kofman at ABC who traveled to a remote village in Veracruz to find the five-year-old boy who was the first patient on the globe to fall ill with the brand new virus. Edgar Hernandez survived his fever.
ABC's John McKenzie told us that the CDC will use its extra funds to build up stockpiles of antiviral medicine, for monitoring and diagnosis, and for international coordination. "The virus is continuing to spread throughout the country ever more rapidly," noted NBC's Robert Bazell, before adding the good news that "most cases so far have been mild." In total there are just ten 'flu patients hospitalized nationwide. Unidentified "health officials" told ABC's McKenzie that "one reason there may be milder cases in the United States is that there has been earlier, more aggressive screening. Mexico only identified the virus after people were dying from it."
CBS had Nancy Cordes on Capitol Hill, where she covered hearings inquiring into the feasibility of a vaccine--a four to six months timeline--while her colleagues at the other networks were preoccupied with Arlen Specter, the senatorial party-switcher. Noting that pork prices are falling on commodity markets, Cordes came up with a ridiculous angle on the pandemic panic: "Authorities are seriously considering dropping the swine 'flu nickname. Europe did. It is calling it the novel virus. The scientific name is H1N1."
MEET EDGAR, THE GLOBAL TRENDSETTER While NBC's Kerry Sanders and CBS' John Blackstone (no link) stayed in Mexico City to cover the empty streets and crowded hospitals, kudos goes to ABC's Jeffrey Kofman. He traveled to the village of La Gloria and located the globe's first ever patient of this strain of influenza. Meet Edgar Hernandez, aged five, bedridden for three days earlier this month with a high fever. How sick was he? "Very sick." What were his symptoms? "With a cough." How does he feel now? "Good."
In all, 800 of La Gloria's 2,000 residents were stricken with the 'flu, although none died. "Just a few miles from the village are about a dozen huge industrial pig farms," Kofman showed us, but was refused access. The villagers blame the hog farms, part owned by US-based Smithfield Foods, for polluted air and ground water. As for the virus, "there is no evidence of swine 'flu in any of our herds or employees," the factory farm asserted in a statement.
PUBLIC HEALTH PREPARES Rounding out the influenza coverage, each newscast offered a public health background feature. ABC's Lisa Stark showed us the Emergency Operations Center of the Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta where 200 staffers coordinate testing for the virus and a nationwide response: "Scientists have preliminary test results in just four hours. The more challenging task is growing the virus so others can start developing a vaccine. Scientists say they will not finish with that initial work for at least another week." NBC went to the local level, as Janet Shamlian showed us Texas' rural Hunt County. The town of Commerce has "fewer than 10,000 residents, no county health department and just a 25-bed hospital." Its preparedness plan involves firefighters, school officials, police officers--"even the jail, joining forces."
CBS had in-house physician Jon LaPook assess how deadly this H1N1 strain of swine 'flu might be. "To put this in perspective," he offered, the regular 'flu kills 36,000 nationwide each year out of 50m or 60m infections. "It is impossible to know if this virus is deadlier." Public health officials speculate that "this current outbreak may die off naturally but we could see a resurgence in the fall."
NARROW SPECTRUM OF SPECTER METAPHORS Looking for a metaphor to describe the decision by Arlen Specter, five-term Republican Senator from Pennsylvania, to switch to the Democratic Party? Try tectonic. "A political earthquake"--ABC's Jonathan Karl; "a seismic shift"--NBC's Kelly O'Donnell. Looking for a metaphor to describe how a supermajority transforms the balance of power in the US Senate? Try supernatural. "The magical sixtieth vote"--CBS' Chip Reid; "60, the magic number"--NBC's O'Donnell. Looking for a metaphor to describe the impact on his former co-partisans? Try trench warfare. "Shell-shocked Republicans"--ABC's Karl; "shell-shocked Senate Republicans"--CBS' Reid.
Specter explained that he was changing parties because he wanted to be reelected. If he had remained a Republican, a primary defeat at the hands of PatrickTwomey Toomey would have been his likely fate. "He left to further his personal political interests," was how ABC's Karl quoted RNC Chairman Michael Steele. Karl called Steele's comments "blistering" whereas accurate could have served just as well. "Nothing more, nothing less than political self-preservation," was how CBS' Reid quoted Texan John Cornyn. Reid characterized Sen Cornyn as criticizing "the crassest kind of politics" whereas a compliment for accuracy could have served just as well.
George Stephanopoulos, anchor of ABC's This Week provided some contrast to this lockstep. He quoted the maxim by a Republican whom he did not name: "60 seats is not 60 votes." Besides Specter, "there are a lot of conservative and moderate Democrats who are resisting Barack Obama's agenda on big issues like healthcare and energy." Filibusters may yet succeed whichever party Specter decides to caucus with.
CROSS-BORDER BATTLEFIELD VIDEOTAPE Besides Mexico and its influenza, the only other overseas dateline was Pakistan. CBS' Lara Logan was in Islamabad, where she obtained battlefield videotape from Taliban guerrillas based in Pakistan's Dir District. They showed a cross-border raid into Afghanistan's Kunar Province where they fired successfully on a Chinook helicopter and a HumVee operated by the United States military and got close enough to a Medevac helicopter to show GI casualties "being lifted to safety." The Pakistani military told Logan that "right now" a major operation against the Taliban in Dir is underway. "For now," Logan reported, "the United States is keeping its forces on the Afghan side of the border, unsure of how committed Pakistan really is to this fight."
AUTISM LINKED TO BRAIN PROTEIN GENES While John Donvan kept his streak as an autism specialist alive on ABC's A Closer Look (11 of the 39 reports filed on the disease since November 2006 in Tyndall Report's database have been by him), CBS welcomed Jennifer Ashton--a new face on the Evening News and a physician. Both Ashton and Donvan told us about the latest DNA research into patients with autism. A genetic mutation has been isolated that alters brain chemistry. ABC's Donvan reported that the change caused by the genes occurs in the brain's frontal lobes. CBS' Ashton explained that it "disrupts synapses" that control "complex social behaviors" such as language and facial gestures. "Often there is an environmental trigger as well," she noted, pointing out that the genetic marker is found in only two-thirds of autistic patients. She did not tell us how frequently the same gene is found in the non-autistic population.
911 CALLS ABOUT 9/11 FEARS ABC's Jake Tapper signaled that Monday's Air Force One snafu, pricetag $328,835, was not all that serious a story by ending his follow-up report with a punchline from Jon Stewart on Comedy Central's The Daily Show: "You know another way you could have gotten that picture--Photoshop." Yet Tapper began his coverage with 911 audiotapes of 9/11 flashbacks. As to why the office workers of Ground Zero were not warned that their high rises were about to be buzzed by a low-flying jumbo jet with World Trade Center flight patterns, Tapper obtained a memorandum from the Federal Aviation Administration with instructions that the Air Force One plan "shall not be released to the public or the media."
ONE HUNDRED MINUS ONE This is the 99th day of Barack Obama's Presidency, so all three newscasts geared up for the big One Hundred. CBS kicked off a series dubbed The First 100 Days--The Next 100 Days with Jeff Greenfield's history lesson on why the round number is such a big deal. "Obama is being measured by a standard that was born almost 30 years before he was." A hundred days was the period between Franklin Delano Roosevelt's inauguration and the first Congressional recess, in which time major New Deal legislation was passed. "Every President since has entered the White House knowing he will be judged by that inevitable, if highly dubious, standard."
On ABC, David Wright looked at the First Family's first hundred days, narrating a photomontage by Pete Souza, the White House photographer. We saw the jungle gym and the garden and the dog and the movie theater: "The Obamas seem comfortable."
While CBS' White House correspondent was assigned serious news--Chip Reid on Arlen Specter's party-switching--and ABC's covered the trivial--Jake Tapper on the Air Force One brouhaha--NBC's Chuck Todd was on the hundred days beat, summarizing the results of his network's latest opinion poll with The Wall Street Journal. The poll found the President with a 61% job approval rating and an 81% personal approval rating. During his hundred days in office, the percentage of Americans believing that the nation is headed in the right direction has risen from 26% to 43%.
WHAT SOME HAVE LIKENED TO WAR CRIMES On the vocabulary watch, it is too bad that NBC/WSJ did not have the guts to word a question honestly. Do Americans support a criminal investigation into "interrogation techniques that some have likened to torture"? Chuck Todd told us that 61% "want to move on, which was the initial instinct of the President." He did not address whether the daintiness of the wording of the question may have prompted the callous indifference to human depravity in the answer.
CHECK OUT THE MIAMI MARINE STADIUM Lee Cowan's heart must have sank at his fuddy-duddy assignment for NBC's In Depth. He was handed this year's list of eleven endangered landmark structures from the National Trust for Historic Preservation and ordered to make a story out of it. He showed us Enola Gay's hangar on the Bonneville Salt Flats and the rusty Memorial Bridge connecting New Hampshire and Maine and a couple of Frank Lloyd Wright creations. Cowan devoted most time to the Century Plaza Hotel in Los Angeles. I disagree. Check them out for yourself. My favorite was the Miami Marine Stadium, "architecturally significant but now drowning in a sea of neglect."
ABC's John McKenzie told us that the CDC will use its extra funds to build up stockpiles of antiviral medicine, for monitoring and diagnosis, and for international coordination. "The virus is continuing to spread throughout the country ever more rapidly," noted NBC's Robert Bazell, before adding the good news that "most cases so far have been mild." In total there are just ten 'flu patients hospitalized nationwide. Unidentified "health officials" told ABC's McKenzie that "one reason there may be milder cases in the United States is that there has been earlier, more aggressive screening. Mexico only identified the virus after people were dying from it."
CBS had Nancy Cordes on Capitol Hill, where she covered hearings inquiring into the feasibility of a vaccine--a four to six months timeline--while her colleagues at the other networks were preoccupied with Arlen Specter, the senatorial party-switcher. Noting that pork prices are falling on commodity markets, Cordes came up with a ridiculous angle on the pandemic panic: "Authorities are seriously considering dropping the swine 'flu nickname. Europe did. It is calling it the novel virus. The scientific name is H1N1."
MEET EDGAR, THE GLOBAL TRENDSETTER While NBC's Kerry Sanders and CBS' John Blackstone (no link) stayed in Mexico City to cover the empty streets and crowded hospitals, kudos goes to ABC's Jeffrey Kofman. He traveled to the village of La Gloria and located the globe's first ever patient of this strain of influenza. Meet Edgar Hernandez, aged five, bedridden for three days earlier this month with a high fever. How sick was he? "Very sick." What were his symptoms? "With a cough." How does he feel now? "Good."
In all, 800 of La Gloria's 2,000 residents were stricken with the 'flu, although none died. "Just a few miles from the village are about a dozen huge industrial pig farms," Kofman showed us, but was refused access. The villagers blame the hog farms, part owned by US-based Smithfield Foods, for polluted air and ground water. As for the virus, "there is no evidence of swine 'flu in any of our herds or employees," the factory farm asserted in a statement.
PUBLIC HEALTH PREPARES Rounding out the influenza coverage, each newscast offered a public health background feature. ABC's Lisa Stark showed us the Emergency Operations Center of the Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta where 200 staffers coordinate testing for the virus and a nationwide response: "Scientists have preliminary test results in just four hours. The more challenging task is growing the virus so others can start developing a vaccine. Scientists say they will not finish with that initial work for at least another week." NBC went to the local level, as Janet Shamlian showed us Texas' rural Hunt County. The town of Commerce has "fewer than 10,000 residents, no county health department and just a 25-bed hospital." Its preparedness plan involves firefighters, school officials, police officers--"even the jail, joining forces."
CBS had in-house physician Jon LaPook assess how deadly this H1N1 strain of swine 'flu might be. "To put this in perspective," he offered, the regular 'flu kills 36,000 nationwide each year out of 50m or 60m infections. "It is impossible to know if this virus is deadlier." Public health officials speculate that "this current outbreak may die off naturally but we could see a resurgence in the fall."
NARROW SPECTRUM OF SPECTER METAPHORS Looking for a metaphor to describe the decision by Arlen Specter, five-term Republican Senator from Pennsylvania, to switch to the Democratic Party? Try tectonic. "A political earthquake"--ABC's Jonathan Karl; "a seismic shift"--NBC's Kelly O'Donnell. Looking for a metaphor to describe how a supermajority transforms the balance of power in the US Senate? Try supernatural. "The magical sixtieth vote"--CBS' Chip Reid; "60, the magic number"--NBC's O'Donnell. Looking for a metaphor to describe the impact on his former co-partisans? Try trench warfare. "Shell-shocked Republicans"--ABC's Karl; "shell-shocked Senate Republicans"--CBS' Reid.
Specter explained that he was changing parties because he wanted to be reelected. If he had remained a Republican, a primary defeat at the hands of Patrick
George Stephanopoulos, anchor of ABC's This Week provided some contrast to this lockstep. He quoted the maxim by a Republican whom he did not name: "60 seats is not 60 votes." Besides Specter, "there are a lot of conservative and moderate Democrats who are resisting Barack Obama's agenda on big issues like healthcare and energy." Filibusters may yet succeed whichever party Specter decides to caucus with.
CROSS-BORDER BATTLEFIELD VIDEOTAPE Besides Mexico and its influenza, the only other overseas dateline was Pakistan. CBS' Lara Logan was in Islamabad, where she obtained battlefield videotape from Taliban guerrillas based in Pakistan's Dir District. They showed a cross-border raid into Afghanistan's Kunar Province where they fired successfully on a Chinook helicopter and a HumVee operated by the United States military and got close enough to a Medevac helicopter to show GI casualties "being lifted to safety." The Pakistani military told Logan that "right now" a major operation against the Taliban in Dir is underway. "For now," Logan reported, "the United States is keeping its forces on the Afghan side of the border, unsure of how committed Pakistan really is to this fight."
AUTISM LINKED TO BRAIN PROTEIN GENES While John Donvan kept his streak as an autism specialist alive on ABC's A Closer Look (11 of the 39 reports filed on the disease since November 2006 in Tyndall Report's database have been by him), CBS welcomed Jennifer Ashton--a new face on the Evening News and a physician. Both Ashton and Donvan told us about the latest DNA research into patients with autism. A genetic mutation has been isolated that alters brain chemistry. ABC's Donvan reported that the change caused by the genes occurs in the brain's frontal lobes. CBS' Ashton explained that it "disrupts synapses" that control "complex social behaviors" such as language and facial gestures. "Often there is an environmental trigger as well," she noted, pointing out that the genetic marker is found in only two-thirds of autistic patients. She did not tell us how frequently the same gene is found in the non-autistic population.
911 CALLS ABOUT 9/11 FEARS ABC's Jake Tapper signaled that Monday's Air Force One snafu, pricetag $328,835, was not all that serious a story by ending his follow-up report with a punchline from Jon Stewart on Comedy Central's The Daily Show: "You know another way you could have gotten that picture--Photoshop." Yet Tapper began his coverage with 911 audiotapes of 9/11 flashbacks. As to why the office workers of Ground Zero were not warned that their high rises were about to be buzzed by a low-flying jumbo jet with World Trade Center flight patterns, Tapper obtained a memorandum from the Federal Aviation Administration with instructions that the Air Force One plan "shall not be released to the public or the media."
ONE HUNDRED MINUS ONE This is the 99th day of Barack Obama's Presidency, so all three newscasts geared up for the big One Hundred. CBS kicked off a series dubbed The First 100 Days--The Next 100 Days with Jeff Greenfield's history lesson on why the round number is such a big deal. "Obama is being measured by a standard that was born almost 30 years before he was." A hundred days was the period between Franklin Delano Roosevelt's inauguration and the first Congressional recess, in which time major New Deal legislation was passed. "Every President since has entered the White House knowing he will be judged by that inevitable, if highly dubious, standard."
On ABC, David Wright looked at the First Family's first hundred days, narrating a photomontage by Pete Souza, the White House photographer. We saw the jungle gym and the garden and the dog and the movie theater: "The Obamas seem comfortable."
While CBS' White House correspondent was assigned serious news--Chip Reid on Arlen Specter's party-switching--and ABC's covered the trivial--Jake Tapper on the Air Force One brouhaha--NBC's Chuck Todd was on the hundred days beat, summarizing the results of his network's latest opinion poll with The Wall Street Journal. The poll found the President with a 61% job approval rating and an 81% personal approval rating. During his hundred days in office, the percentage of Americans believing that the nation is headed in the right direction has risen from 26% to 43%.
WHAT SOME HAVE LIKENED TO WAR CRIMES On the vocabulary watch, it is too bad that NBC/WSJ did not have the guts to word a question honestly. Do Americans support a criminal investigation into "interrogation techniques that some have likened to torture"? Chuck Todd told us that 61% "want to move on, which was the initial instinct of the President." He did not address whether the daintiness of the wording of the question may have prompted the callous indifference to human depravity in the answer.
CHECK OUT THE MIAMI MARINE STADIUM Lee Cowan's heart must have sank at his fuddy-duddy assignment for NBC's In Depth. He was handed this year's list of eleven endangered landmark structures from the National Trust for Historic Preservation and ordered to make a story out of it. He showed us Enola Gay's hangar on the Bonneville Salt Flats and the rusty Memorial Bridge connecting New Hampshire and Maine and a couple of Frank Lloyd Wright creations. Cowan devoted most time to the Century Plaza Hotel in Los Angeles. I disagree. Check them out for yourself. My favorite was the Miami Marine Stadium, "architecturally significant but now drowning in a sea of neglect."
