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TYNDALL HEADLINE: HIGHLIGHTS FROM NOVEMBER 17, 2009
The fallout from Monday's mammogram story dominated the headlines. All three networks had their in-house physicians do a house fall to answer frequently asked questions about screening for breast cancer. The Preventive Services Taskforce recommended that fewer fortysomething women have mammograms and that women older than 50 have them less frequently. The Story of the Day was the reaction to those guidelines. NBC and ABC chose breast screening for their lead, with NBC anchoring on the road in Phoenix. CBS decided to kick off with Barack Obama's summit with Hu Jintao in Beijing instead.
TYNDALL PICKS FOR NOVEMBER 17, 2009: CLICK ON GRID ELEMENTS TO SEARCH FOR MATCHING ITEMS
MAMMOGRAM BACKLASH The fallout from Monday's mammogram story dominated the headlines. All three networks had their in-house physicians do a house fall to answer frequently asked questions about screening for breast cancer. The Preventive Services Taskforce recommended that fewer fortysomething women have mammograms and that women older than 50 have them less frequently. The Story of the Day was the reaction to those guidelines. NBC and ABC chose breast screening for their lead, with NBC anchoring on the road in Phoenix. CBS decided to kick off with Barack Obama's summit with Hu Jintao in Beijing instead.
NBC's in-house physician Nancy Snyderman tended to endorse the taskforce's recommendation to scale back mammography. ABC's Dr Timothy Johnson tended to reject it. CBS brought in its pair of doctors: Jon LaPook was pro; Jennifer Ashton was con. "My patients are so angry about this. They feel almost personally attacked. They are afraid. They do think it is about cost and money…I share their frustrations."
There are two ways of seeing the guidelines as being about "cost and money," as Dr Ashton put it. ABC's John McKenzie represented it one way: "The concern is insurance companies will soon use the new guidelines to start limiting what they will cover." CBS' Dr LaPook spelled out how wasteful the current system is: 90% of abnormal mammograms turn out not to be cancer; this leads to 1.6m women each year undergoing biopsies "the vast majority turning out to be false alarms;" these errors occur disproportionately in women who are under 50; lowering the starting age for mammography from 50 to 40 raised the error rate by 60%.
Dr LaPook on CBS also pointed out that even when a mammogram happens to discover a tumor, it is not certain that it saved that woman's life. Some breast cancers grow so slowly that early detection is not necessary; other breast cancers spread so quickly that even early detection is too late. Mammography saves lives only when the tumor falls in between.
ABC's McKenzie checked in with the American Cancer Society, the Mayo Clinic and the MD Anderson Cancer Center and found "outright revolt." All three have rejected the new screening guidelines. "I would recommend staying with the current guidelines while we have an open debate," Dr Johnson chimed in on ABC. On NBC, Dr Snyderman reminded us that "anecdotes and this big body of science do not necessarily jibe." She predicted that younger doctors will prescribe fewer mammograms while those "who are entrenched…will be a little slower to pick up on these recommendations."
GETTING FAT Both CBS News and ABC News published opinion polls that included questions on healthcare reform. CBS anchor Katie Couric pointed to 61% support for offering government coverage--the so-called public option--to those who are uninsured. George Stephanopoulos, anchor of ABC's This Week noted evenly divided opinion on the proposed legislation: "Since the President's speech back in September those numbers just have not moved." ABC, too, found support for the public option, as well as mandates on employers to cover their workers. "Those are the provisions that are in the most trouble in the Senate."
CBS' Jeff Glor picked up on a study by Emory University that predicted trends in obesity over the next decade. It forecast that the majority of the population of six states--Mississippi, Maryland, Ohio, Kentucky, South Dakota, Oklahoma--will be obese by 2018. Nationwide, treating obesity will account for 21% of the nation's entire healthcare spending.
GENTLE RIGHTS The meeting between the leaders of the United States of America and the People's Republic of China was so unimpressive in ABC's eyes that it did not even assign its White House correspondent to cover it. CBS' Chip Reid reported on "hours of meetings where little progress was made" while NBC's Savannah Guthrie noted that "despite a lot of talk about a new era of cooperation it is clear this will take time." The agenda facing Hu Jintao and Barack Obama included trade and human rights, which were mentioned by both Guthrie and Reid. "Obama gently nudged his hosts on human rights," was how NBC's Guthrie put it. "The President raised the issue of human rights but only gently," according to CBS' Reid. NBC's Guthrie also touched on climate change and nuclear proliferation.
TRADE, DEBT, STIMULUS ABC filed A Closer Look explainer on the $1.4tr that China holds in American debt. Robert Krulwich used his hallmark animated cartoons (here are similar animated Krulwich explainers on deflation, the credit crunch, the housing bubble and faulty stock investments) to demonstrate why Beijing does not "take the profits that China has made in America and sell US stocks and bonds and dollars and turn them into Chinese money so China can fix some of the problems they have got at home." NBC's Savannah Guthrie noted that the federal debt that China holds is "money largely used to fund stimulus efforts" to reverse the recession here.
ABC's Jonathan Karl followed up on Monday's expose of errors in recovery.gov, the White House's Website documenting jobs created--layoffs prevented--thanks to that deficit spending. Monday he told us about hiring in non-existent Congressional districts. Now Karl documents exaggerations: the sale of nine pairs of work boots to the Army Corps of Engineers was documented as nine jobs; a pay raise for 317 Head Start workers was counted as 317 extra jobs. CBS' Chip Reid covered similar fudges last month, with a hat tip to the Associated Press.
Back in Beijing, CBS' Celia Hatton offered glimmers of hope for the United States' trade deficit with China. "Older generations still save half their paychecks but that trend is reversing as a nation of young shopaholics is born." Hatton hinted that many of young China's favorite brands are American: "She drives a Buick, chats on an iPhone, eats at McDonalds, wears Nikes," was her profile of Zhao Mengyao, a credit card wielding twentysomething.
COSTLY DISCOUNTS & LUCRATIVE NON-PROFITS Watch out for online travel, movie and flower delivery retailers, NBC's Lisa Myers warned, such as Expedia, Orbitz, Priceline, Fandango and FTD. They often offer a $10 discount coupon at the end of each credit card purchase. Applying for the coupon enrolls you in a membership club run by a third party. The site provides the club with your credit card number; the club bills you monthly for a membership fee; it kicks back a portion of that fee to the originating site. Myers used Senate hearings as her news hook to describe how these schemes work.
On CBS, Sharyl Attkisson picked up on a study by Charity Navigator for her Follow the Money report. She contrasted trends for executives at corporations and philanthropies. Bosses at businesses are averaging a 9% pay cut during the recession; at not-for-profits their pay has increased by 6%, even as overall charitable donations have declined 2%. "IRS rules forbid excessive compensation but that is subjective and the tax man is not known for going after charities."
Attkisson singled out five worst offenders: the Wildlife Conservation Society, Inspirational Networks, the Boy Scouts of America, the Association of Firefighters and Paramedics, the Committee for Missing Children.
HIGH DESERT The Green is Universal western swing by NBC anchor Brian Williams continued. Monday Lee Cowan kicked off NBC's weeklong Our Planet series by looking for energy saving flat screen television sets. Now Anne Thompson travels to the drought-parched high desert of Arizona to show how to conserve water: showers can be retrofitted with a pause button; dirty laundry water redirected to orchards; yards planted with native plant species. In the past decade, Thompson told us, the city of Flagstaff has cut its water consumption even as its population has grown--21% more people, 37% less H2O.
PALIN’S ROGUE WAY WITH WORDS Going Rogue by Sarah Palin was examined Monday by NBC's Andrea Mitchell and CBS' Jeff Greenfield. Now ABC offers highlights of Barbara Walters' 20/20 sitdown with the onetime Vice-Presidential candidate. Walters asked her about the West Bank and Afghanistan and Russia and unemployment. Palin opined that offering the uninsured healthcare coverage and preventing global warming were counterproductive: "Those are back asswards ways of trying to fix the economy." "You do have a way with words." "I call it like I see it."
NBC's in-house physician Nancy Snyderman tended to endorse the taskforce's recommendation to scale back mammography. ABC's Dr Timothy Johnson tended to reject it. CBS brought in its pair of doctors: Jon LaPook was pro; Jennifer Ashton was con. "My patients are so angry about this. They feel almost personally attacked. They are afraid. They do think it is about cost and money…I share their frustrations."
There are two ways of seeing the guidelines as being about "cost and money," as Dr Ashton put it. ABC's John McKenzie represented it one way: "The concern is insurance companies will soon use the new guidelines to start limiting what they will cover." CBS' Dr LaPook spelled out how wasteful the current system is: 90% of abnormal mammograms turn out not to be cancer; this leads to 1.6m women each year undergoing biopsies "the vast majority turning out to be false alarms;" these errors occur disproportionately in women who are under 50; lowering the starting age for mammography from 50 to 40 raised the error rate by 60%.
Dr LaPook on CBS also pointed out that even when a mammogram happens to discover a tumor, it is not certain that it saved that woman's life. Some breast cancers grow so slowly that early detection is not necessary; other breast cancers spread so quickly that even early detection is too late. Mammography saves lives only when the tumor falls in between.
ABC's McKenzie checked in with the American Cancer Society, the Mayo Clinic and the MD Anderson Cancer Center and found "outright revolt." All three have rejected the new screening guidelines. "I would recommend staying with the current guidelines while we have an open debate," Dr Johnson chimed in on ABC. On NBC, Dr Snyderman reminded us that "anecdotes and this big body of science do not necessarily jibe." She predicted that younger doctors will prescribe fewer mammograms while those "who are entrenched…will be a little slower to pick up on these recommendations."
GETTING FAT Both CBS News and ABC News published opinion polls that included questions on healthcare reform. CBS anchor Katie Couric pointed to 61% support for offering government coverage--the so-called public option--to those who are uninsured. George Stephanopoulos, anchor of ABC's This Week noted evenly divided opinion on the proposed legislation: "Since the President's speech back in September those numbers just have not moved." ABC, too, found support for the public option, as well as mandates on employers to cover their workers. "Those are the provisions that are in the most trouble in the Senate."
CBS' Jeff Glor picked up on a study by Emory University that predicted trends in obesity over the next decade. It forecast that the majority of the population of six states--Mississippi, Maryland, Ohio, Kentucky, South Dakota, Oklahoma--will be obese by 2018. Nationwide, treating obesity will account for 21% of the nation's entire healthcare spending.
GENTLE RIGHTS The meeting between the leaders of the United States of America and the People's Republic of China was so unimpressive in ABC's eyes that it did not even assign its White House correspondent to cover it. CBS' Chip Reid reported on "hours of meetings where little progress was made" while NBC's Savannah Guthrie noted that "despite a lot of talk about a new era of cooperation it is clear this will take time." The agenda facing Hu Jintao and Barack Obama included trade and human rights, which were mentioned by both Guthrie and Reid. "Obama gently nudged his hosts on human rights," was how NBC's Guthrie put it. "The President raised the issue of human rights but only gently," according to CBS' Reid. NBC's Guthrie also touched on climate change and nuclear proliferation.
TRADE, DEBT, STIMULUS ABC filed A Closer Look explainer on the $1.4tr that China holds in American debt. Robert Krulwich used his hallmark animated cartoons (here are similar animated Krulwich explainers on deflation, the credit crunch, the housing bubble and faulty stock investments) to demonstrate why Beijing does not "take the profits that China has made in America and sell US stocks and bonds and dollars and turn them into Chinese money so China can fix some of the problems they have got at home." NBC's Savannah Guthrie noted that the federal debt that China holds is "money largely used to fund stimulus efforts" to reverse the recession here.
ABC's Jonathan Karl followed up on Monday's expose of errors in recovery.gov, the White House's Website documenting jobs created--layoffs prevented--thanks to that deficit spending. Monday he told us about hiring in non-existent Congressional districts. Now Karl documents exaggerations: the sale of nine pairs of work boots to the Army Corps of Engineers was documented as nine jobs; a pay raise for 317 Head Start workers was counted as 317 extra jobs. CBS' Chip Reid covered similar fudges last month, with a hat tip to the Associated Press.
Back in Beijing, CBS' Celia Hatton offered glimmers of hope for the United States' trade deficit with China. "Older generations still save half their paychecks but that trend is reversing as a nation of young shopaholics is born." Hatton hinted that many of young China's favorite brands are American: "She drives a Buick, chats on an iPhone, eats at McDonalds, wears Nikes," was her profile of Zhao Mengyao, a credit card wielding twentysomething.
COSTLY DISCOUNTS & LUCRATIVE NON-PROFITS Watch out for online travel, movie and flower delivery retailers, NBC's Lisa Myers warned, such as Expedia, Orbitz, Priceline, Fandango and FTD. They often offer a $10 discount coupon at the end of each credit card purchase. Applying for the coupon enrolls you in a membership club run by a third party. The site provides the club with your credit card number; the club bills you monthly for a membership fee; it kicks back a portion of that fee to the originating site. Myers used Senate hearings as her news hook to describe how these schemes work.
On CBS, Sharyl Attkisson picked up on a study by Charity Navigator for her Follow the Money report. She contrasted trends for executives at corporations and philanthropies. Bosses at businesses are averaging a 9% pay cut during the recession; at not-for-profits their pay has increased by 6%, even as overall charitable donations have declined 2%. "IRS rules forbid excessive compensation but that is subjective and the tax man is not known for going after charities."
Attkisson singled out five worst offenders: the Wildlife Conservation Society, Inspirational Networks, the Boy Scouts of America, the Association of Firefighters and Paramedics, the Committee for Missing Children.
HIGH DESERT The Green is Universal western swing by NBC anchor Brian Williams continued. Monday Lee Cowan kicked off NBC's weeklong Our Planet series by looking for energy saving flat screen television sets. Now Anne Thompson travels to the drought-parched high desert of Arizona to show how to conserve water: showers can be retrofitted with a pause button; dirty laundry water redirected to orchards; yards planted with native plant species. In the past decade, Thompson told us, the city of Flagstaff has cut its water consumption even as its population has grown--21% more people, 37% less H2O.
PALIN’S ROGUE WAY WITH WORDS Going Rogue by Sarah Palin was examined Monday by NBC's Andrea Mitchell and CBS' Jeff Greenfield. Now ABC offers highlights of Barbara Walters' 20/20 sitdown with the onetime Vice-Presidential candidate. Walters asked her about the West Bank and Afghanistan and Russia and unemployment. Palin opined that offering the uninsured healthcare coverage and preventing global warming were counterproductive: "Those are back asswards ways of trying to fix the economy." "You do have a way with words." "I call it like I see it."
