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TYNDALL HEADLINE: HIGHLIGHTS FROM OCTOBER 29, 2009
A single statistic from the Commerce Department was Story of the Day: 3.5% was the rate at which the Gross Domestic Product grew in the year's third quarter, the economy's first sign of growth since the summer of 2008. The Great Recession may be over. CBS and NBC led with the economy, even though NBC anchor Brian Williams was in Kabul for Day Three of his Afghanistan field trip--he split anchoring chores with David Gregory in Washington DC. ABC led with the cost of war, as Commander-in-Chief Barack Obama made a midnight trip to Dover AFB to salute the return of 18 military coffins.
TYNDALL PICKS FOR OCTOBER 29, 2009: CLICK ON GRID ELEMENTS TO SEARCH FOR MATCHING ITEMS
THE GREAT RECESSION MAY BE OVER A single statistic from the Commerce Department was Story of the Day: 3.5% was the rate at which the Gross Domestic Product grew in the year's third quarter, the economy's first sign of growth since the summer of 2008. The Great Recession may be over. CBS and NBC led with the economy, even though NBC anchor Brian Williams was in Kabul for Day Three of his Afghanistan field trip--he split anchoring chores with David Gregory in Washington DC. ABC led with the cost of war, as Commander-in-Chief Barack Obama made a midnight trip to Dover AFB to salute the return of 18 military coffins.
NBC covered the GDP story from the White House. Savannah Guthrie found the President "hardly triumphant" about the renewed growth and heard his aides "tread carefully…Advisors know the economic indicator that matters most to middle America--jobs." CBS' Anthony Mason had one calculation of the damage of the recession: a loss of 7m jobs. Betsy Stark at ABC had another: 26m unemployed or underemployed.
Both ABC's Stark and CBS' Mason were more ready than the White House itself to credit federal deficit spending with the GDP's expansion. "The $787bn stimulus package may have ignited a recovery," declared CBS' Mason. "The government's fingerprints on this rebound are hard to miss," was how ABC's Stark put it. Both mentioned federal subsidies for automobile purchases--Cash for Clunkers--and for first-time buyers of homes.
Chip Reid, CBS' man at the White House, reminded us that many Republicans do not subscribe to the notion that deficit spending has a stimulative effect: "They do not understand how some stimulus projects will create any jobs." As the Obama Administration prepares to document how jobs were "created or saved" by federal government spending, Reid warned that Congressional Republicans will call the report "a world-class example of government obfuscation." He reminded us that a previous version of the jobs report had been scrutinized by the Associated Press and was found to contain "hundreds of errors."
TAX THAT MAN BEHIND THE TREE Only ABC assigned a correspondent to cover Speaker Nancy Pelosi as she introduced the House of Representative's version of healthcare reform legislation. Jonathan Karl ticked off the key elements--mandatory universal care, a public option to compete with private insurance, cuts in Medicare reimbursement--and corrected Pelosi's estimate that the package would cost less than $90bn a year over the next decade. Karl put it at an annual $105bn instead. NBC's Savannah Guthrie finished her report with healthcare: "The House and Senate bills pay for reform in very different ways. In the Senate bill, the tax on high-end insurance plans cannot pass the House. The House plan to tax high earners cannot pass the Senate."
‘FLU, ‘FLU, ‘FLU CONT’D Yet again all three newscasts filed a feature on the swine strain outbreak of H1N1 influenza. CBS' Eye on Health tied the 'flu to healthcare reform. Mark Strassmann followed up on the two children whose lives had been saved by the intensive care unit of Children's Hospital in Oklahoma City. He introduced us to their fight for life last month; he updated us three weeks ago; and he told us about one death and one homecoming on Wednesday. Now the bills arrive: $1.2m to Medicaid; $900K to an insurance company. "A child who once had severe 'flu might have trouble getting health insurance ever again."
ABC's in-house physician Richard Besser traveled to Philadelphia for A Closer Look at a crowded pediatric hospital emergency room and Robert Bazell on NBC told us about a shortage of the children's syrup-based version of Tamiflu, the antiviral medication. The capsule medicine and the syrup have to mixed by hand. "The FDA today posted the Tamiflu compounding formula on its Website for pharmacists."
SOLEMNITIES ABC's White House correspondent Jake Tapper covered the President's overnight photo-op at Dover AFB. "Sobering," was what Barack Obama called it, as he reflected on his salute of the coffins as they were carried off a military transport. His predecessor George Bush "visited with hundreds of families of fallen soldiers," Tapper reminded us, "but never went to Dover." On CBS, footage of the ceremony was narrated by anchor Katie Couric. She noted "the solemnity of the moment clearly visible on the face of the Commander in Chief." ABC's Tapper reported on the nighttime helicopter ride back to the White House: "Obama thanked his military aide for arranging the trip. No one said a word for the remainder of the 45-minute flight."
WAR COMES TO TOWN NBC's coverage of Afghanistan turned to Kabul, after Wednesday's attack on a downtown guesthouse used by United Nations election monitors. Richard Engel generalized that "for years we have been able to operate as if the war was outside the city and now it has clearly come into the city." It is not only the guerrillas that are switching from rural to urban warfare, Engel pointed out, the US military has made that change too: "The strategy is not to worry about the remote valleys where very few people live" and to focus instead on population centers.
Anchor Brian Williams was given a guided tour of the burned out guesthouse by Christopher Turner, a contractor from Missouri who operates supply convoys for the US military. Turner showed the charred remains of his possessions--"Yes, everything was toast"--and the maids' quarters were he hid, armed with his AK-47. Williams asked Turner for a status report on the war: "It has deteriorated extremely in the last six months…I think we have lost the hearts and minds of the people. I think they have turned against us. I think our task here is very, very difficult, if at all possible."
BURN, BABY, BURN NBC's Adrienne Mong was in Herat in western Afghanistan with chilling videotape. She introduced to the burn unit of a clinic run by French volunteers for teenage girls. Child brides set fire to themselves to escape sexual abuse and forced servitude at the hands of their elder husbands and their in-laws. Mong introduced us to a 17-year-old who died of her burns in her third year of marriage. Of the 51 brides who set themselves on fire and ended up at the clinic in the past six months, only 13 survived. "Her mother-in-law insists it was a kitchen accident."
HILLARY'S BLUNT "A blunt message"--NBC's Andrea Mitchell…"some very blunt talk"--CBS' Wyatt Andrews…"rather blunt and rather remarkable"--ABC's Martha Raddatz. What was it that Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton told local journalists in Lahore during her visit to Pakistan? "al-Qaeda has had a safe haven in Pakistan since 2002 and I find it hard to believe that nobody in your government knows where they are and could not get them if they really wanted to."
CBS' Andrews explained the Secretary's plan as "taking head-on press and public opinion leaders who are accustomed to blaming America." NBC's Mitchell reported that "many Pakistanis were stunned by her directness" while ABC's Raddatz reported on the reaction inside-the-Beltway. "A lot of people in government believe what she said is true," Raddatz reckoned. As for Washington's diplomatic corps, "I think they tried to keep a straight face but I think there were probably a few gasps behind the scenes."
BARACK OBAMA CHANNELS PRINCESS DIANA Speaking of Hillary Rodham Clinton, she was one of the highlights that David Wright picked out from a new behind-the-scenes book on Barack Obama's Presidential campaign. It is election anniversary time. Tuesday ABC aired clips from HBO's Obama documentary By the People. Now ABC's Wright selects highlights from Time's excerpts of The Audacity to Win, the memoir by campaign manager David Plouffe. Plouffe quotes Obama's explanation for his decision not to pick Rodham Clinton as his running mate: "My concern is there would be more than two of us in the relationship."
NBC covered the GDP story from the White House. Savannah Guthrie found the President "hardly triumphant" about the renewed growth and heard his aides "tread carefully…Advisors know the economic indicator that matters most to middle America--jobs." CBS' Anthony Mason had one calculation of the damage of the recession: a loss of 7m jobs. Betsy Stark at ABC had another: 26m unemployed or underemployed.
Both ABC's Stark and CBS' Mason were more ready than the White House itself to credit federal deficit spending with the GDP's expansion. "The $787bn stimulus package may have ignited a recovery," declared CBS' Mason. "The government's fingerprints on this rebound are hard to miss," was how ABC's Stark put it. Both mentioned federal subsidies for automobile purchases--Cash for Clunkers--and for first-time buyers of homes.
Chip Reid, CBS' man at the White House, reminded us that many Republicans do not subscribe to the notion that deficit spending has a stimulative effect: "They do not understand how some stimulus projects will create any jobs." As the Obama Administration prepares to document how jobs were "created or saved" by federal government spending, Reid warned that Congressional Republicans will call the report "a world-class example of government obfuscation." He reminded us that a previous version of the jobs report had been scrutinized by the Associated Press and was found to contain "hundreds of errors."
TAX THAT MAN BEHIND THE TREE Only ABC assigned a correspondent to cover Speaker Nancy Pelosi as she introduced the House of Representative's version of healthcare reform legislation. Jonathan Karl ticked off the key elements--mandatory universal care, a public option to compete with private insurance, cuts in Medicare reimbursement--and corrected Pelosi's estimate that the package would cost less than $90bn a year over the next decade. Karl put it at an annual $105bn instead. NBC's Savannah Guthrie finished her report with healthcare: "The House and Senate bills pay for reform in very different ways. In the Senate bill, the tax on high-end insurance plans cannot pass the House. The House plan to tax high earners cannot pass the Senate."
‘FLU, ‘FLU, ‘FLU CONT’D Yet again all three newscasts filed a feature on the swine strain outbreak of H1N1 influenza. CBS' Eye on Health tied the 'flu to healthcare reform. Mark Strassmann followed up on the two children whose lives had been saved by the intensive care unit of Children's Hospital in Oklahoma City. He introduced us to their fight for life last month; he updated us three weeks ago; and he told us about one death and one homecoming on Wednesday. Now the bills arrive: $1.2m to Medicaid; $900K to an insurance company. "A child who once had severe 'flu might have trouble getting health insurance ever again."
ABC's in-house physician Richard Besser traveled to Philadelphia for A Closer Look at a crowded pediatric hospital emergency room and Robert Bazell on NBC told us about a shortage of the children's syrup-based version of Tamiflu, the antiviral medication. The capsule medicine and the syrup have to mixed by hand. "The FDA today posted the Tamiflu compounding formula on its Website for pharmacists."
SOLEMNITIES ABC's White House correspondent Jake Tapper covered the President's overnight photo-op at Dover AFB. "Sobering," was what Barack Obama called it, as he reflected on his salute of the coffins as they were carried off a military transport. His predecessor George Bush "visited with hundreds of families of fallen soldiers," Tapper reminded us, "but never went to Dover." On CBS, footage of the ceremony was narrated by anchor Katie Couric. She noted "the solemnity of the moment clearly visible on the face of the Commander in Chief." ABC's Tapper reported on the nighttime helicopter ride back to the White House: "Obama thanked his military aide for arranging the trip. No one said a word for the remainder of the 45-minute flight."
WAR COMES TO TOWN NBC's coverage of Afghanistan turned to Kabul, after Wednesday's attack on a downtown guesthouse used by United Nations election monitors. Richard Engel generalized that "for years we have been able to operate as if the war was outside the city and now it has clearly come into the city." It is not only the guerrillas that are switching from rural to urban warfare, Engel pointed out, the US military has made that change too: "The strategy is not to worry about the remote valleys where very few people live" and to focus instead on population centers.
Anchor Brian Williams was given a guided tour of the burned out guesthouse by Christopher Turner, a contractor from Missouri who operates supply convoys for the US military. Turner showed the charred remains of his possessions--"Yes, everything was toast"--and the maids' quarters were he hid, armed with his AK-47. Williams asked Turner for a status report on the war: "It has deteriorated extremely in the last six months…I think we have lost the hearts and minds of the people. I think they have turned against us. I think our task here is very, very difficult, if at all possible."
BURN, BABY, BURN NBC's Adrienne Mong was in Herat in western Afghanistan with chilling videotape. She introduced to the burn unit of a clinic run by French volunteers for teenage girls. Child brides set fire to themselves to escape sexual abuse and forced servitude at the hands of their elder husbands and their in-laws. Mong introduced us to a 17-year-old who died of her burns in her third year of marriage. Of the 51 brides who set themselves on fire and ended up at the clinic in the past six months, only 13 survived. "Her mother-in-law insists it was a kitchen accident."
HILLARY'S BLUNT "A blunt message"--NBC's Andrea Mitchell…"some very blunt talk"--CBS' Wyatt Andrews…"rather blunt and rather remarkable"--ABC's Martha Raddatz. What was it that Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton told local journalists in Lahore during her visit to Pakistan? "al-Qaeda has had a safe haven in Pakistan since 2002 and I find it hard to believe that nobody in your government knows where they are and could not get them if they really wanted to."
CBS' Andrews explained the Secretary's plan as "taking head-on press and public opinion leaders who are accustomed to blaming America." NBC's Mitchell reported that "many Pakistanis were stunned by her directness" while ABC's Raddatz reported on the reaction inside-the-Beltway. "A lot of people in government believe what she said is true," Raddatz reckoned. As for Washington's diplomatic corps, "I think they tried to keep a straight face but I think there were probably a few gasps behind the scenes."
BARACK OBAMA CHANNELS PRINCESS DIANA Speaking of Hillary Rodham Clinton, she was one of the highlights that David Wright picked out from a new behind-the-scenes book on Barack Obama's Presidential campaign. It is election anniversary time. Tuesday ABC aired clips from HBO's Obama documentary By the People. Now ABC's Wright selects highlights from Time's excerpts of The Audacity to Win, the memoir by campaign manager David Plouffe. Plouffe quotes Obama's explanation for his decision not to pick Rodham Clinton as his running mate: "My concern is there would be more than two of us in the relationship."
