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TYNDALL HEADLINE: HIGHLIGHTS FROM JANUARY 05, 2009
In the summer of 2006, when the Israel Defense Force headed north to fight with the Hezbollah militia in southern Lebanon, all three networks found the conflict so newsworthy they dispatched anchors to the region. ABC's Charles Gibson traveled to Jerusalem; NBC's Brian Williams to Tel Aviv and Haifa; CBS' Bob Schieffer in New York shared anchoring chores with Lara Logan in Israel. Now, as 2009 starts, the IDF is heading south into the Gaza Strip to confront the militiamen of Hamas. The Gaza conflict was Story of the Day for the third straight weekday of the new year--but the networks did not even use it to lead off their newscasts, let alone send their anchors out of New York. The economy, specifically President-elect Barack Obama's legislative proposal for fiscal stimulus, was their unanimous choice as lead item. Meanwhile the Palestinian death toll in Gaza at Israeli hands this week neared 550, dozens of them civilian children.
TYNDALL PICKS FOR JANUARY 05, 2009: CLICK ON GRID ELEMENTS TO SEARCH FOR MATCHING ITEMS
HAMAS FAILS TO ATTRACT HEZBOLLAH’S ANCHOR TREATMENT In the summer of 2006, when the Israel Defense Force headed north to fight with the Hezbollah militia in southern Lebanon, all three networks found the conflict so newsworthy they dispatched anchors to the region. ABC's Charles Gibson traveled to Jerusalem; NBC's Brian Williams to Tel Aviv and Haifa; CBS' Bob Schieffer in New York shared anchoring chores with Lara Logan in Israel. Now, as 2009 starts, the IDF is heading south into the Gaza Strip to confront the militiamen of Hamas. The Gaza conflict was Story of the Day for the third straight weekday of the new year--but the networks did not even use it to lead off their newscasts, let alone send their anchors out of New York. The economy, specifically President-elect Barack Obama's legislative proposal for fiscal stimulus, was their unanimous choice as lead item. Meanwhile the Palestinian death toll in Gaza at Israeli hands this week neared 550, dozens of them civilian children.
None of the networks had correspondents file from inside the Gaza Strip as the IDF invaded from north and southeast. "It is very difficult to get an accurate impression of what Gaza is like. The Israeli government has banned foreign troops from going inside," NBC's Richard Engel explained. "Israeli officials openly say they are trying to control the images coming out of Gaza." So ABC's Simon McGregor-Wood relied on the eyewitness accounts of his Gazan producer Sammi Zyara, the roof of whose building was shot at by an IDF Apache helicopter. CBS had Richard Roth in Tel Aviv narrate videotape from the "overwhelmed" emergency room of Shifa Hospital, the same miserable conditions that ABC's Miguel Marqeuz monitored from Jerusalem last week.
Just because reporters were not on the ground inside the Gaza Strip, they were in no doubt about the abject state of its residents. NBC's Engel called it "a growing humanitarian crisis--a million people are with electricity, more than a million have no access to clean water." The IDF's "relentless air and artillery pounding has traumatized Gaza's population," asserted CBS' Mark Phillips, airing "desperate" pleas for food and water. NBC's Martin Fletcher illustrated the asymmetry of the carnage on the two sides by taking us to the Israeli township of Sderot, just one mile from the Gazan border. He waited safely in a bomb shelter with local firefighters as a single Hamas-fired rocket "crude but terrifying" zoomed overhead: "This time it fell in a field harmlessly. All is clear."
CBS' Phillips explained the outlines of a compromise between Gaza's Hamas government and Israel: "The Israelis want the missiles to stop and some guarantee that Hamas will not import more weapons. Hamas wants the blockade lifted." Such a deal is unlikely to be struck yet, an unidentified senior Israeli told NBC's Engel: "The military needs another ten days to finish the offensive." The IDF's goal "is simple, blunt and requires force--to break Hamas, bring it to its knees and force it to beg for a ceasefire." Meanwhile ABC's McGregor-Wood quoted Hamas leader Mahmoud al-Zahar by name: "When you kill our children we are allowed to kill yours. When you bomb our mosques, we will destroy your synagogues."
NEW WHITE HOUSE BEAT GETS GOING The new year started with the next cadre of White House correspondents following the next President of the United States to Capitol Hill where he opened negotiations with Congressional leaders on a $775bn fiscal stimulus to the economy over the next 24 months. Barack Obama's economic team hopes that such deficit spending will be enough to generate 3m additional jobs--which is not that impressive bearing in mind Jake Tapper's prediction on ABC that this Friday's unemployment numbers will bring 2008's total for lost jobs to an almost equivalent 2.5m.
CBS' Chip Reid focused on that 40% of the stimulus that "pleased many Republicans," a two-year plan to cut taxes by $300bn: "Obama, hoping to pass the stimulus package with a large bipartisan majority, was encouraged by early reactions." NBC's Chuck Todd previewed "a speech on Thursday" in which Obama will outline the plan to the public. ABC's Tapper cited the "Google-like search engine" that will allow to voters to examine the costs and projected job gains for each element.
NBC kicked off its America's Agenda series with CNBC's Carl Quintanilla surveying economists' criticisms of the $775bn program. He found a trio of potential flaws: first, federal grants to state governments to build infrastructure and forestall budget cuts may attract wasteful porkbarrel spending; second, the tax cuts may create too much debt, necessitating future, larger tax hikes; third, the stimulus does not address the continuing collapse of the housing market, which "caused all of this hardship in the first place."
NOT PUBLIC BUT STILL PRIVATE Fiscal policy aside, there were three other components to the transfer of power that helped take the networks' focus away from Gaza toward the Beltway instead on this heavy news day. The jockeying over the final seats in the Senate continued. Barack Obama's transition team suffered some setbacks in its nominations for Director of Central Intelligence and Secretary of Commerce. And the soon-to-be First Daughters, Malia and Sasha, had their first day at school.
The daughters first. ABC anchor Charles Gibson (no link) wished them well by noting that they would become his fellow alumns. Gibson studied at Sidwell Friends, DC's private Quaker school, from the seventh grade onward. NBC anchor Brian Williams dug out Nightly News archive footage from 1977 when Amy Carter attended one of the District of Columbia's public schools. Then-anchor John Chancellor promised "that is the last you will see of Amy Carter at school on this program" back then, and Williams extended the same guarantee of privacy to the Obama schoolgirls.
PRO SPOOKS NOT CAREER POLS The nominees second. "Someone forget to tell Sen Dianne Feinstein," tut-tutted Bob Schieffer, anchor of CBS' Face the Nation, when it was bruited that Leon Panetta, former Budget Director and White House Chief of Staff, would be named Director of Central Intelligence. Feinstein, chairwoman-to-be of the Senate Intelligence Committee, favors professional spooks, not career pols, for the job. The irony, Schieffer pointed out, is that the job Panetta wanted was Secretary of Commerce, a slot that is open once more now that Gov Bill Richardson has withdrawn his nomination. NBC's Lisa Myers had outlined Richardson's potential pay-for-play problems with a political action fund contributor and a state bond contract in New Mexico just before Christmas. David Wright (embargoed link) studied Richardson's withdrawal for ABC's A Closer Look and concluded that it was probably no more that an "appearance of impropriety…Most contributions are perfectly legal. To be illegal a prosecutor has to be able to prove the quid pro quo and that is extremely difficult." Nevertheless when Richardson volunteered to quit Barack Obama's team, "no one tried to stop him," Schieffer pointed out.
EMPTY SEATS And the Senate. A pair of probable Democratic seats stay unfilled. Al Franken, named the winner of the Minnesota election after a recount by a 225 vote margin over incumbent Norm Coleman, will not join the Senate until Coleman's legal appeal is resolved. Roland Burris, named by Gov Rod Blagojevich to the vacant Illinois seat, headed for Capitol Hill even though Senate leadership has nixed anyone the governor might name. CBS' Wyatt Andrews called Burris' trip "an act of defiance that is either principled or quite pointless" while NBC's Kelly O'Donnell detected a mood of "defiant optimism" as Burris "insists his appointment will hold." George Stephanopoulos, anchor of ABC's This Week, saw straws in the wind that Burris shall prevail--if he promises not to run for election in 2010 and if Blagojevich's lieutenant governor backs Burris too.
DINAH SHORE’S SHOES The dismal economy was reflected in year-end sales statistics from the automobile industry that were covered by CNBC's Phil LeBeau for NBC and Anthony Mason for CBS. LeBeau pointed out that December's drop in sales "was not just limited to the Big Three." Honda and Toyota joined General Motors and Ford with declines in excess of 30%. Chrysler was worst, down 53%. At the start of the decade, Americans purchased vehicles at a 17m annual rate, CBS' Mason reminded us. In 2008 that total will fall below 12m. He dug out a jingle to illustrate that last time General Motors' sales volume had been so low. Listen to Dinah Shore.
TRAVOLTA, JOBS, MADOFF Rounding out the day's news was a trio of bold faced names. ABC assigned a report to each of the three: Steve Osunsami to actor John Travolta, whose teenage son died while on vacation in The Bahamas; Neal Karlinsky to computer whiz Steve Jobs of Apple, who admitted to hormone problems as the cause of his "shockingly thin" weight loss; Dan Harris to Bernard Madoff, the disgraced financier who had to appear in court on suspicion of violating the terms of his bail. CBS also had a reporter on the Madoff beat. Sharyl Attkisson filed from Washington where she covered House hearings into the Securities and Exchange Commission's failure to respond to a 2005 memo about Madoff The World's Largest Hedge Fund is a Fraud by HarryMarkopoulos Markopolos. "Where Markopoulos Markopolos saw red flags, professional regulators apparently found no problem."
None of the networks had correspondents file from inside the Gaza Strip as the IDF invaded from north and southeast. "It is very difficult to get an accurate impression of what Gaza is like. The Israeli government has banned foreign troops from going inside," NBC's Richard Engel explained. "Israeli officials openly say they are trying to control the images coming out of Gaza." So ABC's Simon McGregor-Wood relied on the eyewitness accounts of his Gazan producer Sammi Zyara, the roof of whose building was shot at by an IDF Apache helicopter. CBS had Richard Roth in Tel Aviv narrate videotape from the "overwhelmed" emergency room of Shifa Hospital, the same miserable conditions that ABC's Miguel Marqeuz monitored from Jerusalem last week.
Just because reporters were not on the ground inside the Gaza Strip, they were in no doubt about the abject state of its residents. NBC's Engel called it "a growing humanitarian crisis--a million people are with electricity, more than a million have no access to clean water." The IDF's "relentless air and artillery pounding has traumatized Gaza's population," asserted CBS' Mark Phillips, airing "desperate" pleas for food and water. NBC's Martin Fletcher illustrated the asymmetry of the carnage on the two sides by taking us to the Israeli township of Sderot, just one mile from the Gazan border. He waited safely in a bomb shelter with local firefighters as a single Hamas-fired rocket "crude but terrifying" zoomed overhead: "This time it fell in a field harmlessly. All is clear."
CBS' Phillips explained the outlines of a compromise between Gaza's Hamas government and Israel: "The Israelis want the missiles to stop and some guarantee that Hamas will not import more weapons. Hamas wants the blockade lifted." Such a deal is unlikely to be struck yet, an unidentified senior Israeli told NBC's Engel: "The military needs another ten days to finish the offensive." The IDF's goal "is simple, blunt and requires force--to break Hamas, bring it to its knees and force it to beg for a ceasefire." Meanwhile ABC's McGregor-Wood quoted Hamas leader Mahmoud al-Zahar by name: "When you kill our children we are allowed to kill yours. When you bomb our mosques, we will destroy your synagogues."
NEW WHITE HOUSE BEAT GETS GOING The new year started with the next cadre of White House correspondents following the next President of the United States to Capitol Hill where he opened negotiations with Congressional leaders on a $775bn fiscal stimulus to the economy over the next 24 months. Barack Obama's economic team hopes that such deficit spending will be enough to generate 3m additional jobs--which is not that impressive bearing in mind Jake Tapper's prediction on ABC that this Friday's unemployment numbers will bring 2008's total for lost jobs to an almost equivalent 2.5m.
CBS' Chip Reid focused on that 40% of the stimulus that "pleased many Republicans," a two-year plan to cut taxes by $300bn: "Obama, hoping to pass the stimulus package with a large bipartisan majority, was encouraged by early reactions." NBC's Chuck Todd previewed "a speech on Thursday" in which Obama will outline the plan to the public. ABC's Tapper cited the "Google-like search engine" that will allow to voters to examine the costs and projected job gains for each element.
NBC kicked off its America's Agenda series with CNBC's Carl Quintanilla surveying economists' criticisms of the $775bn program. He found a trio of potential flaws: first, federal grants to state governments to build infrastructure and forestall budget cuts may attract wasteful porkbarrel spending; second, the tax cuts may create too much debt, necessitating future, larger tax hikes; third, the stimulus does not address the continuing collapse of the housing market, which "caused all of this hardship in the first place."
NOT PUBLIC BUT STILL PRIVATE Fiscal policy aside, there were three other components to the transfer of power that helped take the networks' focus away from Gaza toward the Beltway instead on this heavy news day. The jockeying over the final seats in the Senate continued. Barack Obama's transition team suffered some setbacks in its nominations for Director of Central Intelligence and Secretary of Commerce. And the soon-to-be First Daughters, Malia and Sasha, had their first day at school.
The daughters first. ABC anchor Charles Gibson (no link) wished them well by noting that they would become his fellow alumns. Gibson studied at Sidwell Friends, DC's private Quaker school, from the seventh grade onward. NBC anchor Brian Williams dug out Nightly News archive footage from 1977 when Amy Carter attended one of the District of Columbia's public schools. Then-anchor John Chancellor promised "that is the last you will see of Amy Carter at school on this program" back then, and Williams extended the same guarantee of privacy to the Obama schoolgirls.
PRO SPOOKS NOT CAREER POLS The nominees second. "Someone forget to tell Sen Dianne Feinstein," tut-tutted Bob Schieffer, anchor of CBS' Face the Nation, when it was bruited that Leon Panetta, former Budget Director and White House Chief of Staff, would be named Director of Central Intelligence. Feinstein, chairwoman-to-be of the Senate Intelligence Committee, favors professional spooks, not career pols, for the job. The irony, Schieffer pointed out, is that the job Panetta wanted was Secretary of Commerce, a slot that is open once more now that Gov Bill Richardson has withdrawn his nomination. NBC's Lisa Myers had outlined Richardson's potential pay-for-play problems with a political action fund contributor and a state bond contract in New Mexico just before Christmas. David Wright (embargoed link) studied Richardson's withdrawal for ABC's A Closer Look and concluded that it was probably no more that an "appearance of impropriety…Most contributions are perfectly legal. To be illegal a prosecutor has to be able to prove the quid pro quo and that is extremely difficult." Nevertheless when Richardson volunteered to quit Barack Obama's team, "no one tried to stop him," Schieffer pointed out.
EMPTY SEATS And the Senate. A pair of probable Democratic seats stay unfilled. Al Franken, named the winner of the Minnesota election after a recount by a 225 vote margin over incumbent Norm Coleman, will not join the Senate until Coleman's legal appeal is resolved. Roland Burris, named by Gov Rod Blagojevich to the vacant Illinois seat, headed for Capitol Hill even though Senate leadership has nixed anyone the governor might name. CBS' Wyatt Andrews called Burris' trip "an act of defiance that is either principled or quite pointless" while NBC's Kelly O'Donnell detected a mood of "defiant optimism" as Burris "insists his appointment will hold." George Stephanopoulos, anchor of ABC's This Week, saw straws in the wind that Burris shall prevail--if he promises not to run for election in 2010 and if Blagojevich's lieutenant governor backs Burris too.
DINAH SHORE’S SHOES The dismal economy was reflected in year-end sales statistics from the automobile industry that were covered by CNBC's Phil LeBeau for NBC and Anthony Mason for CBS. LeBeau pointed out that December's drop in sales "was not just limited to the Big Three." Honda and Toyota joined General Motors and Ford with declines in excess of 30%. Chrysler was worst, down 53%. At the start of the decade, Americans purchased vehicles at a 17m annual rate, CBS' Mason reminded us. In 2008 that total will fall below 12m. He dug out a jingle to illustrate that last time General Motors' sales volume had been so low. Listen to Dinah Shore.
TRAVOLTA, JOBS, MADOFF Rounding out the day's news was a trio of bold faced names. ABC assigned a report to each of the three: Steve Osunsami to actor John Travolta, whose teenage son died while on vacation in The Bahamas; Neal Karlinsky to computer whiz Steve Jobs of Apple, who admitted to hormone problems as the cause of his "shockingly thin" weight loss; Dan Harris to Bernard Madoff, the disgraced financier who had to appear in court on suspicion of violating the terms of his bail. CBS also had a reporter on the Madoff beat. Sharyl Attkisson filed from Washington where she covered House hearings into the Securities and Exchange Commission's failure to respond to a 2005 memo about Madoff The World's Largest Hedge Fund is a Fraud by Harry
