 |           |
TYNDALL HEADLINE: HIGHLIGHTS FROM JULY 28, 2009
A slow summer week continues. CBS could find no hard news event worthy to lead its newscast so it continued its monthlong practice of overcovering the aftermath of Michael Jackson's death. It made a police search of the home of the late singer's physician its headline. The Story of the Day was the choice of lead at both ABC and NBC even though CBS did not even mention in passing. The Centers for Disease Control are preparing for a fall outbreak of the H1N1 strain of the influenza virus. New research has found that pregnant women may be at disproportionate risk.
TYNDALL PICKS FOR JULY 28, 2009: CLICK ON GRID ELEMENTS TO SEARCH FOR MATCHING ITEMS
SWINE ‘FLU & JACKO TOP A NEWSFREE AGENDA A slow summer week continues. CBS could find no hard news event worthy to lead its newscast so it continued its monthlong practice of overcovering the aftermath of Michael Jackson's death. It made a police search of the home of the late singer's physician its headline. The Story of the Day was the choice of lead at both ABC and NBC even though CBS did not even mention in passing. The Centers for Disease Control are preparing for a fall outbreak of the H1N1 strain of the influenza virus. New research has found that pregnant women may be at disproportionate risk.
Even though the number of pregnant women killed by the swine 'flu virus is small--just 15 so far nationwide, ABC's Lisa Stark told us--their risk is greater. Some 1% of the population is pregnant at any one time yet they represent 6% of those killed by this 'flu. In Brazil, Stark added, the proportion is higher still, eight out of 45. NBC's Robert Bazell explained that all kinds of influenza are risky in the late stages of pregnancy because the uterus expands and reduces lung capacity, making it more likely for an infection to become pneumonia. "Doctors do not even know if swine 'flu is more dangerous to pregnant women than seasonal influenza but because the virus strikes mostly young people that is the big cause for concern."
NBC followed up with a human interest 'flu story from China. Adrienne Mong told us about a tour party of 64 high school students from Medford Ore that arrived in Beijing two weeks ago. When one student tested positive for H1N1, the entire party was placed in quarantine for seven days. Thought to be no longer infectious, they visited Beijing sights and the Great Wall before heading to Dengfeng, the martial arts center. Then three more students tested positive for the swine strain and quarantine again complicated their summer adventure: "China is taking a tough approach."
CBS’ ANDREWS KEEPS HIS EYE ON THE BALL While ABC anchor Charles Gibson was being briefed by Jake Tapper from the White House and Jonathan Karl from Capitol Hill on the latest legislative jockeying by committees drafting a healthcare bill, Wyatt Andrews on CBS continued his informative series of features on the real-life flaws in the delivery of healthcare and some experimental solutions. Here he examined the pros and cons of converting paper records into digital files. Here he looked at the Dartmouth-Hitchcock experiment to replace fee-for-service medicine with wellness incentives. Now he shows us a scheme to direct funds away from specialists and towards family physicians. There is already a shortfall of 17,000 physicians in general practice. So Andrews advised us to "imagine what happens when 45m uninsured Americans start to enter the system."
SONIA OK’D IN A STROLL Only NBC assigned a reporter to cover the Senate Judiciary Committee vote to recommend confirmation of Sonia Sotomayor, the Supreme Court nominee. The vote may have been significant but it was hardly newsworthy so ABC and CBS really cannot be faulted for mentioning it only in passing. Pete Williams gave most airtime to Lindsay Graham, the only Republican on the panel to join the 13-6 majority in Sotomayor's favor: "If she by being on the Court will inspire young women, particularly Latina women, to seek a career in the law that would be a good thing."
BONUSES & LEGAL FEES On a light day for political news, CBS filed a couple of features from inside the federal bureaucracy. Kelly Wallace introduced us to Pay Czar Kenneth Feinberg, whose job it is to check executive salaries at major corporate recipients of the Treasury Department's TARP bailout funds. Feinberg's first test case is Andrew Hall, the Connecticut-based speculator who runs Citigroup's Phibro energy trading desk. His contract calls for a $100m bonus out of 2008's profits. Feinberg's job is to "strike the right balance between rewarding performance and discouraging the risk-taking blamed for the financial crisis." There are six firms besides Citigroup on Feinberg's watchlist: the automakers General Motors and Chrysler and their financing firms; Bank of America; and AIG, the nationalized insurance conglomerate.
CBS offered a hat tip to the Washington Times as the source for its Follow the Money investigation into the Legal Services Corporation. Sharyl Attkisson quoted audits into LSC that were given to the newspaper. They found funds being used for extravagant interior decoration, alcohol and catering, interest-free loans to workers, and contracts without competitive bids. LSC funds 137 Legal Aid programs for poor people who need attorneys. It has a $390m annual budget that is about to be increased to $440m. LSC "says it has strengthened oversight and is fixing each problem raised."
THE SUBWAY, THE RECRUITER & THE SOMALIS ABC's Pierre Thomas did not tell us much about the alleged cell of eight trainee terrorists in rural North Carolina under the leadership of Daniel Patrick Boyd, a 39-year-old "who fought in Afghanistan against the Soviets in the late '80s." He vaguely referred to FBI concerns that "the next step is directing these young men to attack the homeland." Instead Thomas told us about possible similarities between Boyd's alleged cell and other suspects: a Long Islander charged with telling al-Qaeda about the New York City subway system; the accused killer of a military recruiter in Arkansas; and 20 Somali-Americans who left Minnesota to join the civil war in their homeland.
ULTRA VIOLET APPALACHIA The Lancet inspired CBS' in-house physician Jon LaPook to warn some of us to stay away from tanning salons. The medical journal has changed its rating of a salon's ultra-violet rays--no longer a probable cause of cancer; now it is definite. There are 25,000 such salons nationwide with 30m customers. Dr LaPook told us that white-skinned people under the age of 35 are most at risk. Melanoma among young white women is now 50% more common than it was 30 years ago. The cities where tanning salons are most popular are in the Appalachian north--Pittsburgh, Charleston WV and Akron.
CBS LOVES JACKSON ACTION CBS' decision to lead its newscast with the latest twist in the aftermath of the death of pop star Michael Jackson comes as no surprise. CBS has treated Jackson as much more newsworthy than the other two newscasts. So far in the month of July, CBS spent as much time on Jackson--the mourning and the investigation of his death--as the other two newscasts combined (57 min v ABC 29, NBC 28). This time all three newscasts had a correspondent cover the search warrant executed at the Las Vegas home and the clinic of Conrad Murray, Jackson's personal physician.
If the singer died of an overdose of an anesthetic, its prescription by a physician might amount to manslaughter. CBS' Ben Tracy was careful to note that police "have never called Murray a suspect and they say he continues to cooperate with their investigation." ABC's Lisa Fletcher quoted Murray's lawyer insisting that his client "did not do anything that would kill Jackson." NBC's Jeff Rossen quoted the lawyer's assertion that Murray had done nothing wrong: "Murray was present during the search of his home and assisted the officers."
NBC's Rossen pointed out that police "are no looking into several doctors who wrote prescriptions." By contrast, ABC's Fletcher quoted the Associated Press' police sources, who reportedly allege that Murray injected Jackson at his mansion on the day he died. "Doctors say it is unheard of to use Propofol outside of an hospital and without equipment to monitor vital signs."
SEE THE SEA Israel's travel restrictions against Palestinians are so strict that children living just 60 miles away from the sea have never seen the Mediterranean, never spent a day at the beach. NBC's Martin Fletcher profiled a busload of 66 children as they experienced surf and sand for the first time in their lives. "Former Israeli soldiers and former Palestinian militants helped organize and pay for the day" and because Israel has recently lifted many West Bank roadblocks, "there was only one barrier" for the beachgoers to pass.
Even though the number of pregnant women killed by the swine 'flu virus is small--just 15 so far nationwide, ABC's Lisa Stark told us--their risk is greater. Some 1% of the population is pregnant at any one time yet they represent 6% of those killed by this 'flu. In Brazil, Stark added, the proportion is higher still, eight out of 45. NBC's Robert Bazell explained that all kinds of influenza are risky in the late stages of pregnancy because the uterus expands and reduces lung capacity, making it more likely for an infection to become pneumonia. "Doctors do not even know if swine 'flu is more dangerous to pregnant women than seasonal influenza but because the virus strikes mostly young people that is the big cause for concern."
NBC followed up with a human interest 'flu story from China. Adrienne Mong told us about a tour party of 64 high school students from Medford Ore that arrived in Beijing two weeks ago. When one student tested positive for H1N1, the entire party was placed in quarantine for seven days. Thought to be no longer infectious, they visited Beijing sights and the Great Wall before heading to Dengfeng, the martial arts center. Then three more students tested positive for the swine strain and quarantine again complicated their summer adventure: "China is taking a tough approach."
CBS’ ANDREWS KEEPS HIS EYE ON THE BALL While ABC anchor Charles Gibson was being briefed by Jake Tapper from the White House and Jonathan Karl from Capitol Hill on the latest legislative jockeying by committees drafting a healthcare bill, Wyatt Andrews on CBS continued his informative series of features on the real-life flaws in the delivery of healthcare and some experimental solutions. Here he examined the pros and cons of converting paper records into digital files. Here he looked at the Dartmouth-Hitchcock experiment to replace fee-for-service medicine with wellness incentives. Now he shows us a scheme to direct funds away from specialists and towards family physicians. There is already a shortfall of 17,000 physicians in general practice. So Andrews advised us to "imagine what happens when 45m uninsured Americans start to enter the system."
SONIA OK’D IN A STROLL Only NBC assigned a reporter to cover the Senate Judiciary Committee vote to recommend confirmation of Sonia Sotomayor, the Supreme Court nominee. The vote may have been significant but it was hardly newsworthy so ABC and CBS really cannot be faulted for mentioning it only in passing. Pete Williams gave most airtime to Lindsay Graham, the only Republican on the panel to join the 13-6 majority in Sotomayor's favor: "If she by being on the Court will inspire young women, particularly Latina women, to seek a career in the law that would be a good thing."
BONUSES & LEGAL FEES On a light day for political news, CBS filed a couple of features from inside the federal bureaucracy. Kelly Wallace introduced us to Pay Czar Kenneth Feinberg, whose job it is to check executive salaries at major corporate recipients of the Treasury Department's TARP bailout funds. Feinberg's first test case is Andrew Hall, the Connecticut-based speculator who runs Citigroup's Phibro energy trading desk. His contract calls for a $100m bonus out of 2008's profits. Feinberg's job is to "strike the right balance between rewarding performance and discouraging the risk-taking blamed for the financial crisis." There are six firms besides Citigroup on Feinberg's watchlist: the automakers General Motors and Chrysler and their financing firms; Bank of America; and AIG, the nationalized insurance conglomerate.
CBS offered a hat tip to the Washington Times as the source for its Follow the Money investigation into the Legal Services Corporation. Sharyl Attkisson quoted audits into LSC that were given to the newspaper. They found funds being used for extravagant interior decoration, alcohol and catering, interest-free loans to workers, and contracts without competitive bids. LSC funds 137 Legal Aid programs for poor people who need attorneys. It has a $390m annual budget that is about to be increased to $440m. LSC "says it has strengthened oversight and is fixing each problem raised."
THE SUBWAY, THE RECRUITER & THE SOMALIS ABC's Pierre Thomas did not tell us much about the alleged cell of eight trainee terrorists in rural North Carolina under the leadership of Daniel Patrick Boyd, a 39-year-old "who fought in Afghanistan against the Soviets in the late '80s." He vaguely referred to FBI concerns that "the next step is directing these young men to attack the homeland." Instead Thomas told us about possible similarities between Boyd's alleged cell and other suspects: a Long Islander charged with telling al-Qaeda about the New York City subway system; the accused killer of a military recruiter in Arkansas; and 20 Somali-Americans who left Minnesota to join the civil war in their homeland.
ULTRA VIOLET APPALACHIA The Lancet inspired CBS' in-house physician Jon LaPook to warn some of us to stay away from tanning salons. The medical journal has changed its rating of a salon's ultra-violet rays--no longer a probable cause of cancer; now it is definite. There are 25,000 such salons nationwide with 30m customers. Dr LaPook told us that white-skinned people under the age of 35 are most at risk. Melanoma among young white women is now 50% more common than it was 30 years ago. The cities where tanning salons are most popular are in the Appalachian north--Pittsburgh, Charleston WV and Akron.
CBS LOVES JACKSON ACTION CBS' decision to lead its newscast with the latest twist in the aftermath of the death of pop star Michael Jackson comes as no surprise. CBS has treated Jackson as much more newsworthy than the other two newscasts. So far in the month of July, CBS spent as much time on Jackson--the mourning and the investigation of his death--as the other two newscasts combined (57 min v ABC 29, NBC 28). This time all three newscasts had a correspondent cover the search warrant executed at the Las Vegas home and the clinic of Conrad Murray, Jackson's personal physician.
If the singer died of an overdose of an anesthetic, its prescription by a physician might amount to manslaughter. CBS' Ben Tracy was careful to note that police "have never called Murray a suspect and they say he continues to cooperate with their investigation." ABC's Lisa Fletcher quoted Murray's lawyer insisting that his client "did not do anything that would kill Jackson." NBC's Jeff Rossen quoted the lawyer's assertion that Murray had done nothing wrong: "Murray was present during the search of his home and assisted the officers."
NBC's Rossen pointed out that police "are no looking into several doctors who wrote prescriptions." By contrast, ABC's Fletcher quoted the Associated Press' police sources, who reportedly allege that Murray injected Jackson at his mansion on the day he died. "Doctors say it is unheard of to use Propofol outside of an hospital and without equipment to monitor vital signs."
SEE THE SEA Israel's travel restrictions against Palestinians are so strict that children living just 60 miles away from the sea have never seen the Mediterranean, never spent a day at the beach. NBC's Martin Fletcher profiled a busload of 66 children as they experienced surf and sand for the first time in their lives. "Former Israeli soldiers and former Palestinian militants helped organize and pay for the day" and because Israel has recently lifted many West Bank roadblocks, "there was only one barrier" for the beachgoers to pass.
