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TYNDALL HEADLINE: HIGHLIGHTS FROM JANUARY 28, 2009
For the second straight day, President Barack Obama's $825bn fiscal proposal to stimulate the recessionary economy was Story of the Day. Tuesday the President made news by traveling to Capitol Hill to lobby House Republicans for his bill. Wednesday the headlines belonged to the House, which approved the measure 244-188, and to its Republicans, who were unanimous in their rejection of Obama's arguments. All 176 voted Nay. Only CBS led with the House vote. NBC kicked off with the request by the money-losing Postal Service to cut back mail deliveries to five days a week. ABC led with its investigative unit's expose of the CIA Station Chief at the US Embassy in Algiers. The spy is suspected of serial drug-induced date rape.
TYNDALL PICKS FOR JANUARY 28, 2009: CLICK ON GRID ELEMENTS TO SEARCH FOR MATCHING ITEMS
COVERAGE OF STIMULUS FINALLY GETS SPECIFIC For the second straight day, President Barack Obama's $825bn fiscal proposal to stimulate the recessionary economy was Story of the Day. Tuesday the President made news by traveling to Capitol Hill to lobby House Republicans for his bill. Wednesday the headlines belonged to the House, which approved the measure 244-188, and to its Republicans, who were unanimous in their rejection of Obama's arguments. All 176 voted Nay. Only CBS led with the House vote. NBC kicked off with the request by the money-losing Postal Service to cut back mail deliveries to five days a week. ABC led with its investigative unit's expose of the CIA Station Chief at the US Embassy in Algiers. The spy is suspected of serial drug-induced date rape.
Tyndall Report has complained about the nightly newscasts' shoddy reporting about the substance of the Republican opposition to the stimulus plan. When CBS' Chip Reid covered complaints of wasteful non-stimulative spending Tuesday he came up with examples of only $36bn out of the $825bn. Last Friday, Savannah Guthrie's list of offending items on NBC was even shorter--just $2.2bn worth. Now ABC's Jonathan Karl falls into the same trap, repeating GOP criticism that the bill is "filled with old-fashioned big government spending" but coming up with specifics that are not filling at all: a total of less than $2bn on new cars, Census Bureau funding and sex education.
At last we turn to disputes of substance. NBC's Kelly O'Donnell outlined the difference between the two parties thus: "Democrats see a safety net during hard times while Republicans fear a step towards nationalized healthcare." The question of whether the federal government should borrow money to cover healthcare for the unemployed and deficit-laden state governments was a clear partisan difference that was cited by all three newscasts. CBS' Reid had the size of the subsidy at $127bn; ABC's Karl put it at $150bn; NBC's O'Donnell at $39bn for the unemployed and $87bn for Medicaid. Whatever the exact amount, at least they all were finally covering real money.
Education spending, too, constituted a disagreement of substance between Democrats and Republicans. ABC's Karl estimated the total at $150bn, "double the entire budget" of the Department of Education; CBS' Reid put the figure at $41bn in federal grants for local school districts; NBC's O'Donnell offered that same $41bn as funding for school construction plus a further $79bn to help pay teachers' salaries.
ABC did a smart thing, asking Betsy Stark to assemble a panel of economists to assess some of the plan's line items. Which aspects are "really stimulus" and which are "social policy?" She asked Laurence Meyer, a former central banker; Mark Zandi of Moody's economy.com, whose affiliation with John McCain's Presidential campaign Stark did not mention; and Rosanne Altshuler of the Urban Tax Policy Center at the Brookings Institution. All three picked $54bn for food stamps and unemployment benefits as their favorite element; second was $79bn "aimed at helping state governments facing big budget shortfalls."
Without spelling it out, ABC's Stark implied that the House GOP has little support from the dismal profession--at least those economists that she happened to select as its representatives.
TARP MAY OPEN BAD BANK NBC's White House correspondent Chuck Todd shifted his focus from fiscal stimulus to the next major economic headache facing Barack Obama's financial team, "the crumbling banking and housing sectors." Todd reported that the Treasury Department is preparing to open a so-called Bad Bank, "a government-run entity that will buy up delinquent loans and other bad assets." Such a set-up succeeded during the '80s during the Savings-&-Loans crisis, Todd reminded us, yet the difference was that, back then, the government already owned the bad assets; now it has to decide what price the Bad Bank should pay to acquire them.
Sharyl Attkisson at CBS continues to make the Treasury Department's TARP bailout her beat. Her latest Follow the Money report from Capitol Hill looked into the secrecy surrounding the legal paperwork and auditing of the TARP billions. Contracts have been handed out without competitive bidding, with names and payments redacted. How much is the Bank of New York getting paid to manage the bailout? "Blacked out."
SWIFT COMPLETION OF SNAIL MAIL IS SWIFTER ONLINE Tom Costello could not resist the money phrase in his lead-off report for NBC on the United States Postal Service proposal to deliver mail only five days a week in a bid to cut its $6bn annual losses. "While neither snow nor rain nor heat will keep postal workers from their appointed rounds, they may have met their match in the global recession." Costello did point out that it is not only the recession that has caused "a dramatic decrease in mail volume" but also online communications. But he wanted to make the story economy not technology.
ICE WIPES OUT POWER For the second straight day, all three newscasts covered the icestorm that has snapped power lines in Arkansas, Missouri and Kentucky, causing electricity blackouts for hundreds of thousands. The storm stretches from Texas to Maine: CBS had Hari Sreenivasan show us the winter wonderland from Dallas; ABC used Eric Horng (embargoed link) in Cincinnati; NBC went with Peter Alexander in upstate New York; and CBS' Early Show weathercaster Dave Price rounded things off in New Hampshire. His drive from Worcester Mass to Concord should have taken 90 minutes. The snow and ice lengthened the trip to three hours and closed local airports: "No flights for us out of New Hampshire tonight."
FERTILITY EGGS AND PEANUT SALMONELLA FOLLOW-UPS Tuesday, ABC's Mike von Fremd earned kudos for his determination to eschew sentimentality in his coverage of the southern California octuplets. His network's in-house physician Timothy Johnson now elaborate, charging that any fertility clinic that allowed such a multiple pregnancy to go ahead was engaging in "bad practice." He explained to anchor Charles Gibson why it is "inherently wrong" to have eight babies: "Obviously the mother is at great risk for complications of pregnancy and, most importantly, the babies are at enormous risk for both near term and long term medical problems and developmental problems."
Only NBC followed up on what is shaping up to be one of the largest food recalls in United States history. "Candies, ice creams, cookies, energy bars, peanut butter cracker sandwiches and large vats of peanut butter used in institutions such as schools, hospitals and nursing homes," were on Robert Bazell's checklist. The risky foods contain ingredients processed over the last 24 months at the Peanut Corporation of America's plant in Georgia, where several strains of salmonella have been found. Since 2001, Bazell noted, the Food & Drug Administration had not inspected the plant's food safety directly, but had assigned that to Georgia's Department of Agriculture. When the FDA returned earlier this month it found "several violations of normal food processing procedures."
RAMAZAN THE REFORMER CBS' Elizabeth Palmer's reporting assignment to Afghanistan switched from war (here, here and here) to local politics. She filed a profile in praise of Ramazan Bashardost, a member of parliament notable for not riding around Kabul in a "shiny new SUV." Corruption is endemic In Afghanistan, Palmer complained, showing shakedowns at policy traffic checkpoints and detailing bribes paid to get electricity switched on or to get government papers issued. A Kabul neighborhood populated by government bureaucrats is nicknamed City of Loot for its lavish mansions. Palmer pointed her finger directly at President Hamid Karzai since it is "on his watch this corruption has just ballooned." Meanwhile MP Bashardost has pitched a tent outside the parliament building to listen to constituents' complaints.
IS HE THE SPY WHO RAPED ME? Brian Ross led off ABC's newscast with his Investigates feature on Andrew Warren, the CIA's top spy at the United States Embassy to Algeria. Warren has been ordered out of the country pending investigation into allegations by two women that they were drugged and raped, waking up next morning naked in Warren's bed: one reported no memory of the previous night's sex; the other remembered asking Warren to stop but being paralyzed to resist him. Ross reported that investigators found "more than a dozen" videotapes of Warren having sex with different women in his apartment. In his defense, the spy "claims the sex was consensual."
HETEROSEXUAL WITH ISSUES The Trials of Ted Haggard is the HBO documentary on the onetime megachurch evangelist who resigned from his ministry when it was revealed "he paid a male prostitute for sex and crystal meth," as ABC's Dan Harris put it. Haggard granted Harris an interview for Nightline to promote the HBO movie and ABC offered a portion on World News. Haggard has decided to stop preaching and sell insurance instead. He is still married to his wife Gayle--he calls himself "heterosexual but with issues." Gayle Haggard explained the two reasons why she is still married to Ted: "because of how I feel about my husband and about our marriage"--she did not elaborate--and "how I feel about being part of the church and the teachings of Jesus."
WHEN ADVERTISING MAKES NEWS Both NBC and ABC closed with Madison Avenue. ABC anchor Charles Gibson celebrated the humor of NFL Super Bowl commercials by offering free publicity to a trio of Sunday's sponsors: Miller High Life beer; Pedigree, the dog adoption organization; and careerbuilder.com the job site. It is part of the economic calculation behind spending $3m for a 30-second spot that advertisers are attracting free publicity too--if they can make us laugh. From the White House, NBC's John Yang offered his free publicity to Starbucks coffee and Pepsi the cola maker and Chicago's baseball White Sox and retailer JCrew and Spider Man comics as brands that have capitalized on the memorabilia mania surrounding Barack Obama's inauguration. Thumbs down go to Sweet Sasha and Marvelous Malia, a pair of dolls our new First Lady has deemed "inappropriate."
Tyndall Report has complained about the nightly newscasts' shoddy reporting about the substance of the Republican opposition to the stimulus plan. When CBS' Chip Reid covered complaints of wasteful non-stimulative spending Tuesday he came up with examples of only $36bn out of the $825bn. Last Friday, Savannah Guthrie's list of offending items on NBC was even shorter--just $2.2bn worth. Now ABC's Jonathan Karl falls into the same trap, repeating GOP criticism that the bill is "filled with old-fashioned big government spending" but coming up with specifics that are not filling at all: a total of less than $2bn on new cars, Census Bureau funding and sex education.
At last we turn to disputes of substance. NBC's Kelly O'Donnell outlined the difference between the two parties thus: "Democrats see a safety net during hard times while Republicans fear a step towards nationalized healthcare." The question of whether the federal government should borrow money to cover healthcare for the unemployed and deficit-laden state governments was a clear partisan difference that was cited by all three newscasts. CBS' Reid had the size of the subsidy at $127bn; ABC's Karl put it at $150bn; NBC's O'Donnell at $39bn for the unemployed and $87bn for Medicaid. Whatever the exact amount, at least they all were finally covering real money.
Education spending, too, constituted a disagreement of substance between Democrats and Republicans. ABC's Karl estimated the total at $150bn, "double the entire budget" of the Department of Education; CBS' Reid put the figure at $41bn in federal grants for local school districts; NBC's O'Donnell offered that same $41bn as funding for school construction plus a further $79bn to help pay teachers' salaries.
ABC did a smart thing, asking Betsy Stark to assemble a panel of economists to assess some of the plan's line items. Which aspects are "really stimulus" and which are "social policy?" She asked Laurence Meyer, a former central banker; Mark Zandi of Moody's economy.com, whose affiliation with John McCain's Presidential campaign Stark did not mention; and Rosanne Altshuler of the Urban Tax Policy Center at the Brookings Institution. All three picked $54bn for food stamps and unemployment benefits as their favorite element; second was $79bn "aimed at helping state governments facing big budget shortfalls."
Without spelling it out, ABC's Stark implied that the House GOP has little support from the dismal profession--at least those economists that she happened to select as its representatives.
TARP MAY OPEN BAD BANK NBC's White House correspondent Chuck Todd shifted his focus from fiscal stimulus to the next major economic headache facing Barack Obama's financial team, "the crumbling banking and housing sectors." Todd reported that the Treasury Department is preparing to open a so-called Bad Bank, "a government-run entity that will buy up delinquent loans and other bad assets." Such a set-up succeeded during the '80s during the Savings-&-Loans crisis, Todd reminded us, yet the difference was that, back then, the government already owned the bad assets; now it has to decide what price the Bad Bank should pay to acquire them.
Sharyl Attkisson at CBS continues to make the Treasury Department's TARP bailout her beat. Her latest Follow the Money report from Capitol Hill looked into the secrecy surrounding the legal paperwork and auditing of the TARP billions. Contracts have been handed out without competitive bidding, with names and payments redacted. How much is the Bank of New York getting paid to manage the bailout? "Blacked out."
SWIFT COMPLETION OF SNAIL MAIL IS SWIFTER ONLINE Tom Costello could not resist the money phrase in his lead-off report for NBC on the United States Postal Service proposal to deliver mail only five days a week in a bid to cut its $6bn annual losses. "While neither snow nor rain nor heat will keep postal workers from their appointed rounds, they may have met their match in the global recession." Costello did point out that it is not only the recession that has caused "a dramatic decrease in mail volume" but also online communications. But he wanted to make the story economy not technology.
ICE WIPES OUT POWER For the second straight day, all three newscasts covered the icestorm that has snapped power lines in Arkansas, Missouri and Kentucky, causing electricity blackouts for hundreds of thousands. The storm stretches from Texas to Maine: CBS had Hari Sreenivasan show us the winter wonderland from Dallas; ABC used Eric Horng (embargoed link) in Cincinnati; NBC went with Peter Alexander in upstate New York; and CBS' Early Show weathercaster Dave Price rounded things off in New Hampshire. His drive from Worcester Mass to Concord should have taken 90 minutes. The snow and ice lengthened the trip to three hours and closed local airports: "No flights for us out of New Hampshire tonight."
FERTILITY EGGS AND PEANUT SALMONELLA FOLLOW-UPS Tuesday, ABC's Mike von Fremd earned kudos for his determination to eschew sentimentality in his coverage of the southern California octuplets. His network's in-house physician Timothy Johnson now elaborate, charging that any fertility clinic that allowed such a multiple pregnancy to go ahead was engaging in "bad practice." He explained to anchor Charles Gibson why it is "inherently wrong" to have eight babies: "Obviously the mother is at great risk for complications of pregnancy and, most importantly, the babies are at enormous risk for both near term and long term medical problems and developmental problems."
Only NBC followed up on what is shaping up to be one of the largest food recalls in United States history. "Candies, ice creams, cookies, energy bars, peanut butter cracker sandwiches and large vats of peanut butter used in institutions such as schools, hospitals and nursing homes," were on Robert Bazell's checklist. The risky foods contain ingredients processed over the last 24 months at the Peanut Corporation of America's plant in Georgia, where several strains of salmonella have been found. Since 2001, Bazell noted, the Food & Drug Administration had not inspected the plant's food safety directly, but had assigned that to Georgia's Department of Agriculture. When the FDA returned earlier this month it found "several violations of normal food processing procedures."
RAMAZAN THE REFORMER CBS' Elizabeth Palmer's reporting assignment to Afghanistan switched from war (here, here and here) to local politics. She filed a profile in praise of Ramazan Bashardost, a member of parliament notable for not riding around Kabul in a "shiny new SUV." Corruption is endemic In Afghanistan, Palmer complained, showing shakedowns at policy traffic checkpoints and detailing bribes paid to get electricity switched on or to get government papers issued. A Kabul neighborhood populated by government bureaucrats is nicknamed City of Loot for its lavish mansions. Palmer pointed her finger directly at President Hamid Karzai since it is "on his watch this corruption has just ballooned." Meanwhile MP Bashardost has pitched a tent outside the parliament building to listen to constituents' complaints.
IS HE THE SPY WHO RAPED ME? Brian Ross led off ABC's newscast with his Investigates feature on Andrew Warren, the CIA's top spy at the United States Embassy to Algeria. Warren has been ordered out of the country pending investigation into allegations by two women that they were drugged and raped, waking up next morning naked in Warren's bed: one reported no memory of the previous night's sex; the other remembered asking Warren to stop but being paralyzed to resist him. Ross reported that investigators found "more than a dozen" videotapes of Warren having sex with different women in his apartment. In his defense, the spy "claims the sex was consensual."
HETEROSEXUAL WITH ISSUES The Trials of Ted Haggard is the HBO documentary on the onetime megachurch evangelist who resigned from his ministry when it was revealed "he paid a male prostitute for sex and crystal meth," as ABC's Dan Harris put it. Haggard granted Harris an interview for Nightline to promote the HBO movie and ABC offered a portion on World News. Haggard has decided to stop preaching and sell insurance instead. He is still married to his wife Gayle--he calls himself "heterosexual but with issues." Gayle Haggard explained the two reasons why she is still married to Ted: "because of how I feel about my husband and about our marriage"--she did not elaborate--and "how I feel about being part of the church and the teachings of Jesus."
WHEN ADVERTISING MAKES NEWS Both NBC and ABC closed with Madison Avenue. ABC anchor Charles Gibson celebrated the humor of NFL Super Bowl commercials by offering free publicity to a trio of Sunday's sponsors: Miller High Life beer; Pedigree, the dog adoption organization; and careerbuilder.com the job site. It is part of the economic calculation behind spending $3m for a 30-second spot that advertisers are attracting free publicity too--if they can make us laugh. From the White House, NBC's John Yang offered his free publicity to Starbucks coffee and Pepsi the cola maker and Chicago's baseball White Sox and retailer JCrew and Spider Man comics as brands that have capitalized on the memorabilia mania surrounding Barack Obama's inauguration. Thumbs down go to Sweet Sasha and Marvelous Malia, a pair of dolls our new First Lady has deemed "inappropriate."
