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TYNDALL HEADLINE: HIGHLIGHTS FROM JULY 29, 2009
The Centers for Disease Control made a three-network sweep with its guidelines for influenza vaccinations this fall. Only 200m shots against the H1N1 strain of swine 'flu are likely to be available in October and November so the entire population will not be covered. NBC and ABC led from Atlanta where the CDC meeting designated which demographics will qualify; CBS covered the CDC remotely from New York. Influenza was the Story of the Day. ABC used Elizabeth Vargas as its substitute anchor.
TYNDALL PICKS FOR JULY 29, 2009: CLICK ON GRID ELEMENTS TO SEARCH FOR MATCHING ITEMS
NOT ENOUGH ‘FLU SHOTS TO GO ROUND The Centers for Disease Control made a three-network sweep with its guidelines for influenza vaccinations this fall. Only 200m shots against the H1N1 strain of swine 'flu are likely to be available in October and November so the entire population will not be covered. NBC and ABC led from Atlanta where the CDC meeting designated which demographics will qualify; CBS covered the CDC remotely from New York. Influenza was the Story of the Day. ABC used Elizabeth Vargas as its substitute anchor.
ABC's Lisa Stark saw the CDC deciding to "paint with a broad brush" as it named seven groups to get shots, accounting for 160m people, just over half the population. Eligible will be pregnant women, healthcare workers, infant care providers, children and toddlers over six months of age, teenagers, adults with underlying health problems, and "in a surprise move" healthy college-aged twentysomethings. Stark warned that there may not be enough vaccine for all those groups to be covered if next month's clinical trials find that booster shots are required--except that in a normal 'flu season only 40% of those eligible receive shots anyway. NBC's Robert Bazell reminded us that it is 'flu season right now in the southern hemisphere. Vaccine trials are under way in Australia and Argentina is facing a shortage of intensive care hospital beds and ventilators.
CBS missed out on covering the dangers of H1N1 to pregnant women that ABC's Stark and NBC's Bazell covered Tuesday, so most of in-house physician Jennifer Ashton's report on the CDC vaccine guidelines played catch-up, focusing on the pregnancy angle. She cited expert opinion that pregnant women should be given an anti-viral medication such as Tamiflu immediately symptoms appear, even before testing positive for the actual virus. ABC's in-house physician Timothy Johnson (at the tail of the Stark videostream) pointed out that "there are other strategies to prevent getting the 'flu" besides shots. Try "washing hands, avoiding coughing and sneezing."
NBC anchor Brian Williams consulted Dr Anthony Fauci of the National Institutes of Health about the prospects for a disease-ridden fall. Fauci conceded that "this virus spreads very efficiently among humans" but then reassured us that 'right now it is acting like a mild-to-moderate 'flu that you would see during a regular 'flu season." What worries Fauci is if the virus grows virulent.
DEMOCRATS’ DISAPPEARING HEALTHCARE Negotiations inched forward on Capitol Hill over healthcare legislation. CBS' Nancy Cordes took the Senate side, where a committee rejected both a mandate on employers to insure their workers and also competition for the insurance industry from a federally-run plan. "Many Democrats up here feel that there is no point to reform without a government plan," she noted. The committee's fall back position was a not-for-profit self-help co-operative to compete with corporate insurers. ABC's George Stephanopoulos took the House side, where conservative Democrats agreed to support a bill that compelled fewer small businesses to insure their workers and "watered down" that public health insurance option. At the White House, NBC's Savannah Guthrie called that "a family feud between Democratic leaders and conservatives." The upshot, Guthrie noted, was that "some of the President's priorities may be on the chopping block." She talked to unidentified aides of Barack Obama and they admitted that "they have a message problem selling healthcare reform."
CHIP’S STATISTICS To underscore the President's healthcare message problem, CBS' Chip Reid unfairly emphasized unfavorable statistics in his network's latest national opinion poll conducted with The New York Times. The numbers he highlighted were those worried that the eventual legislation would diminish the quality of healthcare (69%) or increase its cost (77%) or hike their taxes (66%). "He still has not convinced most Americans," was Reid's top line. Reid's report was unfair in that he relegated contradictory supportive statistics to its tail end. Most people agree that the current system needs major overhaul (82%), worrying that otherwise it will increase medical costs (75%) and jeopardize their current coverage (66%). How many people want a government-run healthcare option? 66%. NBC News also published a poll with its partner Wall Street Journal. Chuck Todd showed us the month-by-month decline in Barack Obama's approval ratings--from 61% in April to 56% in June to 53% in July: "This campaign for healthcare has taken a serious toll on him and his party."
SAFER THE UNWITTING SALESMAN There was a hint in Kelly Cobiella's expose of FWM Laboratories on CBS that her own network was unintentionally complicit in the firm's Better Business Bureau violations. FWM, which is based in Hollywood Fla, does a booming business in mail order Resveratrol and Acai Berry, "the latest miracle supplements," as Cobiella called them. CBS gets involved because FWM's online sales promotions include the 60 Minutes report by Morley Safer that touted their anti-oxidant ingredients. "News organizations including CBS have tried to get FWM and others to stop misusing reports to sell their products," Cobiella complained. FWM uses fine print to convert trial customers to monthly subscribers without their permission and then undermans its call center so complaints go unanswered. FWM's problem, it appears, is not their pills but their bills. Cobiella's report was prepared in partnership with Business Week.
POST-RACIAL PROFILE ABC's Nightline is claiming an Exclusive for its up-close-and-personal profile of Attorney General Eric Holder. Pierre Thomas filed a preview. Holder has inherited George Bush's War on Terrorism in two ways. First, his day's routine starts with continuity, receiving "the threat matrix laying out how terrorists are actively targeting America." Second, he is deciding "whether to investigate the Bush Administration's detention and interrogation of terrorism suspects." Holder repeated his famous soundbite for Thomas: "Waterboarding is torture." ABC World News, we should remember, is scrupulous in deploying euphemism to avoid uttering the T-word.
Holder also recalled for ABC's Thomas how he was racially profiled by a police officer. His car was stopped and fruitlessly searched for weapons during his student days. NBC's Andrea Mitchell was assigned to a follow-up story on the arrest of Henry Louis Gates, the Harvard professor handcuffed at his own home after accusing police of suspecting him of burglary because he is African-American. Mitchell started by setting the record straight that the police report of the arrest was inaccurate. It said that the 911 dispatcher sent them in search of a black suspect yet Lucia Whalen, the suspicious caller, made no mention of race.
Then midway through her report, using the segue of Barack Obama's "acted stupidly" soundbite, Mitchell changed the subject to repeat ad hominem attacks against the President by Fox News Channel's Glenn Beck and talkradio's Rush Limbaugh. Limbaugh said: "President Obama is black. I think he has a chip on his shoulder." Beck was incoherent. First he said that Obama "has a deep-seated hatred for white people and white culture." Then, when asked to clarify, Beck explained: "I am not saying that he does not like white people." Then a third try: "This guy is, I believe, a racist."
Then Mitchell concluded by changing the subject again, mentioning the rumors among "rightwing bloggers and talkradio hosts" that Obama's Hawaiian birth certificate is a forgery and that he was actually born abroad, disqualifying him from office--a conclusion that is light years away from a non-racial false alarm about a burglary near Harvard Yard.
TERRORISTS OR SPIES OR UNARMED CIVILIANS? "They are cleaning the country of terrorists." That was how CBS' Lara Logan reported Teheran's praise of Baghdad for its two-day blockade of Camp Ashraf, the base inside Iraq for the People's Mujahadeen, the Iranian exile militia that Logan identified by its initials MeK. Logan gave Iran's portrayal of MeK no credibility whatsoever. She called Camp Ashraf's population "unarmed civilians" although she did acknowledge their espionage role: "It was MeK that provided the United States with intelligence on Iran's nuclear program…Since the US invasion the camp's roughly 3,000 residents have been living under US protection. That ended in January." The current crackdown by Iraqi police has killed eleven and arrested 30, Logan reported. "The attack was seen as the latest sign that American influence in Iraq is waning as Iranian influence rises."
BEACHES GOING DOWN THE DRAIN The Natural Resources Defense Council took advantage of the summer season for its environmental campaign against beach pollution. NRDC succeeded in getting CBS' Kelly Wallace to take a trip to Jones Beach on the Atlantic Ocean to publicize its findings. Run-off from storm drains dumps oil and trash and pet feces and fertilizer into the ocean making swimming beaches around New York City and in Florida the unhealthiest in the nation. Wallace showed us NRDC's preferred solution--permeable pavement. Instead of concrete or asphalt, roadways with holes absorb storm water into the ground rather than sending it oceanbound down the drain.
RUSSIAN HORSES & MADAGASCAN LEMURS ABC and CBS both closed their newscasts with animal features. CBS' Don Teague managed heartwarming and eccentric at the same time. The Artania Circus, a Russian equestrian entertainment, was abandoned by its promoter midway through its north American tour. While waiting for their visa issues and money lawsuits to be resolved, the circus is staying at an equestrian center in Rockwall Texas. An advantage is a karaoke bar just down the road, if you fancy a duet with a homesick horse acrobat.
On ABC, Dan Harris has a side specialty of African jungle safaris. Here is the bonopo ape of the Congo. Here is a gorilla colony protected by the pygmies of the Central African Republic. Now spot the silky safaka and other exotic lemurs in the rosewood forests of northern Madagascar.
ABC's Lisa Stark saw the CDC deciding to "paint with a broad brush" as it named seven groups to get shots, accounting for 160m people, just over half the population. Eligible will be pregnant women, healthcare workers, infant care providers, children and toddlers over six months of age, teenagers, adults with underlying health problems, and "in a surprise move" healthy college-aged twentysomethings. Stark warned that there may not be enough vaccine for all those groups to be covered if next month's clinical trials find that booster shots are required--except that in a normal 'flu season only 40% of those eligible receive shots anyway. NBC's Robert Bazell reminded us that it is 'flu season right now in the southern hemisphere. Vaccine trials are under way in Australia and Argentina is facing a shortage of intensive care hospital beds and ventilators.
CBS missed out on covering the dangers of H1N1 to pregnant women that ABC's Stark and NBC's Bazell covered Tuesday, so most of in-house physician Jennifer Ashton's report on the CDC vaccine guidelines played catch-up, focusing on the pregnancy angle. She cited expert opinion that pregnant women should be given an anti-viral medication such as Tamiflu immediately symptoms appear, even before testing positive for the actual virus. ABC's in-house physician Timothy Johnson (at the tail of the Stark videostream) pointed out that "there are other strategies to prevent getting the 'flu" besides shots. Try "washing hands, avoiding coughing and sneezing."
NBC anchor Brian Williams consulted Dr Anthony Fauci of the National Institutes of Health about the prospects for a disease-ridden fall. Fauci conceded that "this virus spreads very efficiently among humans" but then reassured us that 'right now it is acting like a mild-to-moderate 'flu that you would see during a regular 'flu season." What worries Fauci is if the virus grows virulent.
DEMOCRATS’ DISAPPEARING HEALTHCARE Negotiations inched forward on Capitol Hill over healthcare legislation. CBS' Nancy Cordes took the Senate side, where a committee rejected both a mandate on employers to insure their workers and also competition for the insurance industry from a federally-run plan. "Many Democrats up here feel that there is no point to reform without a government plan," she noted. The committee's fall back position was a not-for-profit self-help co-operative to compete with corporate insurers. ABC's George Stephanopoulos took the House side, where conservative Democrats agreed to support a bill that compelled fewer small businesses to insure their workers and "watered down" that public health insurance option. At the White House, NBC's Savannah Guthrie called that "a family feud between Democratic leaders and conservatives." The upshot, Guthrie noted, was that "some of the President's priorities may be on the chopping block." She talked to unidentified aides of Barack Obama and they admitted that "they have a message problem selling healthcare reform."
CHIP’S STATISTICS To underscore the President's healthcare message problem, CBS' Chip Reid unfairly emphasized unfavorable statistics in his network's latest national opinion poll conducted with The New York Times. The numbers he highlighted were those worried that the eventual legislation would diminish the quality of healthcare (69%) or increase its cost (77%) or hike their taxes (66%). "He still has not convinced most Americans," was Reid's top line. Reid's report was unfair in that he relegated contradictory supportive statistics to its tail end. Most people agree that the current system needs major overhaul (82%), worrying that otherwise it will increase medical costs (75%) and jeopardize their current coverage (66%). How many people want a government-run healthcare option? 66%. NBC News also published a poll with its partner Wall Street Journal. Chuck Todd showed us the month-by-month decline in Barack Obama's approval ratings--from 61% in April to 56% in June to 53% in July: "This campaign for healthcare has taken a serious toll on him and his party."
SAFER THE UNWITTING SALESMAN There was a hint in Kelly Cobiella's expose of FWM Laboratories on CBS that her own network was unintentionally complicit in the firm's Better Business Bureau violations. FWM, which is based in Hollywood Fla, does a booming business in mail order Resveratrol and Acai Berry, "the latest miracle supplements," as Cobiella called them. CBS gets involved because FWM's online sales promotions include the 60 Minutes report by Morley Safer that touted their anti-oxidant ingredients. "News organizations including CBS have tried to get FWM and others to stop misusing reports to sell their products," Cobiella complained. FWM uses fine print to convert trial customers to monthly subscribers without their permission and then undermans its call center so complaints go unanswered. FWM's problem, it appears, is not their pills but their bills. Cobiella's report was prepared in partnership with Business Week.
POST-RACIAL PROFILE ABC's Nightline is claiming an Exclusive for its up-close-and-personal profile of Attorney General Eric Holder. Pierre Thomas filed a preview. Holder has inherited George Bush's War on Terrorism in two ways. First, his day's routine starts with continuity, receiving "the threat matrix laying out how terrorists are actively targeting America." Second, he is deciding "whether to investigate the Bush Administration's detention and interrogation of terrorism suspects." Holder repeated his famous soundbite for Thomas: "Waterboarding is torture." ABC World News, we should remember, is scrupulous in deploying euphemism to avoid uttering the T-word.
Holder also recalled for ABC's Thomas how he was racially profiled by a police officer. His car was stopped and fruitlessly searched for weapons during his student days. NBC's Andrea Mitchell was assigned to a follow-up story on the arrest of Henry Louis Gates, the Harvard professor handcuffed at his own home after accusing police of suspecting him of burglary because he is African-American. Mitchell started by setting the record straight that the police report of the arrest was inaccurate. It said that the 911 dispatcher sent them in search of a black suspect yet Lucia Whalen, the suspicious caller, made no mention of race.
Then midway through her report, using the segue of Barack Obama's "acted stupidly" soundbite, Mitchell changed the subject to repeat ad hominem attacks against the President by Fox News Channel's Glenn Beck and talkradio's Rush Limbaugh. Limbaugh said: "President Obama is black. I think he has a chip on his shoulder." Beck was incoherent. First he said that Obama "has a deep-seated hatred for white people and white culture." Then, when asked to clarify, Beck explained: "I am not saying that he does not like white people." Then a third try: "This guy is, I believe, a racist."
Then Mitchell concluded by changing the subject again, mentioning the rumors among "rightwing bloggers and talkradio hosts" that Obama's Hawaiian birth certificate is a forgery and that he was actually born abroad, disqualifying him from office--a conclusion that is light years away from a non-racial false alarm about a burglary near Harvard Yard.
TERRORISTS OR SPIES OR UNARMED CIVILIANS? "They are cleaning the country of terrorists." That was how CBS' Lara Logan reported Teheran's praise of Baghdad for its two-day blockade of Camp Ashraf, the base inside Iraq for the People's Mujahadeen, the Iranian exile militia that Logan identified by its initials MeK. Logan gave Iran's portrayal of MeK no credibility whatsoever. She called Camp Ashraf's population "unarmed civilians" although she did acknowledge their espionage role: "It was MeK that provided the United States with intelligence on Iran's nuclear program…Since the US invasion the camp's roughly 3,000 residents have been living under US protection. That ended in January." The current crackdown by Iraqi police has killed eleven and arrested 30, Logan reported. "The attack was seen as the latest sign that American influence in Iraq is waning as Iranian influence rises."
BEACHES GOING DOWN THE DRAIN The Natural Resources Defense Council took advantage of the summer season for its environmental campaign against beach pollution. NRDC succeeded in getting CBS' Kelly Wallace to take a trip to Jones Beach on the Atlantic Ocean to publicize its findings. Run-off from storm drains dumps oil and trash and pet feces and fertilizer into the ocean making swimming beaches around New York City and in Florida the unhealthiest in the nation. Wallace showed us NRDC's preferred solution--permeable pavement. Instead of concrete or asphalt, roadways with holes absorb storm water into the ground rather than sending it oceanbound down the drain.
RUSSIAN HORSES & MADAGASCAN LEMURS ABC and CBS both closed their newscasts with animal features. CBS' Don Teague managed heartwarming and eccentric at the same time. The Artania Circus, a Russian equestrian entertainment, was abandoned by its promoter midway through its north American tour. While waiting for their visa issues and money lawsuits to be resolved, the circus is staying at an equestrian center in Rockwall Texas. An advantage is a karaoke bar just down the road, if you fancy a duet with a homesick horse acrobat.
On ABC, Dan Harris has a side specialty of African jungle safaris. Here is the bonopo ape of the Congo. Here is a gorilla colony protected by the pygmies of the Central African Republic. Now spot the silky safaka and other exotic lemurs in the rosewood forests of northern Madagascar.
