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TYNDALL HEADLINE: HIGHLIGHTS FROM OCTOBER 26, 2009
A trio of stories vied for the day's top spot. NBC chose to lead with the deadly climax to a nighttime narcotics raid by DEA agents and commandos in Afghanistan's western Badghis Province: their Chinook helicopter crashed, killing ten on board. ABC and CBS both started with a follow-up from last Thursday's overblown story of Northwest Airlines' overshooting Flight 188: its pilots explained that they were browsing not sleeping. The Story of the Day was a further update on the H1N1 swine strain of the influenza virus: long lines for the vaccine persist. NBC and CBS both had substitute anchors filling in from their morning programs: Today's Ann Curry and Early Show's Harry Smith respectively.
TYNDALL PICKS FOR OCTOBER 26, 2009: CLICK ON GRID ELEMENTS TO SEARCH FOR MATCHING ITEMS
COMMANDOS’ NIGHTTIME DRUG BUST ENDS IN DEATH A trio of stories vied for the day's top spot. NBC chose to lead with the deadly climax to a nighttime narcotics raid by DEA agents and commandos in Afghanistan's western Badghis Province: their Chinook helicopter crashed, killing ten on board. ABC and CBS both started with a follow-up from last Thursday's overblown story of Northwest Airlines' overshooting Flight 188: its pilots explained that they were browsing not sleeping. The Story of the Day was a further update on the H1N1 swine strain of the influenza virus: long lines for the vaccine persist. NBC and CBS both had substitute anchors filling in from their morning programs: Today's Ann Curry and Early Show's Harry Smith respectively.
The drug raid was not a direct part of the counterinsurgency against Taliban guerrillas, according to Afghan-based correspondents. NBC's Richard Engel identified the target as "a suspected drugs and weapons trafficker who supplies militants, including the Taliban." CBS' Mandy Clark referred to them merely as "drug smugglers." ABC's Jim Sciutto called it an attack "on a compound of an insurgent leader involved in trafficking opium." Sciutto stated that targeting the opium trade is a new strategy for the United States.
It was up to CBS' Lara Logan (at the tail of the Clark videostream) back in the New York City studio to tie the raid directly to the war itself. She questioned the Pentagon's account that the Chinook crash was an accident: "The Taliban commander of that region is saying very clearly that as the helicopter was taking off--when it was still flying low and it was still slow--that is when they hit from the righthand side with heavy machine gun fire and a rocket propelled grenade."
CBS' Clark tied the Chinook crash to a midair collision of a pair of USMC helicopters, a UH-1 Huey and a Cobra gunship--in the southern Helmand Province that killed four on board. "Afghanistan is a punishing environment for helicopters. This month alone the USArmy says it has lost six other helicopters, five to crashes, one to enemy fire."
David Rohde, a reporter for The New York Times, has been working the interview circuit since he published his account of his escape after being held hostage for seven months. Rohde was kidnapped in Afghanistan and kept prisoner across the Pakistani border in Waziristan. His latest stop for a q-&-a was with NBC's Ann Curry. He disabused her of the notion that the so-called tribal areas consisted of rudimentary mountain caves. "I was shocked at the strength of the Taliban control of the Pakistani tribal areas, It is a fully functional government. There were road crews repairing roads. There were police patroling streets." Yet when he escaped all he had to do to find freedom was walk down the road to a Pakistani military base nearby.
Rounding out the day's Afghanistan coverage, both NBC's Savannah Guthrie and CBS' David Martin covered a speech by Barack Obama in which he promised servicemen that he would not be rushed into a decision to send them off to war. CBS' Martin pointed out that "the argument over troops has taken a back seat to the drama of Afghanistan's disputed presidential election." The runoff vote is scheduled for November 7th "but there is no guarantee it will produce the result the Obama Administration needs most--a legitimate Afghan government."
ABC MARKS THE SPOT "Buildings shredded as far as the eyes can see…glass…blood-splattered clothing…burned rubber." That was Miguel Marquez' eyewitness account on ABC of the carnage left by a pair of bus bombs in downtown Baghdad that killed more than 150 people, including two dozen children in a daycare center. "This is the hole created by the explosion. It goes down 25 feet," Marquez showed us. Tom Aspell narrated images of destruction from NBC's bureau in London. He reckoned this was the worst attack in Baghdad in two years. CBS mentioned the bombs merely in passing.
OPT-OUT OPTION All three newscasts covered the day's big political news, the decision by Majority Leader Harry Reid to seek a vote in the Senate on a version of the public option as part of its healthcare bill. Reid suggested a federal plan that would allow individual states to choose not to participate, a so-called opt-out. NBC's Kelly O'Donnell declared that for Democratic liberals "this kind of public option--or any kind of public option--is considered a victory." CBS' Nancy Cordes treated Reid's decision as a big deal, calling the opt-out "the cornerstone of the new Senate healthcare reform bill."
For months the public option had been "declared dead" in the Senate, CBS' Cordes reflected. "Liberal Democrats just kept coming up with different versions until they hit on one that, it seems, those three or four moderate holdouts might be able to live with." By contrast, George Stephanopoulos speculated on ABC that Reid "still may not have the votes to get this to the Senate floor." He pointed to three Democrats--Blanche Lincoln, Mary Landrieu, Ben Nelson--and one Republican who may now defect. "The President is very skeptical of this move," he commented. It "almost certainly" will not be supported by Olympia Snowe, hitherto the White House's lone Republican ally in its Senate coalition.
YET MORE ABOUT THE ‘FLU The influenza outbreak continues to get overcovered. ABC and NBC both filed an update on the shortage of the vaccine against the H1N1 swine strain. NBC's Robert Bazell found "huge frustration about getting the vaccine" while ABC's John McKenzie reported that "tempers have flared as people waited for hours only to be turned away." McKenzie's A Closer Look had the advantage of the dynamic wheel format, in which we whiz round the country checking on the vaccine's status through the eyes of ABC's correspondents: Clayton Sandell in Colorado, Barbara Pinto in Missouri, Steve Osunsami in Florida plus online research into how to find shots in five other states. The public health operations in Mississippi and Alabama were rated worst.
CBS' substitute anchor Harry Smith was joined by his Early Show colleague Jennifer Ashton, a practicing gynecologist. Her report on the dangers facing pregnant women who are infected by the H1N1 virus evinced their morning roots. Ashton went for the emotional human interest angle rather than the public policy question. She told us the tale of Aubrey Opdyke, who was six months pregnant when she was infected. "She spent five weeks in a drug-induced coma suffering collapsed lungs, kidney failure and seizures."
The Early Show angle is to focus on her husband Brian, who had to make "a life and death decision" to authorize a premature Caesarian section to save his wife's life. An Evening News angle would have been to examine whether H1N1 is leading to an increase in late-term abortions, including the often-denounced so-called partial birth method, to save the lives of pregnant women. Ashton did not even mention the word abortion. Perhaps speaking the A-word, instead of restricting herself to the C-section, would have made her story seem less heartwrenching. By the way, the Opdyke daughter, untimely ripped from her mother's womb, survived for seven minutes.
SAVE THE SMELT CBS aired an interesting environmental feature from southern California. Sandra Hughes told us about the combination of a three-year drought and strict environmental laws that have limited the use of irrigation pumps in the San Joaquin Valley. The pumps endanger a species of fish called the delta smelt; it gets mangled when the water churns too fast. In Los Angeles, water conservation means limits on lawns; in the valley, it means 500,000 acres of unplanted farmland; fewer fruits, nuts and vegetables; and up to 40% unemployment in some produce producing towns.
IT WAS HARDLY WATERGATE "The co-pilot called it an innocuous mistake," reported CBS' Bob Orr. And quite right he is too. Granted, the Northwest Airlines flight did land an hour late. Granted, it burned 150 miles worth of extra fuel. Granted, the cockpit crew violated procedure by ignoring radio calls and e-mail alerts. Still. No harm, no foul.
The network newscasts could not let go. All three assigned a correspondent to the investigation by the National Transportation Safety Board at which both pilots testified that they were distracted by a study of the new flight schedules imposed after Delta took over Northwest. CBS' Orr depicted them with "their headsets off and their noses buried in laptop computers." ABC's Lisa Stark reported on their testimony: "They were not sleeping; they were not dozing; they were not having an argument; but they were distracted." Trying to make the crew's behavior more consequential than it was, NBC's Tom Costello invoked the 72 people who died in a jetliner crash in North Carolina because of a distracted cockpit crew. Sure enough, it was a horrible tale--but it happened in 1974 to the now-defunct Eastern Airlines and the pilots were discussing the merits of the pardon of Richard Nixon.
ABNORMAL PARANORMAL So much for the free publicity NBC's Miguel Almaguer lavished on the movie Amelia on Friday. ABC's Brian Rooney reported that the $100m production made just $4m at the box office over the weekend. Rooney covered the $64m in grosses for Paranormal Activity instead. "It was shot with no-name actors in one house in one week with a handheld camera and cost $15K…made for about the cost of a Hollywood lunch."
The drug raid was not a direct part of the counterinsurgency against Taliban guerrillas, according to Afghan-based correspondents. NBC's Richard Engel identified the target as "a suspected drugs and weapons trafficker who supplies militants, including the Taliban." CBS' Mandy Clark referred to them merely as "drug smugglers." ABC's Jim Sciutto called it an attack "on a compound of an insurgent leader involved in trafficking opium." Sciutto stated that targeting the opium trade is a new strategy for the United States.
It was up to CBS' Lara Logan (at the tail of the Clark videostream) back in the New York City studio to tie the raid directly to the war itself. She questioned the Pentagon's account that the Chinook crash was an accident: "The Taliban commander of that region is saying very clearly that as the helicopter was taking off--when it was still flying low and it was still slow--that is when they hit from the righthand side with heavy machine gun fire and a rocket propelled grenade."
CBS' Clark tied the Chinook crash to a midair collision of a pair of USMC helicopters, a UH-1 Huey and a Cobra gunship--in the southern Helmand Province that killed four on board. "Afghanistan is a punishing environment for helicopters. This month alone the USArmy says it has lost six other helicopters, five to crashes, one to enemy fire."
David Rohde, a reporter for The New York Times, has been working the interview circuit since he published his account of his escape after being held hostage for seven months. Rohde was kidnapped in Afghanistan and kept prisoner across the Pakistani border in Waziristan. His latest stop for a q-&-a was with NBC's Ann Curry. He disabused her of the notion that the so-called tribal areas consisted of rudimentary mountain caves. "I was shocked at the strength of the Taliban control of the Pakistani tribal areas, It is a fully functional government. There were road crews repairing roads. There were police patroling streets." Yet when he escaped all he had to do to find freedom was walk down the road to a Pakistani military base nearby.
Rounding out the day's Afghanistan coverage, both NBC's Savannah Guthrie and CBS' David Martin covered a speech by Barack Obama in which he promised servicemen that he would not be rushed into a decision to send them off to war. CBS' Martin pointed out that "the argument over troops has taken a back seat to the drama of Afghanistan's disputed presidential election." The runoff vote is scheduled for November 7th "but there is no guarantee it will produce the result the Obama Administration needs most--a legitimate Afghan government."
ABC MARKS THE SPOT "Buildings shredded as far as the eyes can see…glass…blood-splattered clothing…burned rubber." That was Miguel Marquez' eyewitness account on ABC of the carnage left by a pair of bus bombs in downtown Baghdad that killed more than 150 people, including two dozen children in a daycare center. "This is the hole created by the explosion. It goes down 25 feet," Marquez showed us. Tom Aspell narrated images of destruction from NBC's bureau in London. He reckoned this was the worst attack in Baghdad in two years. CBS mentioned the bombs merely in passing.
OPT-OUT OPTION All three newscasts covered the day's big political news, the decision by Majority Leader Harry Reid to seek a vote in the Senate on a version of the public option as part of its healthcare bill. Reid suggested a federal plan that would allow individual states to choose not to participate, a so-called opt-out. NBC's Kelly O'Donnell declared that for Democratic liberals "this kind of public option--or any kind of public option--is considered a victory." CBS' Nancy Cordes treated Reid's decision as a big deal, calling the opt-out "the cornerstone of the new Senate healthcare reform bill."
For months the public option had been "declared dead" in the Senate, CBS' Cordes reflected. "Liberal Democrats just kept coming up with different versions until they hit on one that, it seems, those three or four moderate holdouts might be able to live with." By contrast, George Stephanopoulos speculated on ABC that Reid "still may not have the votes to get this to the Senate floor." He pointed to three Democrats--Blanche Lincoln, Mary Landrieu, Ben Nelson--and one Republican who may now defect. "The President is very skeptical of this move," he commented. It "almost certainly" will not be supported by Olympia Snowe, hitherto the White House's lone Republican ally in its Senate coalition.
YET MORE ABOUT THE ‘FLU The influenza outbreak continues to get overcovered. ABC and NBC both filed an update on the shortage of the vaccine against the H1N1 swine strain. NBC's Robert Bazell found "huge frustration about getting the vaccine" while ABC's John McKenzie reported that "tempers have flared as people waited for hours only to be turned away." McKenzie's A Closer Look had the advantage of the dynamic wheel format, in which we whiz round the country checking on the vaccine's status through the eyes of ABC's correspondents: Clayton Sandell in Colorado, Barbara Pinto in Missouri, Steve Osunsami in Florida plus online research into how to find shots in five other states. The public health operations in Mississippi and Alabama were rated worst.
CBS' substitute anchor Harry Smith was joined by his Early Show colleague Jennifer Ashton, a practicing gynecologist. Her report on the dangers facing pregnant women who are infected by the H1N1 virus evinced their morning roots. Ashton went for the emotional human interest angle rather than the public policy question. She told us the tale of Aubrey Opdyke, who was six months pregnant when she was infected. "She spent five weeks in a drug-induced coma suffering collapsed lungs, kidney failure and seizures."
The Early Show angle is to focus on her husband Brian, who had to make "a life and death decision" to authorize a premature Caesarian section to save his wife's life. An Evening News angle would have been to examine whether H1N1 is leading to an increase in late-term abortions, including the often-denounced so-called partial birth method, to save the lives of pregnant women. Ashton did not even mention the word abortion. Perhaps speaking the A-word, instead of restricting herself to the C-section, would have made her story seem less heartwrenching. By the way, the Opdyke daughter, untimely ripped from her mother's womb, survived for seven minutes.
SAVE THE SMELT CBS aired an interesting environmental feature from southern California. Sandra Hughes told us about the combination of a three-year drought and strict environmental laws that have limited the use of irrigation pumps in the San Joaquin Valley. The pumps endanger a species of fish called the delta smelt; it gets mangled when the water churns too fast. In Los Angeles, water conservation means limits on lawns; in the valley, it means 500,000 acres of unplanted farmland; fewer fruits, nuts and vegetables; and up to 40% unemployment in some produce producing towns.
IT WAS HARDLY WATERGATE "The co-pilot called it an innocuous mistake," reported CBS' Bob Orr. And quite right he is too. Granted, the Northwest Airlines flight did land an hour late. Granted, it burned 150 miles worth of extra fuel. Granted, the cockpit crew violated procedure by ignoring radio calls and e-mail alerts. Still. No harm, no foul.
The network newscasts could not let go. All three assigned a correspondent to the investigation by the National Transportation Safety Board at which both pilots testified that they were distracted by a study of the new flight schedules imposed after Delta took over Northwest. CBS' Orr depicted them with "their headsets off and their noses buried in laptop computers." ABC's Lisa Stark reported on their testimony: "They were not sleeping; they were not dozing; they were not having an argument; but they were distracted." Trying to make the crew's behavior more consequential than it was, NBC's Tom Costello invoked the 72 people who died in a jetliner crash in North Carolina because of a distracted cockpit crew. Sure enough, it was a horrible tale--but it happened in 1974 to the now-defunct Eastern Airlines and the pilots were discussing the merits of the pardon of Richard Nixon.
ABNORMAL PARANORMAL So much for the free publicity NBC's Miguel Almaguer lavished on the movie Amelia on Friday. ABC's Brian Rooney reported that the $100m production made just $4m at the box office over the weekend. Rooney covered the $64m in grosses for Paranormal Activity instead. "It was shot with no-name actors in one house in one week with a handheld camera and cost $15K…made for about the cost of a Hollywood lunch."
