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TYNDALL HEADLINE: HIGHLIGHTS FROM OCTOBER 21, 2009
What a light day of news! There was practically no mention of international developments or foreign policy. Only one story was deemed worthy of coverage by a reporter on all three newscasts. Filling the void were landscape gardeners and baseball umpires, Alzheimer's monitors and a hula-hooping First Lady. Saving the news agenda from total trivia was TARP. The federal bailout of the financial industry was the unanimous choice to lead all three newscasts. The Story of the Day was Special Master Kenneth Feinberg's decision to order a massive pay cut for 175 millionaire executives.
TYNDALL PICKS FOR OCTOBER 21, 2009: CLICK ON GRID ELEMENTS TO SEARCH FOR MATCHING ITEMS
ONLY TARP SAYS THE NEWS DAY What a light day of news! There was practically no mention of international developments or foreign policy. Only one story was deemed worthy of coverage by a reporter on all three newscasts. Filling the void were landscape gardeners and baseball umpires, Alzheimer's monitors and a hula-hooping First Lady. Saving the news agenda from total trivia was TARP. The federal bailout of the financial industry was the unanimous choice to lead all three newscasts. The Story of the Day was Special Master Kenneth Feinberg's decision to order a massive pay cut for 175 millionaire executives.
The 175 were the top 25 bosses at the seven firms that were partly nationalized after being bailed out by the Treasury Department. They are a pair of automobile manufacturers, General Motors and Chrysler; their consumer finance arms; an insurance conglomerate, AIG; and two giant banks, Citigroup and Bank of America. ABC's Jake Tapper calculated that the seven businesses received a total of $300bn from TARP. On average, these executive will be paid just one tenth of their base salary, with total annual compensation--including pensions, perks and bonuses--being cut in half.
ABC's Betsy Stark remarked that "all the banks have benefited and continue to benefit from the taxpayers' largesse," yet executives at the likes of Goldman Sachs and JP Morgan Chase will not see a penny cut from their take home pay. "Wells Fargo received $25bn and has not paid it back," CBS' Sharyl Attkisson pointed out, yet its bosses will be "subject to lesser compensation losses." The rest of Wall Street, predicted NBC's Lisa Myers, "receives huge bonuses as if the meltdown never happened."
ABC's Stark reported that the executives taking the cuts "are worried about their businesses, worried about being put at a further competitive disadvantage. They are weak companies and are worried about getting weaker if they are not able to retain their top talent through rich pay packages." She cited an example of a banker being lured away from a $200K-a-year job at one of the seven firms with a $5m-a-year offer. Stark's arithmetic was off by an order of magnitude. This hypothetical five-million-dollar banker would be making $2.5m after the 50% cut, more than ten times more than Stark's imaginary $200,000.
PROSTATE CANCER SCREENING The New York Times inspired both ABC and NBC to cover the public health issue of screening for cancer. The newspaper quoted Dr Otis Bradley, the chief medical officer of the American Cancer Society, as warning that the advantages of screening for prostate and breast cancer--with PSA blood tests and mammograms--"have been exaggerated." NBC's Robert Bazell noted that the Times had reported that the ACS was "quietly working" on a revision for its guidelines about screening. This scoop was contradicted by the society's official announcement that no revisions are planned. ABC's Sharyn Alfonsi picked up on the reaction that it would be "a disastrous public health message to let people believe cancer screenings are useless." This piece of reporting is a straw man. Dr Bradley never called screenings "useless"--suggesting merely that their benefits are exaggerated.
ABC's exasperated anchor Charles Gibson called in his network's in-house physician Timothy Johnson (at the tail of the Alfonsi videostream): "I am left with this confusion," he complained. "It seems to me what you are talking about--what is uncertain--is what you do after the screenings; not a question of whether you should have the screenings themselves but, then, what kind of treatment should come after you spot the cancer." Dr Johnson's reply: "These tests do what they are supposed to do, in most cases. They find the cancers. The problem is that we do not know which ones to treat--which ones are going to be lethal--so we overtreat."
By the way, both ABC's Dr Johnson and NBC's Bazell pointed out that these concerns about screenings do not apply to pap smears or to colonoscopies.
This controversy comes at a time when my friend Jeff Jarvis has just undergone prostate cancer surgery after testing PSA positive. Jarvis has discussed his diagnosis, his surgery, its impact on his penis and the public health question of PSA testing at his BuzzMachine.com. Being a prostate cancer surgery patient myself, I have joined in those discussions in his comments.
MORE ‘FLU CBS covered Capitol Hill public health hearings into the H1N1 influenza outbreak. Wyatt Andrews followed up on Monday's Eye on Health feature on Peramivir, the experimental intravenous antiviral medicine that is not yet approved by the Food & Drug Administration. Health Secretary Kathleen Sibelius testified that emergency approval of antivirals in IV form is "imminent." Dean Reynolds told us that nationwide almost 200 schools have been closed because of the 'flu, affecting 65,000 students and 4,000 teachers. Education Secretary Arne Duncan testified that closing a school should be a last resort: "It puts a strain on families. I worry about children who do not eat--who rely on the school lunches."
"Federal health officials say there is not actually a shortage of vaccine but so far it has not always made it to the right place at the right time." That was how CBS' Don Teague updated us on the pace of inoculations on Tuesday. Now ABC's Lisa Stark reports the opposite. She watched the queuing residents of Rockville Md being turned away as shots ran out. "Maryland has received only half of the 1m doses it expected by now; Arizona is 800,000 doses short; same with Texas."
CROCKETT & TUBBS COME TO DIXIE "The days of the cigarette boats and the pastel suits--those are gone. I guess we are the new Miami Vice." That was District Attorney Danny Porter's boast to CBS' Mark Strassmann about the new role for his Gwinnett County. Strassmann reported that four Mexican-based narcotics cartels have moved their distribution into the suburbs of Atlanta. Its interlocking Interstate highways are now the hub for shipping cocaine and methamphetamines to 70% of the domestic market, covering "at least 230 cities." Strassmann claimed an Exclusive for his report. Too bad that it covered the same trend that NBC's Mark Potter spotted in January of this year and ABC's Brian Ross spotted in April.
OBTUSE OBAMA NBC offered us the First Family. Tom Costello used a soundbite from the hula-hooping First Lady encouraging us to eat our vegetables for his report on a looming crackdown by the Food & Drug Administration on the packaged food industry. The Smart Choices label, with its green check mark logo, is turning up on food that fails to pass nutritious muster. Costello singled out Fruit Loops cereals, frozen dinners and Fudgesicles.
Savannah Guthrie sat down with the President to continue her network's A Woman's Nation series. She asked about stereotypical gender roles played by Barack and Michelle. "If the kids get sick why is it that she is the one who has to take time off of her job to go pick them up from school as opposed to me?" Mr Obama asked rhetorically. "Men are still a little obtuse about this stuff and need to be knocked across the head every once in a while."
NBC was so preoccupied with Maria Shriver's feminist project that Guthrie got in only a passing mention about Afghanistan. Nancy Snyderman followed up with a feature that contradicted Shriver's findings of a new equality between the genders. Snyderman listed how women routinely get the short end of the stick: they spend most time providing unpaid care for elderly family members; are most likely to suffer chronic illnesses as a result; often have to pay more for their own health insurance; and are more likely than men to go bankrupt because they get sick.
VATICAN CALLING There was only a single package filed by a reporter on any of the three newscasts that had a foreign angle--and even that was filed from a New York City dateline. CBS' Jim Axelrod told us about the Vatican's decision to ease its rules for allowing Anglican Christians to convert to Roman Catholicism almost 500 years after the Church of England rejected the authority of the Pope. Axelrod explained that Rome is looking for conservatives disaffected by ordained women and married homosexuals. Anglican priests who happen to be married--male heterosexual ones--would be allowed to keep their collars. Axelrod speculated that "one of the unintended consequences for the Catholic Church might be to open up debate about priests and celibacy."
ARBOR DAY Meet Brent Green of Orange Drive. He is a landscaper with the American Spirit, according to CBS' Ben Tracy. Every year for the past eleven years, Green has planted street trees on his birthday as a present to his Los Angeles neighbors, a total of 420 so far. Green's greening of the 'hood has produced more shade, beautified houses, speed bumps to slow traffic, a reduction in crime, painted fire hydrants--and streetwalking prostitutes replaced by children at play.
WELL DONE, UMP Sports stories are often closers on the nightly newscasts but, because of legal hassles over copyright clearances, the networks often forego their entitlement to post the video online under the law's fair use provision. So it was gratifying to see that Ron Claiborne's report on the baseball playoffs survived as videostream on ABC's Website. He showed us three blown calls from Tuesday's game between the New York Yankees and the Angels of Anaheim. "A lot of baseball fans are clamoring--not to Kill the Ump as in days of yore--but for instant replay.
Not this baseball fan. Calling baserunnerSteve Nick Swisher out incorrectly at third was the fair thing to do after calling him safe incorrectly at second in the same inning. In this instance, two wrongs really did make a right. Well done, ump.
The 175 were the top 25 bosses at the seven firms that were partly nationalized after being bailed out by the Treasury Department. They are a pair of automobile manufacturers, General Motors and Chrysler; their consumer finance arms; an insurance conglomerate, AIG; and two giant banks, Citigroup and Bank of America. ABC's Jake Tapper calculated that the seven businesses received a total of $300bn from TARP. On average, these executive will be paid just one tenth of their base salary, with total annual compensation--including pensions, perks and bonuses--being cut in half.
ABC's Betsy Stark remarked that "all the banks have benefited and continue to benefit from the taxpayers' largesse," yet executives at the likes of Goldman Sachs and JP Morgan Chase will not see a penny cut from their take home pay. "Wells Fargo received $25bn and has not paid it back," CBS' Sharyl Attkisson pointed out, yet its bosses will be "subject to lesser compensation losses." The rest of Wall Street, predicted NBC's Lisa Myers, "receives huge bonuses as if the meltdown never happened."
ABC's Stark reported that the executives taking the cuts "are worried about their businesses, worried about being put at a further competitive disadvantage. They are weak companies and are worried about getting weaker if they are not able to retain their top talent through rich pay packages." She cited an example of a banker being lured away from a $200K-a-year job at one of the seven firms with a $5m-a-year offer. Stark's arithmetic was off by an order of magnitude. This hypothetical five-million-dollar banker would be making $2.5m after the 50% cut, more than ten times more than Stark's imaginary $200,000.
PROSTATE CANCER SCREENING The New York Times inspired both ABC and NBC to cover the public health issue of screening for cancer. The newspaper quoted Dr Otis Bradley, the chief medical officer of the American Cancer Society, as warning that the advantages of screening for prostate and breast cancer--with PSA blood tests and mammograms--"have been exaggerated." NBC's Robert Bazell noted that the Times had reported that the ACS was "quietly working" on a revision for its guidelines about screening. This scoop was contradicted by the society's official announcement that no revisions are planned. ABC's Sharyn Alfonsi picked up on the reaction that it would be "a disastrous public health message to let people believe cancer screenings are useless." This piece of reporting is a straw man. Dr Bradley never called screenings "useless"--suggesting merely that their benefits are exaggerated.
ABC's exasperated anchor Charles Gibson called in his network's in-house physician Timothy Johnson (at the tail of the Alfonsi videostream): "I am left with this confusion," he complained. "It seems to me what you are talking about--what is uncertain--is what you do after the screenings; not a question of whether you should have the screenings themselves but, then, what kind of treatment should come after you spot the cancer." Dr Johnson's reply: "These tests do what they are supposed to do, in most cases. They find the cancers. The problem is that we do not know which ones to treat--which ones are going to be lethal--so we overtreat."
By the way, both ABC's Dr Johnson and NBC's Bazell pointed out that these concerns about screenings do not apply to pap smears or to colonoscopies.
This controversy comes at a time when my friend Jeff Jarvis has just undergone prostate cancer surgery after testing PSA positive. Jarvis has discussed his diagnosis, his surgery, its impact on his penis and the public health question of PSA testing at his BuzzMachine.com. Being a prostate cancer surgery patient myself, I have joined in those discussions in his comments.
MORE ‘FLU CBS covered Capitol Hill public health hearings into the H1N1 influenza outbreak. Wyatt Andrews followed up on Monday's Eye on Health feature on Peramivir, the experimental intravenous antiviral medicine that is not yet approved by the Food & Drug Administration. Health Secretary Kathleen Sibelius testified that emergency approval of antivirals in IV form is "imminent." Dean Reynolds told us that nationwide almost 200 schools have been closed because of the 'flu, affecting 65,000 students and 4,000 teachers. Education Secretary Arne Duncan testified that closing a school should be a last resort: "It puts a strain on families. I worry about children who do not eat--who rely on the school lunches."
"Federal health officials say there is not actually a shortage of vaccine but so far it has not always made it to the right place at the right time." That was how CBS' Don Teague updated us on the pace of inoculations on Tuesday. Now ABC's Lisa Stark reports the opposite. She watched the queuing residents of Rockville Md being turned away as shots ran out. "Maryland has received only half of the 1m doses it expected by now; Arizona is 800,000 doses short; same with Texas."
CROCKETT & TUBBS COME TO DIXIE "The days of the cigarette boats and the pastel suits--those are gone. I guess we are the new Miami Vice." That was District Attorney Danny Porter's boast to CBS' Mark Strassmann about the new role for his Gwinnett County. Strassmann reported that four Mexican-based narcotics cartels have moved their distribution into the suburbs of Atlanta. Its interlocking Interstate highways are now the hub for shipping cocaine and methamphetamines to 70% of the domestic market, covering "at least 230 cities." Strassmann claimed an Exclusive for his report. Too bad that it covered the same trend that NBC's Mark Potter spotted in January of this year and ABC's Brian Ross spotted in April.
OBTUSE OBAMA NBC offered us the First Family. Tom Costello used a soundbite from the hula-hooping First Lady encouraging us to eat our vegetables for his report on a looming crackdown by the Food & Drug Administration on the packaged food industry. The Smart Choices label, with its green check mark logo, is turning up on food that fails to pass nutritious muster. Costello singled out Fruit Loops cereals, frozen dinners and Fudgesicles.
Savannah Guthrie sat down with the President to continue her network's A Woman's Nation series. She asked about stereotypical gender roles played by Barack and Michelle. "If the kids get sick why is it that she is the one who has to take time off of her job to go pick them up from school as opposed to me?" Mr Obama asked rhetorically. "Men are still a little obtuse about this stuff and need to be knocked across the head every once in a while."
NBC was so preoccupied with Maria Shriver's feminist project that Guthrie got in only a passing mention about Afghanistan. Nancy Snyderman followed up with a feature that contradicted Shriver's findings of a new equality between the genders. Snyderman listed how women routinely get the short end of the stick: they spend most time providing unpaid care for elderly family members; are most likely to suffer chronic illnesses as a result; often have to pay more for their own health insurance; and are more likely than men to go bankrupt because they get sick.
VATICAN CALLING There was only a single package filed by a reporter on any of the three newscasts that had a foreign angle--and even that was filed from a New York City dateline. CBS' Jim Axelrod told us about the Vatican's decision to ease its rules for allowing Anglican Christians to convert to Roman Catholicism almost 500 years after the Church of England rejected the authority of the Pope. Axelrod explained that Rome is looking for conservatives disaffected by ordained women and married homosexuals. Anglican priests who happen to be married--male heterosexual ones--would be allowed to keep their collars. Axelrod speculated that "one of the unintended consequences for the Catholic Church might be to open up debate about priests and celibacy."
ARBOR DAY Meet Brent Green of Orange Drive. He is a landscaper with the American Spirit, according to CBS' Ben Tracy. Every year for the past eleven years, Green has planted street trees on his birthday as a present to his Los Angeles neighbors, a total of 420 so far. Green's greening of the 'hood has produced more shade, beautified houses, speed bumps to slow traffic, a reduction in crime, painted fire hydrants--and streetwalking prostitutes replaced by children at play.
WELL DONE, UMP Sports stories are often closers on the nightly newscasts but, because of legal hassles over copyright clearances, the networks often forego their entitlement to post the video online under the law's fair use provision. So it was gratifying to see that Ron Claiborne's report on the baseball playoffs survived as videostream on ABC's Website. He showed us three blown calls from Tuesday's game between the New York Yankees and the Angels of Anaheim. "A lot of baseball fans are clamoring--not to Kill the Ump as in days of yore--but for instant replay.
Not this baseball fan. Calling baserunner
