 |           |
TYNDALL HEADLINE: HIGHLIGHTS FROM JULY 21, 2009
President Barack Obama again used his headline-grabbing clout to turn his pitch for healthcare reform into Story of the Day. Last Wednesday was the most recent previous time the healthcare debate topped the networks' agenda when he invited their trio of in-house physicians to interview him at the White House. Now the President offers an in-person q-&-a on his legislative goals to CBS anchor Katie Couric, who anchored from the capital. CBS, naturally, led with healthcare. ABC chose the state of the national economy and NBC looked to the west coast as California claimed to have reached a deal to close its $26bn state budget deficit.
TYNDALL PICKS FOR JULY 21, 2009: CLICK ON GRID ELEMENTS TO SEARCH FOR MATCHING ITEMS
THE PR PRESIDENT President Barack Obama again used his headline-grabbing clout to turn his pitch for healthcare reform into Story of the Day. Last Wednesday was the most recent previous time the healthcare debate topped the networks' agenda when he invited their trio of in-house physicians to interview him at the White House. Now the President offers an in-person q-&-a on his legislative goals to CBS anchor Katie Couric, who anchored from the capital. CBS, naturally, led with healthcare. ABC chose the state of the national economy and NBC looked to the west coast as California claimed to have reached a deal to close its $26bn state budget deficit.
"If the stimulus plan is not really working, at least for now, why should Americans sign off on spending billions of dollars on healthcare reform?" was the non-sequitur that CBS' Couric posed to the President. "Who is to say you are reading the tea leaves accurately now?" "Meaning what?" came Obama's puzzled reply. Couric explained: "When you make these projections and estimates and cost savings, it is a pretty dicey proposition--don't you think?--to predict economics into the future." Obama remained calm: "If what you are saying is that economists are often wrong, you are absolutely right about that; but that cannot be a rationale for inaction."
The President laid down four tests for the healthcare legislation. "If I am not happy with the end product I will not sign a bill," he pledged. He demanded more competition between plans; guaranteed coverage for patients with pre-existing conditions; no increase in the federal deficit; and a reduction in long-term healthcare costs. Obama was slippery about that last point. At one point he demanded that the bill should "reduce costs;" at another he said he wanted to "bend the cost curve so that healthcare inflation is reduced." Couric did not ask him which he meant.
DISCORD AMONG DEMOCRATS The President's publicity generating efforts aside, the healthcare news of the day concerned discord among Congressional Democrats. CBS' Nancy Cordes focused on the split in their House caucus over how to fund the next decade's $1tr pricetag: "More and more of them oppose a proposed surtax on the wealthy." ABC's Jake Tapper found a disagreement between Senate Democrats and House Democrats over tax increases and cost controls. They are in accord, Tapper conceded, about pre-existing conditions, an option of government-run coverage and an emphasis on "prevention and wellness programs." NBC's Chuck Todd filed a brief stand-up from the White House on Barack Obama's meeting with conservative Democrats. Todd detected nervousness about the need to raise revenues: "The last time a Congress had to vote to raise taxes," he reminded us, "was in 1993."
Last week, CBS' Chip Reid displayed excessive solicitude towards small business when he profiled the $280K-a-year owner of a mountaineering firm who does not provide healthcare for his 25-person staff. Now ABC's Chris Bury (at the tail of the Tapper videostream) is assigned to check out a jeweler, a restaurateur and a market stallholder in smalltown Missouri on their reaction to the healthcare debate. He spoke to the three employers but only one of their workers--a waitress who prefers government-provided healthcare to a workplace plan.
PENTAGON FUNDING FOR CONCEALED HANDGUNS Only CBS assigned a correspondent to preview another debate on Capitol Hill. Bob Orr told us about an amendment to the Pentagon budget that the Senate will vote on. No, he was not reporting on the F-22 Raptor fighter jet, whose production was discontinued. Orr pointed to a proposal to allow gun owners to "obtain permits in states with weak regulations and then carry the weapons unchecked virtually anywhere." He showed us a full page ad in USA Today denouncing the measure signed by 450 urban mayors: "Opponents note the timing is terrible. Violent crime is plunging, with big city murders nearing 30-year lows." Meanwhile, sponsors called national concealed weapons permits "a crimefighting tool."
CELLPHONE SAFETY STATISTICS SUPPRESSED Both CBS' Sharyl Attkisson and ABC's Lisa Stark picked up on a potential scandal from 2003. The National Highway Transportation Safety Board had prepared a public relations blitz, complete with talking points, press releases and a rollout plan, to publicize the dangers of talking on a cellphone while driving. In 2002, the NHTSA estimated, more than 950 people had been killed by distracted motorists during cellphone conversations. But the rollout never happened and the research documenting the dangers was kept secret until a lawsuit forced its publication. "It is unclear why the agency did not act," ABC's Stark stated, noting that drivers' cellphone use has doubled in the ensuing six years. "Safety advocates suspect the government did not want to upset the powerful wireless industry," reported CBS' Attkisson. "Total bunk," was how a former transportation official responded.
MASON’S OPTIMISTIC MISPARAPHRASE ON CBS Chairman Benjamin Bernanke of the Federal Reserve Board testified before a House committee. CBS' Anthony Mason misinterpreted his "latest diagnosis for the sick economy." Mason paraphrased Bernanke as saying "the patient is improving" while his soundbite offered no more than "the pace of decline appears to have slowed significantly." ABC's Bianna Golodryga heard warnings about foreclosures and unemployment and small business woes. Maybe lending to that sector "will never come back," the central banker warned, "because credit is sort of permanently tightened up." Pointing to "more shuttered shops" as retailers go out of business, CBS' Mason worried about foreclosed "office buildings, malls, hotels." Both reporters did find some solace in the stock market: "green arrows on Wall Street seven straight days"--ABC's Golodryga; the Dow Jones Industrial Average "now back in positive territory for the year"--CBS' Mason.
NBC chose to look at a statewide economy rather than the national one. Miguel Almaguer filed from Los Angeles on the "midnight negotiations and an ending long overdue" as Californian politicians claimed to have agreed on a budget. Almaguer listed cuts in healthcare, welfare, prisons, colleges, schools and eldercare. Offshore oil drilling will be allowed off scenic Santa Barbara for the first time in 40 years. Municipalities will lose state aid: "They may sue California to get their earmarked money back."
POLICE CUFF SCHOLAR NBC's Mike Taibbi called him a "world renowned scholar." CBS' Jim Axelrod called him "perhaps America's best-known African-American intellectual." But when Professor Henry Louis Gates of Harvard University ended up handcuffed, in a mugshot, arrested by the Cambridge Police Department, ABC did not consider the incident worth a reporter. "This is what happens to black men in America," was how NBC's Taibbi quoted Gates' protests when he was confronted in his own house on suspicion of burglary by police. "Outrageous," quoted CBS' Axelrod from Gates' interview with Washington Post, "how poor black men across the country are treated every day." Gates accused police of refusing to accept his photo ID and refusing to provide him with name and badge number. Police accused Gates of being uncooperative, belligerent and disorderly. Charges were eventually dropped.
GOSK GOES OUTSIDE OF CATEGORY CBS did not file a single story with an overseas dateline. NBC had Stephanie Gosk file from her bicycle on an outside-of-category climb on a Tour de France Alp but unfortunately her network did not link to the video, presumably because it believed it could not make fair use of sports footage. ABC sent Bob Woodruff to a trauma unit in Kandahar that has treated 1,000 casualties so far this year, between 60% and 80% of them Afghan civilians. The medics had worked previously in Iraq, where Woodruff himself almost had his brains blown out: the nurse, a lieutenant, "took care of me when I was in a coma;" the surgeon, a colonel, "removed rocks from my brain and neck."
WHAT MADE MILWAUKEE’S BRAVEST ABC's closer from Milwaukee saw Barbara Pinto narrate amateur videotape from an SUV accident. Neighbors rushed to the scene on Layton Avenue as the driver and her baby daughter were pulled to safety but a four-year-old boy was trapped, buckled into his car seat as the SUV burst into flames. A policeman arrived on the scene with a fire extinguisher and a neighbor sprayed his garden hose as a pair of off-duty firefighter brothers dived into the fire to cut the toddler loose. Meet John and Joel Rechlitz.
ART IS NOT BRAIN SURGERY Alison Silva's paintings went from "bright and cheery and whimsical" to a darker, new style that "has earned her more commissions and higher prices," CBS' Richard Schlesinger showed us. The change happened after she suffered blackouts, headaches and dizziness. Her neurologist found "a dangerous tangle of blood vessels" with an MRI brain scan, posing "the risk of seizures or stroke or maybe death." Artist Silva decided to leave her brain alone. "Surgery could cure her but it could also destroy her ability to create."
"If the stimulus plan is not really working, at least for now, why should Americans sign off on spending billions of dollars on healthcare reform?" was the non-sequitur that CBS' Couric posed to the President. "Who is to say you are reading the tea leaves accurately now?" "Meaning what?" came Obama's puzzled reply. Couric explained: "When you make these projections and estimates and cost savings, it is a pretty dicey proposition--don't you think?--to predict economics into the future." Obama remained calm: "If what you are saying is that economists are often wrong, you are absolutely right about that; but that cannot be a rationale for inaction."
The President laid down four tests for the healthcare legislation. "If I am not happy with the end product I will not sign a bill," he pledged. He demanded more competition between plans; guaranteed coverage for patients with pre-existing conditions; no increase in the federal deficit; and a reduction in long-term healthcare costs. Obama was slippery about that last point. At one point he demanded that the bill should "reduce costs;" at another he said he wanted to "bend the cost curve so that healthcare inflation is reduced." Couric did not ask him which he meant.
DISCORD AMONG DEMOCRATS The President's publicity generating efforts aside, the healthcare news of the day concerned discord among Congressional Democrats. CBS' Nancy Cordes focused on the split in their House caucus over how to fund the next decade's $1tr pricetag: "More and more of them oppose a proposed surtax on the wealthy." ABC's Jake Tapper found a disagreement between Senate Democrats and House Democrats over tax increases and cost controls. They are in accord, Tapper conceded, about pre-existing conditions, an option of government-run coverage and an emphasis on "prevention and wellness programs." NBC's Chuck Todd filed a brief stand-up from the White House on Barack Obama's meeting with conservative Democrats. Todd detected nervousness about the need to raise revenues: "The last time a Congress had to vote to raise taxes," he reminded us, "was in 1993."
Last week, CBS' Chip Reid displayed excessive solicitude towards small business when he profiled the $280K-a-year owner of a mountaineering firm who does not provide healthcare for his 25-person staff. Now ABC's Chris Bury (at the tail of the Tapper videostream) is assigned to check out a jeweler, a restaurateur and a market stallholder in smalltown Missouri on their reaction to the healthcare debate. He spoke to the three employers but only one of their workers--a waitress who prefers government-provided healthcare to a workplace plan.
PENTAGON FUNDING FOR CONCEALED HANDGUNS Only CBS assigned a correspondent to preview another debate on Capitol Hill. Bob Orr told us about an amendment to the Pentagon budget that the Senate will vote on. No, he was not reporting on the F-22 Raptor fighter jet, whose production was discontinued. Orr pointed to a proposal to allow gun owners to "obtain permits in states with weak regulations and then carry the weapons unchecked virtually anywhere." He showed us a full page ad in USA Today denouncing the measure signed by 450 urban mayors: "Opponents note the timing is terrible. Violent crime is plunging, with big city murders nearing 30-year lows." Meanwhile, sponsors called national concealed weapons permits "a crimefighting tool."
CELLPHONE SAFETY STATISTICS SUPPRESSED Both CBS' Sharyl Attkisson and ABC's Lisa Stark picked up on a potential scandal from 2003. The National Highway Transportation Safety Board had prepared a public relations blitz, complete with talking points, press releases and a rollout plan, to publicize the dangers of talking on a cellphone while driving. In 2002, the NHTSA estimated, more than 950 people had been killed by distracted motorists during cellphone conversations. But the rollout never happened and the research documenting the dangers was kept secret until a lawsuit forced its publication. "It is unclear why the agency did not act," ABC's Stark stated, noting that drivers' cellphone use has doubled in the ensuing six years. "Safety advocates suspect the government did not want to upset the powerful wireless industry," reported CBS' Attkisson. "Total bunk," was how a former transportation official responded.
MASON’S OPTIMISTIC MISPARAPHRASE ON CBS Chairman Benjamin Bernanke of the Federal Reserve Board testified before a House committee. CBS' Anthony Mason misinterpreted his "latest diagnosis for the sick economy." Mason paraphrased Bernanke as saying "the patient is improving" while his soundbite offered no more than "the pace of decline appears to have slowed significantly." ABC's Bianna Golodryga heard warnings about foreclosures and unemployment and small business woes. Maybe lending to that sector "will never come back," the central banker warned, "because credit is sort of permanently tightened up." Pointing to "more shuttered shops" as retailers go out of business, CBS' Mason worried about foreclosed "office buildings, malls, hotels." Both reporters did find some solace in the stock market: "green arrows on Wall Street seven straight days"--ABC's Golodryga; the Dow Jones Industrial Average "now back in positive territory for the year"--CBS' Mason.
NBC chose to look at a statewide economy rather than the national one. Miguel Almaguer filed from Los Angeles on the "midnight negotiations and an ending long overdue" as Californian politicians claimed to have agreed on a budget. Almaguer listed cuts in healthcare, welfare, prisons, colleges, schools and eldercare. Offshore oil drilling will be allowed off scenic Santa Barbara for the first time in 40 years. Municipalities will lose state aid: "They may sue California to get their earmarked money back."
POLICE CUFF SCHOLAR NBC's Mike Taibbi called him a "world renowned scholar." CBS' Jim Axelrod called him "perhaps America's best-known African-American intellectual." But when Professor Henry Louis Gates of Harvard University ended up handcuffed, in a mugshot, arrested by the Cambridge Police Department, ABC did not consider the incident worth a reporter. "This is what happens to black men in America," was how NBC's Taibbi quoted Gates' protests when he was confronted in his own house on suspicion of burglary by police. "Outrageous," quoted CBS' Axelrod from Gates' interview with Washington Post, "how poor black men across the country are treated every day." Gates accused police of refusing to accept his photo ID and refusing to provide him with name and badge number. Police accused Gates of being uncooperative, belligerent and disorderly. Charges were eventually dropped.
GOSK GOES OUTSIDE OF CATEGORY CBS did not file a single story with an overseas dateline. NBC had Stephanie Gosk file from her bicycle on an outside-of-category climb on a Tour de France Alp but unfortunately her network did not link to the video, presumably because it believed it could not make fair use of sports footage. ABC sent Bob Woodruff to a trauma unit in Kandahar that has treated 1,000 casualties so far this year, between 60% and 80% of them Afghan civilians. The medics had worked previously in Iraq, where Woodruff himself almost had his brains blown out: the nurse, a lieutenant, "took care of me when I was in a coma;" the surgeon, a colonel, "removed rocks from my brain and neck."
WHAT MADE MILWAUKEE’S BRAVEST ABC's closer from Milwaukee saw Barbara Pinto narrate amateur videotape from an SUV accident. Neighbors rushed to the scene on Layton Avenue as the driver and her baby daughter were pulled to safety but a four-year-old boy was trapped, buckled into his car seat as the SUV burst into flames. A policeman arrived on the scene with a fire extinguisher and a neighbor sprayed his garden hose as a pair of off-duty firefighter brothers dived into the fire to cut the toddler loose. Meet John and Joel Rechlitz.
ART IS NOT BRAIN SURGERY Alison Silva's paintings went from "bright and cheery and whimsical" to a darker, new style that "has earned her more commissions and higher prices," CBS' Richard Schlesinger showed us. The change happened after she suffered blackouts, headaches and dizziness. Her neurologist found "a dangerous tangle of blood vessels" with an MRI brain scan, posing "the risk of seizures or stroke or maybe death." Artist Silva decided to leave her brain alone. "Surgery could cure her but it could also destroy her ability to create."
