 |           |
TYNDALL HEADLINE: HIGHLIGHTS FROM NOVEMBER 11, 2009
The aftermath of the shooting spree at Fort Hood was Story of the Day again but last week's carnage is starting to show diminishing returns (14 min v 23 Tuesday, 18 Monday, 44 Friday, 41 Thursday). For the first time since it happened, Fort Hood failed to lead all three newscasts. NBC stuck with the story, as the townsfolk of Killeen held a parade in honor of the base in central Texas. CBS chose Veterans Day observances at Arlington Cemetery. ABC picked a non-military story--the delay in a transAtlantic United Airlines flight after the pilot was removed on suspicion of drunkenness.
TYNDALL PICKS FOR NOVEMBER 11, 2009: CLICK ON GRID ELEMENTS TO SEARCH FOR MATCHING ITEMS
OPRAH LANDS THE DAY’S FORT HOOD SCOOP The aftermath of the shooting spree at Fort Hood was Story of the Day again but last week's carnage is starting to show diminishing returns (14 min v 23 Tuesday, 18 Monday, 44 Friday, 41 Thursday). For the first time since it happened, Fort Hood failed to lead all three newscasts. NBC stuck with the story, as the townsfolk of Killeen held a parade in honor of the base in central Texas. CBS chose Veterans Day observances at Arlington Cemetery. ABC picked a non-military story--the delay in a transAtlantic United Airlines flight after the pilot was removed on suspicion of drunkenness.
Oprah, TV's daytime talkshow, had the Fort Hood scoop as Oprah Winfrey landed a remote interview with the civilian police officers credited with putting a stop to Nidal Hasan, the major accused of being the gunman. Last Friday, ABC designated Kimberly Munley as its Person of the Week, giving her sole credit for halting the massacre. Oprah had her fellow sergeant Mark Todd join Munley at her hospital bedside. Their version was that Munley fired on Hasan first but was wounded; Todd shot second, disabling the gunman. Both ABC's Bob Woodruff and CBS' Bob Teague played clips from Winfrey's q-&-a. Presumably because of rights issues, neither package is posted online as a videostream. CBS' Teague told us that before the police arrived, unarmed soldiers tried to protect themselves by throwing tables and chairs at the gunman.
NBC's Mark Potter, who showed us the Veterans Day parade in which 85 different groups marched through Killeen's sun-drenched downtown, also told us about Sgt Munley's appearance on Oprah: "She says that after being shot she struggled to remain conscious and, important for investigators, says she remembers everything about the incident."
MORE ON THE MAJOR All three newscasts continued their background checks on Fort Hood suspect Nidal Hasan, the psychiatrist turned gunman. NBC's Pete Williams picked up on a National Public Radio report that Hasan's colleagues at Walter Reed Army Medical Center "has serious doubts about his mental stability" yet they "never followed through by filing any formal complaints" so army brass was unaware that the major was a potential danger. CBS' David Martin reported that other Walter Reed doctors found him "weird and had such a low opinion of him as a psychiatrist that they refused to refer other patients to him."
ABC's Pierre Thomas pointed out that Hasan bought his handguns legally, from a store in Killeen, and that the FBI knew of the purchases because of the required background check. Yet even though Hasan's name was also in the files of the Joint Terrorism Taskforce, which was monitoring his e-mail correspondence with "a radical imam suspected of ties to al-Qaeda" in Yemen, the two pieces of data were never connected: "Federal law forbids them from widely sharing--even to police--information about legal gun purchases," Thomas' "senior law enforcement" sources explained to him.
Hasan lived sparsely in a $350-a-month apartment at Fort Hood with "few worldly possessions," CBS' Martin observed. His psychiatrist's annual salary was $92,000 plus a monthly housing allowance of $1,100 and he had no family dependents. Yet "he was living like a private." Martin wondered where his money went: "Members of the mosque where he worshipped said he was a very generous man who helped others pay their utility bills."
CURAHEE Veterans Day saw Barack Obama lay the traditional Presidential wreath at the Tomb of the Unknowns at Arlington Cemetery. He then broke with tradition, CBS anchor Katie Couric narrated, by inspecting the tombs in the cemetery's Section 60, the burial ground for the war dead of Iraq and Afghanistan. ABC assigned David Wright for A Closer Look at the Commander-in-Chief's assertion during Tuesday's memorial at Fort Hood that "this generation has more than proved itself the equal of those who have come before." Wright wondered whether World War II's Greatest Generation would agree. He went to the DC Mall for some vox pop and found no gainsayers.
On this Veterans Day, CBS' David Martin did double duty from the Pentagon. His news story on Fort Hood at the top of the newscast was followed by a closing feature on Brian Brennan, a legless army lieutenant whom Martin first profiled in May. Back then he told us about the war cry Curahee invoked at Brennan's bedside by David Petraeus. The sound of the word from the general's lips stirred the young officer out of an 18-month unresponsive coma: "His stumps are banging up and down on the sheets. His head is moving around and very clearly responding to his unit's nickname." Now the general and the Afghanistan veteran go jogging together, Brennan running on metal legs. Martin caught Petraeus' mock resentment that the lieutenant does not have to stretch out his calves first.
FLYING TOO HIGH WITH SOME GUY IN THE SKY The Heathrow Airport pilot who may have been drinking "was turned in by a fellow crew member," ABC's David Muir told us. He hardly needed to down anything to get into trouble: in Britain pilots are flying over the limit with a 0.02 blood/alcohol level, "about a half glass of beer." FAA rules are nicknamed "bottle to throttle," NBC's Tom Costello told us, for the dry eight hours required before climbing into the cockpit. Both Muir and Costello offered free publicity to Flying Drunk, the memoir by Joseph Balzer. He was imprisoned for drinking behind the joystick in 1990. Balzer is now sober and has regained his pilot's license.
CBS' Nancy Cordes tried to make a general story out of the rare event. She yoked this rare United Airlines breathalyzer with the Northwest Airlines pilots who flew beyond Minneapolis last month and a Delta Airlines jetliner that landed on a taxiway instead of a runway to create "a series of embarrassing incidents" for the piloting profession. She cited as a possible cause the strain and stress from a series of slashing cuts to salary and benefits over the past eight years.
BUYER’S REMORSE Follow the Money, CBS' investigative series on the mother's milk of politics, often deals with small sums in the federal scheme of things. Sharyl Attkisson is more interested in ethical principles than in the number of zeroes are the principal
So she gives Steve Buyer, the Republican Congressman from Indiana, a hard time for the $800,000 in charity fundraising he has drummed up from corporations and trade associations, including seed money from Big Pharma and support from RJ Reynolds: "Consider that he sits on committees that oversee drugs, tobacco and telecommunications." The charity in question is called the Frontier Foundation. It was organized in 2003 to disburse college scholarships, yet has so far "has not spent a single penny." Mused Attkisson: "It can be difficult to know where Buyer's reelection campaign ends and his Frontier Foundation begins." The campaign and the charity had a single office and were run by the same person.
As soon as the foundation amasses a self-sustaining $1m, it will start awarding scholarships, Buyer assured Attkisson.
MY GRANNY WAS AWESOME The aging demographics of the nightly newscast audience are such that there are likely to be more grandparents than parents watching. So ABC's decision to assign John Berman to publicize Eliot Glazer's popular new Website of snapshots My Parents Were Awesome was doubling flattering to its viewers. First, Berman assured them that young folks really understand that their elders were cool and funloving once upon a time; second, Berman fudged his viewers' ages, implying that it is their own children who are still cool and funloving childless young adults--rather than their grandchildren.
Oprah, TV's daytime talkshow, had the Fort Hood scoop as Oprah Winfrey landed a remote interview with the civilian police officers credited with putting a stop to Nidal Hasan, the major accused of being the gunman. Last Friday, ABC designated Kimberly Munley as its Person of the Week, giving her sole credit for halting the massacre. Oprah had her fellow sergeant Mark Todd join Munley at her hospital bedside. Their version was that Munley fired on Hasan first but was wounded; Todd shot second, disabling the gunman. Both ABC's Bob Woodruff and CBS' Bob Teague played clips from Winfrey's q-&-a. Presumably because of rights issues, neither package is posted online as a videostream. CBS' Teague told us that before the police arrived, unarmed soldiers tried to protect themselves by throwing tables and chairs at the gunman.
NBC's Mark Potter, who showed us the Veterans Day parade in which 85 different groups marched through Killeen's sun-drenched downtown, also told us about Sgt Munley's appearance on Oprah: "She says that after being shot she struggled to remain conscious and, important for investigators, says she remembers everything about the incident."
MORE ON THE MAJOR All three newscasts continued their background checks on Fort Hood suspect Nidal Hasan, the psychiatrist turned gunman. NBC's Pete Williams picked up on a National Public Radio report that Hasan's colleagues at Walter Reed Army Medical Center "has serious doubts about his mental stability" yet they "never followed through by filing any formal complaints" so army brass was unaware that the major was a potential danger. CBS' David Martin reported that other Walter Reed doctors found him "weird and had such a low opinion of him as a psychiatrist that they refused to refer other patients to him."
ABC's Pierre Thomas pointed out that Hasan bought his handguns legally, from a store in Killeen, and that the FBI knew of the purchases because of the required background check. Yet even though Hasan's name was also in the files of the Joint Terrorism Taskforce, which was monitoring his e-mail correspondence with "a radical imam suspected of ties to al-Qaeda" in Yemen, the two pieces of data were never connected: "Federal law forbids them from widely sharing--even to police--information about legal gun purchases," Thomas' "senior law enforcement" sources explained to him.
Hasan lived sparsely in a $350-a-month apartment at Fort Hood with "few worldly possessions," CBS' Martin observed. His psychiatrist's annual salary was $92,000 plus a monthly housing allowance of $1,100 and he had no family dependents. Yet "he was living like a private." Martin wondered where his money went: "Members of the mosque where he worshipped said he was a very generous man who helped others pay their utility bills."
CURAHEE Veterans Day saw Barack Obama lay the traditional Presidential wreath at the Tomb of the Unknowns at Arlington Cemetery. He then broke with tradition, CBS anchor Katie Couric narrated, by inspecting the tombs in the cemetery's Section 60, the burial ground for the war dead of Iraq and Afghanistan. ABC assigned David Wright for A Closer Look at the Commander-in-Chief's assertion during Tuesday's memorial at Fort Hood that "this generation has more than proved itself the equal of those who have come before." Wright wondered whether World War II's Greatest Generation would agree. He went to the DC Mall for some vox pop and found no gainsayers.
On this Veterans Day, CBS' David Martin did double duty from the Pentagon. His news story on Fort Hood at the top of the newscast was followed by a closing feature on Brian Brennan, a legless army lieutenant whom Martin first profiled in May. Back then he told us about the war cry Curahee invoked at Brennan's bedside by David Petraeus. The sound of the word from the general's lips stirred the young officer out of an 18-month unresponsive coma: "His stumps are banging up and down on the sheets. His head is moving around and very clearly responding to his unit's nickname." Now the general and the Afghanistan veteran go jogging together, Brennan running on metal legs. Martin caught Petraeus' mock resentment that the lieutenant does not have to stretch out his calves first.
FLYING TOO HIGH WITH SOME GUY IN THE SKY The Heathrow Airport pilot who may have been drinking "was turned in by a fellow crew member," ABC's David Muir told us. He hardly needed to down anything to get into trouble: in Britain pilots are flying over the limit with a 0.02 blood/alcohol level, "about a half glass of beer." FAA rules are nicknamed "bottle to throttle," NBC's Tom Costello told us, for the dry eight hours required before climbing into the cockpit. Both Muir and Costello offered free publicity to Flying Drunk, the memoir by Joseph Balzer. He was imprisoned for drinking behind the joystick in 1990. Balzer is now sober and has regained his pilot's license.
CBS' Nancy Cordes tried to make a general story out of the rare event. She yoked this rare United Airlines breathalyzer with the Northwest Airlines pilots who flew beyond Minneapolis last month and a Delta Airlines jetliner that landed on a taxiway instead of a runway to create "a series of embarrassing incidents" for the piloting profession. She cited as a possible cause the strain and stress from a series of slashing cuts to salary and benefits over the past eight years.
BUYER’S REMORSE Follow the Money, CBS' investigative series on the mother's milk of politics, often deals with small sums in the federal scheme of things. Sharyl Attkisson is more interested in ethical principles than in the number of zeroes are the principal
So she gives Steve Buyer, the Republican Congressman from Indiana, a hard time for the $800,000 in charity fundraising he has drummed up from corporations and trade associations, including seed money from Big Pharma and support from RJ Reynolds: "Consider that he sits on committees that oversee drugs, tobacco and telecommunications." The charity in question is called the Frontier Foundation. It was organized in 2003 to disburse college scholarships, yet has so far "has not spent a single penny." Mused Attkisson: "It can be difficult to know where Buyer's reelection campaign ends and his Frontier Foundation begins." The campaign and the charity had a single office and were run by the same person.
As soon as the foundation amasses a self-sustaining $1m, it will start awarding scholarships, Buyer assured Attkisson.
MY GRANNY WAS AWESOME The aging demographics of the nightly newscast audience are such that there are likely to be more grandparents than parents watching. So ABC's decision to assign John Berman to publicize Eliot Glazer's popular new Website of snapshots My Parents Were Awesome was doubling flattering to its viewers. First, Berman assured them that young folks really understand that their elders were cool and funloving once upon a time; second, Berman fudged his viewers' ages, implying that it is their own children who are still cool and funloving childless young adults--rather than their grandchildren.
