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TYNDALL HEADLINE: HIGHLIGHTS FROM AUGUST 12, 2009
Tyndall Report is off on vacation. I shall catch up on all my news viewing upon my return. Back on line after Labor Day. Happy summer!
TYNDALL PICKS FOR AUGUST 12, 2009: CLICK ON GRID ELEMENTS TO SEARCH FOR MATCHING ITEMS
TOWN HALLS ADD TRACTION TO ABSTRACTION Tyndall Report is off on vacation. I shall catch up on all my news viewing upon my return. Back on line after Labor Day. Happy summer!
Both the politics and the substance of the proposed healthcare reform legislation are finally getting some traction. Give credit to those raucous town hall meetings. Now the dry abstractions of insurance reform, mandates and subsidies, and federal intervention have animated visuals to add some zest. After Tuesday's sedate presentation by President Barack Obama both NBC and CBS led with shouting crowds grilling hometown politicians. Healthcare was Story of the Day again. Only ABC failed to sign on, choosing to kick off with statistics about federal deficit spending.
NBC's Savannah Guthrie found herself in the delicious position of reporting on the White House's criticism of the news media's fixation on the most confrontational of the town hall meetings by showing scenes from another round of town hall meetings. These ran the gamut "from the cordial to the combative." She quoted press secretary Robert Gibbs deploring the "food fight on cable every day" even as Democrats such as Sen Claire McCaskill of Missouri "toned down criticism of protestors as extremists on the fringe." On NBC's Today, McCaskill praised the hecklers who interrupted her as "democracy in action." CBS' Cynthia Bowers followed Charles Grassley, McCaskill's Republican colleague from Iowa, to a series of four town hall meetings and found "standing-room only crowds at every stop."
The false dichotomy between orchestrated protests and authentic opposition reapperaed in Ben Tracy's report on CBS. Obviously it is possible, even desirable, for political activists to be both sincere and coordinated but Tracy tried to generate controversy by distorting it as an either-or. He quoted Michael Patrick Leahy of the National Tea Party Coalition in support of the protestors--"It is a million-or-so independent individual voices, exercising their right to free speech"--and jumped on that "independent" to find Leahy contending that "the outrage is not organized." So Tracy cited coordinating groups such as Recess Rally and Right Principles and Freedom Works to undercut Leahy. Tracy concluded with a supporter of healthcare reform pointing the finger at FOX News Channel's orchestrators Glenn Beck, Bill O'Reilly and Sean Hannity for delivering talking points "that are not true."
HEALTHCARE FACTCHECKS ABC's Kate Snow was assigned to Fact Check the advocacy advertising--pro and con--in the healthcare debate with the help of Brooks Jackson of factcheck.org. Snow ended up exasperated. She found "many claims that cannot be proven or disproven…some claims rely on so many assumptions that it is impossible to know whether they will come true or not." On CBS' Sharyl Attkisson checked on whether the legislation will pay for abortions or cover illegal immigrants: on abortion, "two of the bills do not address the question at all;" on immigration "it is unclear."
HEALTHCARE EXPLAINERS NBC unveiled its logo for healthcare legislation explainers. In Making Sense of it All, Kelly O'Donnell outlined what it would mean if a public insurance option was passed. She reckoned it would cover about 10m people under the age of 65, mostly those now uninsured or self-employed or working for small businesses. O'Donnell found a glimmer of hope for those who back a single payer system from an unlikely source. Sen David Vitter, the Louisiana Republican who opposes the public plan, predicted that "in a very few number of years" it would grow to become "the only option."
ABC's in-house physician Timothy Johnson reminded us that the federal government is already "very much involved" in healthcare, "Medicare being the classic example." Johnson claimed that Medicare patients "often have more choices than private insurance companies, which limit the choices you might have." The government also negotiates coverage rates with private plans in its capacity as an employer. Johnson did not add that the government also acts as a British-style monopoly healthcare provider in the Veterans Administration system.
JAKE & JOHN MAYNARD DO NOT SEE EYE TO EYE Of an entire checklist of issues that ABC News and Washington Post ask about in their national opinion poll, Barack Obama's job performance is rated lowest on his handling of the federal deficit, Jake Tapper told us. With two months to go in this fiscal year, federal borrowing has already reached $1.27tr. Tapper is clearly no Keynesian. When he calculated that this amounts to $4,000 per capita in extra demand, he did not treat it as helpful immediate fiscal stimulus but as burdensome long-term debt.
ECLECTIC LUMINARIES ABC anchor Charles Gibson did not attend the White House ceremonies at which 16 honorees were awarded the Medal of Freedom by President Barack Obama but he did narrate the videotape, introducing us to eight from the "eclectic list of luminaries." Gibson selected six Americans--Edward Kennedy, Billie Jean King, Sandra Day O'Connor, Sidney Poitier, Joseph Lowery and Joe Medicine Crow--and two foreigners, Stephen Hawking and Desmond Tutu, who "never lost the twinkle in his eye." Bill Plante of CBS was at the White House to note that Edward Kennedy was the only one of the 16 not to attend. His brain tumor kept him at home in Massachusetts, not only missing the medal ceremony but also "missing from the pitched battle over healthcare reform, an issue he has called the cause of his life."
DUSTY DAHANEH The lead foreign correspondents of the three networks all flew into Kabul ahead of next week's presidential election. NBC's Richard Engel arrived from Beirut; ABC's Jim Sciutto from London; CBS' Lara Logan from Washington DC. All three narrated the same footage of the Battle of Dahaneh, an eight-hour firefight between 400 Marines and Taliban guerrillas over the dusty town in Helmand Province. "If the Taliban is able to stop large numbers of people from voting in the south then the credibility of the election could be in doubt," CBS' Logan stated, accounting for the Marine Corps' town-by-town sweep through Helmand. ABC's Sciutto estimated that as many as 10% of Afghanistan's polling stations would be unable to open on election day. NBC's Engel pointed to Taliban leaflets threatening to slit the throat of anyone who votes and saw far greater dangers: "Nearly half of Afghanistan remains at high risk of a Taliban attack."
TOXIC BUTTERFLY The Red Butterfly is the lyrical name for a factory in rural Chongqing Province that manufactures screens for television sets. CBS' Celia Hatton traveled to central China to set the record straight, calling it "the toxic downside of China's industrial rise." Red Butterfly's waste products include strontium carbonate, leading to villagers' complaints of skin rashes, blurred vision, congested lungs and liver problems. The rate of cancer may now be as high as 70 cases for every 1,000 people. "Villagers say the area's wealthiest people have already moved away, leaving the most vulnerable."
MEET THE ERCOLINES For its charming closer, NBC introduced us to then-and-now pictures of Bobbi Kelly and Nick Ercoline. They are now a school nurse and a retired carpenter, happily married for 38 years, living in upstate New York. On a Sunday morning precisely 40 years ago they woke up to the music of Jefferson Airplane when Burk Uzzle took their picture. Their embrace ended up on the cover of the soundtrack album of the Woodstock rock concert. Uzzel photographed the Ercolines once again for the documentary Woodstock Then & Now. Anchor Brian Williams showed us their reunion.
Both the politics and the substance of the proposed healthcare reform legislation are finally getting some traction. Give credit to those raucous town hall meetings. Now the dry abstractions of insurance reform, mandates and subsidies, and federal intervention have animated visuals to add some zest. After Tuesday's sedate presentation by President Barack Obama both NBC and CBS led with shouting crowds grilling hometown politicians. Healthcare was Story of the Day again. Only ABC failed to sign on, choosing to kick off with statistics about federal deficit spending.
NBC's Savannah Guthrie found herself in the delicious position of reporting on the White House's criticism of the news media's fixation on the most confrontational of the town hall meetings by showing scenes from another round of town hall meetings. These ran the gamut "from the cordial to the combative." She quoted press secretary Robert Gibbs deploring the "food fight on cable every day" even as Democrats such as Sen Claire McCaskill of Missouri "toned down criticism of protestors as extremists on the fringe." On NBC's Today, McCaskill praised the hecklers who interrupted her as "democracy in action." CBS' Cynthia Bowers followed Charles Grassley, McCaskill's Republican colleague from Iowa, to a series of four town hall meetings and found "standing-room only crowds at every stop."
The false dichotomy between orchestrated protests and authentic opposition reapperaed in Ben Tracy's report on CBS. Obviously it is possible, even desirable, for political activists to be both sincere and coordinated but Tracy tried to generate controversy by distorting it as an either-or. He quoted Michael Patrick Leahy of the National Tea Party Coalition in support of the protestors--"It is a million-or-so independent individual voices, exercising their right to free speech"--and jumped on that "independent" to find Leahy contending that "the outrage is not organized." So Tracy cited coordinating groups such as Recess Rally and Right Principles and Freedom Works to undercut Leahy. Tracy concluded with a supporter of healthcare reform pointing the finger at FOX News Channel's orchestrators Glenn Beck, Bill O'Reilly and Sean Hannity for delivering talking points "that are not true."
HEALTHCARE FACTCHECKS ABC's Kate Snow was assigned to Fact Check the advocacy advertising--pro and con--in the healthcare debate with the help of Brooks Jackson of factcheck.org. Snow ended up exasperated. She found "many claims that cannot be proven or disproven…some claims rely on so many assumptions that it is impossible to know whether they will come true or not." On CBS' Sharyl Attkisson checked on whether the legislation will pay for abortions or cover illegal immigrants: on abortion, "two of the bills do not address the question at all;" on immigration "it is unclear."
HEALTHCARE EXPLAINERS NBC unveiled its logo for healthcare legislation explainers. In Making Sense of it All, Kelly O'Donnell outlined what it would mean if a public insurance option was passed. She reckoned it would cover about 10m people under the age of 65, mostly those now uninsured or self-employed or working for small businesses. O'Donnell found a glimmer of hope for those who back a single payer system from an unlikely source. Sen David Vitter, the Louisiana Republican who opposes the public plan, predicted that "in a very few number of years" it would grow to become "the only option."
ABC's in-house physician Timothy Johnson reminded us that the federal government is already "very much involved" in healthcare, "Medicare being the classic example." Johnson claimed that Medicare patients "often have more choices than private insurance companies, which limit the choices you might have." The government also negotiates coverage rates with private plans in its capacity as an employer. Johnson did not add that the government also acts as a British-style monopoly healthcare provider in the Veterans Administration system.
JAKE & JOHN MAYNARD DO NOT SEE EYE TO EYE Of an entire checklist of issues that ABC News and Washington Post ask about in their national opinion poll, Barack Obama's job performance is rated lowest on his handling of the federal deficit, Jake Tapper told us. With two months to go in this fiscal year, federal borrowing has already reached $1.27tr. Tapper is clearly no Keynesian. When he calculated that this amounts to $4,000 per capita in extra demand, he did not treat it as helpful immediate fiscal stimulus but as burdensome long-term debt.
ECLECTIC LUMINARIES ABC anchor Charles Gibson did not attend the White House ceremonies at which 16 honorees were awarded the Medal of Freedom by President Barack Obama but he did narrate the videotape, introducing us to eight from the "eclectic list of luminaries." Gibson selected six Americans--Edward Kennedy, Billie Jean King, Sandra Day O'Connor, Sidney Poitier, Joseph Lowery and Joe Medicine Crow--and two foreigners, Stephen Hawking and Desmond Tutu, who "never lost the twinkle in his eye." Bill Plante of CBS was at the White House to note that Edward Kennedy was the only one of the 16 not to attend. His brain tumor kept him at home in Massachusetts, not only missing the medal ceremony but also "missing from the pitched battle over healthcare reform, an issue he has called the cause of his life."
DUSTY DAHANEH The lead foreign correspondents of the three networks all flew into Kabul ahead of next week's presidential election. NBC's Richard Engel arrived from Beirut; ABC's Jim Sciutto from London; CBS' Lara Logan from Washington DC. All three narrated the same footage of the Battle of Dahaneh, an eight-hour firefight between 400 Marines and Taliban guerrillas over the dusty town in Helmand Province. "If the Taliban is able to stop large numbers of people from voting in the south then the credibility of the election could be in doubt," CBS' Logan stated, accounting for the Marine Corps' town-by-town sweep through Helmand. ABC's Sciutto estimated that as many as 10% of Afghanistan's polling stations would be unable to open on election day. NBC's Engel pointed to Taliban leaflets threatening to slit the throat of anyone who votes and saw far greater dangers: "Nearly half of Afghanistan remains at high risk of a Taliban attack."
TOXIC BUTTERFLY The Red Butterfly is the lyrical name for a factory in rural Chongqing Province that manufactures screens for television sets. CBS' Celia Hatton traveled to central China to set the record straight, calling it "the toxic downside of China's industrial rise." Red Butterfly's waste products include strontium carbonate, leading to villagers' complaints of skin rashes, blurred vision, congested lungs and liver problems. The rate of cancer may now be as high as 70 cases for every 1,000 people. "Villagers say the area's wealthiest people have already moved away, leaving the most vulnerable."
MEET THE ERCOLINES For its charming closer, NBC introduced us to then-and-now pictures of Bobbi Kelly and Nick Ercoline. They are now a school nurse and a retired carpenter, happily married for 38 years, living in upstate New York. On a Sunday morning precisely 40 years ago they woke up to the music of Jefferson Airplane when Burk Uzzle took their picture. Their embrace ended up on the cover of the soundtrack album of the Woodstock rock concert. Uzzel photographed the Ercolines once again for the documentary Woodstock Then & Now. Anchor Brian Williams showed us their reunion.
