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TYNDALL HEADLINE: HIGHLIGHTS FROM NOVEMBER 30, 2009
An assorted trio of stories attracted the attention of all three newscasts. All three joined in the celebrity fun as tabloid rumors swirled around a taciturn Tiger Woods. All three national newscasts covered a local crime story from the Tacoma suburbs, where a quartet of off-duty police officers was murdered at a coffee shop table. All three previewed President Barack Obama's foreign policy speech on the war in Afghanistan with the news that the Commander in Chief had already given marching orders to 30,000 additional troops. All three newscasts chose to lead with Afghanistan and it was Story of the Day by a narrow margin.
TYNDALL PICKS FOR NOVEMBER 30, 2009: CLICK ON GRID ELEMENTS TO SEARCH FOR MATCHING ITEMS
AFGHAN TROOPS PLUS SLAIN COPS PLUS TIGER’S SILENCE An assorted trio of stories attracted the attention of all three newscasts. All three joined in the celebrity fun as tabloid rumors swirled around a taciturn Tiger Woods. All three national newscasts covered a local crime story from the Tacoma suburbs, where a quartet of off-duty police officers was murdered at a coffee shop table. All three previewed President Barack Obama's foreign policy speech on the war in Afghanistan with the news that the Commander in Chief had already given marching orders to 30,000 additional troops. All three newscasts chose to lead with Afghanistan and it was Story of the Day by a narrow margin.
Jake Tapper, ABC's usually plainspoken White House correspondent, lapsed into incoherence in repeating his anonymous briefing from a "senior administration official" on the President's policy in Afghanistan. "His strategy is based more on fighting terrorism than on nation building," Tapper asserted. In the next sentence he described the troop reinforcement as a plan that "relies on training Afghan forces"—an activity that is quintessential to nation building.
ABC's Tapper explained: while the Pentagon will focus on training a national security force, the United States' development aid effort will not be national. Instead of funds being spent on President Hamid Karzai's central government, "much of it will go to the provincial and district level and to specific ministries…If Karzai continues to run a government that is full of corruption and fails to provide basic services he may find himself out of the loop altogether."
So we shall see province building not nation building.
Chuck Todd, NBC's man at the White House, was similarly confusing. He asserted that the troops' mission—"to dismantle and destroy al-Qaeda and to prevent the Taliban from creating a safe haven in the Afghanistan-Pakistan region"—remains unchanged. Yet Todd pointed out that President Obama had doubled the US military presence inside Afghanistan proper in the past ten months, not in the border zone where al-Qaeda is based. On the contrary, CBS' David Martin noted from the Pentagon that the first of the additional troops would be deployed "into the Taliban heartland in southern Afghanistan."
UNBALANCED CBS' White House correspondent Chip Reid is turning to advocacy journalism. He did not even countenance a Keynesian analysis that deficit spending is needed to boost aggregate demand in recessionary times. For Reid, federal borrowing is ill-advised plain and simple. Barack Obama "will shine the spotlight on two tough issues—Afghanistan and jobs—that have one thing in common. There simply is not enough money to pay for what he wants to do."
Reid reported that, since taxes will not be raised, borrowed money will be used to pay for war. Furthermore "business leaders will push for tax credits while unions are expected to support more stimulus spending" to subsidize hiring. "Both would add to the deficit." Then Reid found a third reason to expect the federal government to increase the National Debt. He called healthcare reform a "potential budgetbuster" flatly contradicting President Obama's pledge that any bill he signs will reduce deficits. What evidence did Reid cite to have us disbelieve that promise? "Polls show most Americans do not believe it; neither do Republicans."
DESIREE, MAHOGANY & MICHELE MEET MICHAELE & TAREQ The cast of characters surrounding Michaele and Tareq Salahi expands. The Salahis were the "spotlight hungry" uninvited guests who attended the state dinner for the Prime Minister of India on the White House lawn last week, NBC's Savannah Guthrie reminded us. The Secret Service admitted its error in granting the Salahis access. "Now the attention has turned to the White House Social Secretary," ABC's Yunji de Nies noted. "At major White House events the tradition has long been that the Social Secretary works near the entrance with the staff helping to verify guests. Desiree Rogers was not at the gate."
Enter Mahogany Jones, the publicist for the partycrashers: "The Salahis are not shopping any interviews or demanding money from the media networks to tell their story," was how NBC's Guthrie quoted her—without mentioning the possibility of their being cast in a Real Housewives reality TV show on Bravo, NBC's sibling cable channel. Next Guthrie picks up on the Washington Post's reporting about the role of Michele Jones, a Pentagon official who corresponded with the Salahis about the prospect of obtaining tickets. "She had no authority to get them into the dinner," NBC's Guthrie reported.
THE QUALITY OF MERCY What made the murder of the four police officers in that Washington State coffee shop cross over from a local crime story to a national one? The answer lies in the suspect's penal history and its ties to Mike Huckabee, onetime Republican Presidential candidate and current cable TV news personality.
Police pursued a manhunt for Maurice Clemmons, the accused killer of four of the comrades. At the time of the killings Clemmons was free on bail, accused of child rape and assault. It was not the bail that was newsworthy but Gov Huckabee's decade-old act of clemency. ABC's Neal Karlinsky quoted from the successful appeal for mercy that Clemmons submitted in 2000: "Where once stood a young 16-year-old misguided fool now stands a 27-year-old man who has learned through the School of Hard Knocks how to appreciate the rights of others."
CBS' John Blackstone pointed out that Clemmons had been convicted of robbery and sentenced when he was still a juvenile. "He should have been in an Arkansas prison until 2015 for a teenage crime spree," was how ABC's Karlinsky put it. NBC's George Lewis noted the original 95-year sentence for a "long record of violent crimes" and did not mention Clemmons' youth as a factor in Huckabee's leniency.
AMAZON & TWITTER ON CYBER MONDAY "Cyber Monday is not so much a day any more as it is a state of mind." Thus CNBC's Jane Wells disdained the very story she had been assigned to by NBC. Both Wells and CBS' Hattie Kauffman filed from amazon.com's giant distribution warehouse in Phoenix to illustrate the gradually switchover of holiday retail habits from shopping malls to online shopping baskets. CBS' Kauffman estimated that 10% of all Christmas shopping this year will be online: 78m shoppers made physical visits to stores on Black Friday; 96m surfers let their fingers do the shopping on Cyber Monday. ABC's Dan Harris showed us that online commerce involves not only the Websites of retailers themselves but also marketing buzz on social networks. "Welcome to a very Twitter Christmas!"
MEET MARK MALKOFF Comedian and filmmaker Mark Malkoff grabbed free publicity from CBS' Assignment America for his project to collect Keys to the City. So far 95 municipalities have honored him—not for his comedy or for his movies—but just for asking. "This man is completely undeserving of the honor," stated Steve Hartman. Hartman took himself off to Trenton NJ to test how easy it is to win that city's keys. Hartman won the honor for himself and for his cameraman and for his anchor and for Tyler, someone he met at lunch: "This is going to mean so much to some random person," Hartman thanked Hizzoner.
YOU HAVE A RIGHT TO REMAIN SILENT There was one valuable civic service that Tiger Woods performed on behalf of all of us. He reminded us of our Constitutional rights. ABC anchor Charles Gibson invited Nightline anchor Terry Moran into the studio after the golf champion refused to allow the Florida Highway Patrol into his home for three straight days following a late night accident involving his SUV and a fire hydrant: "Every American, Tiger Woods included, has an absolute, fundamental right not to talk to the police," Moran asserted.
Besides Moran, each of the newscasts had a correspondent outside the golfer's Florida home to cover Woods' refusal to comment. ABC's John Berman called the highway patrol's statement about its rebuffed interview requests "tersely worded." CBS' Randall Pinkston noted that the golfer's lawyer had provided his client's license, registration and proof of insurance and "that is all that is legally required."
Unable to obtain a Woods soundbite, reporters resorted to reading statements from his Website. "Many false, unfounded and malicious rumors that are currently circulating about my family and me are irresponsible," was a choice non-denial-denial that CBS' Pinkston and NBC's Mark Potter quoted. The "many" being irresponsible clearly implies that "some" or a least "a few" are not. Singling out "false, unfounded and malicious" rumors for denunciation implies that there are others that will turn out to be true or well-founded or fair-minded. His Website might as well have said nothing.
TUOHY TRUMPS TIGER NBC's closer contrasted the implied scandal surrounding Tiger Woods with the feel-good sports story of Michael Oher, the NFL rookie who plays for the Baltimore Ravens. Chris Jansing was assigned to tell us the tale of Leigh Anne Tuohy, "a superhero of a different kind, a wealthy woman who one freezing, fateful night spotted a teenage Michael Oher alone and brought him in from the cold." Except that the Los-Angeles-based Jansing was not really telling us the story of Oher and Tuohy—but of their movie biopic The Blind Side, Hollywood's unexpected box office hit. "Typically movies drop off significantly in the second week but The Blind Side was actually up 18%."
Jake Tapper, ABC's usually plainspoken White House correspondent, lapsed into incoherence in repeating his anonymous briefing from a "senior administration official" on the President's policy in Afghanistan. "His strategy is based more on fighting terrorism than on nation building," Tapper asserted. In the next sentence he described the troop reinforcement as a plan that "relies on training Afghan forces"—an activity that is quintessential to nation building.
ABC's Tapper explained: while the Pentagon will focus on training a national security force, the United States' development aid effort will not be national. Instead of funds being spent on President Hamid Karzai's central government, "much of it will go to the provincial and district level and to specific ministries…If Karzai continues to run a government that is full of corruption and fails to provide basic services he may find himself out of the loop altogether."
So we shall see province building not nation building.
Chuck Todd, NBC's man at the White House, was similarly confusing. He asserted that the troops' mission—"to dismantle and destroy al-Qaeda and to prevent the Taliban from creating a safe haven in the Afghanistan-Pakistan region"—remains unchanged. Yet Todd pointed out that President Obama had doubled the US military presence inside Afghanistan proper in the past ten months, not in the border zone where al-Qaeda is based. On the contrary, CBS' David Martin noted from the Pentagon that the first of the additional troops would be deployed "into the Taliban heartland in southern Afghanistan."
UNBALANCED CBS' White House correspondent Chip Reid is turning to advocacy journalism. He did not even countenance a Keynesian analysis that deficit spending is needed to boost aggregate demand in recessionary times. For Reid, federal borrowing is ill-advised plain and simple. Barack Obama "will shine the spotlight on two tough issues—Afghanistan and jobs—that have one thing in common. There simply is not enough money to pay for what he wants to do."
Reid reported that, since taxes will not be raised, borrowed money will be used to pay for war. Furthermore "business leaders will push for tax credits while unions are expected to support more stimulus spending" to subsidize hiring. "Both would add to the deficit." Then Reid found a third reason to expect the federal government to increase the National Debt. He called healthcare reform a "potential budgetbuster" flatly contradicting President Obama's pledge that any bill he signs will reduce deficits. What evidence did Reid cite to have us disbelieve that promise? "Polls show most Americans do not believe it; neither do Republicans."
DESIREE, MAHOGANY & MICHELE MEET MICHAELE & TAREQ The cast of characters surrounding Michaele and Tareq Salahi expands. The Salahis were the "spotlight hungry" uninvited guests who attended the state dinner for the Prime Minister of India on the White House lawn last week, NBC's Savannah Guthrie reminded us. The Secret Service admitted its error in granting the Salahis access. "Now the attention has turned to the White House Social Secretary," ABC's Yunji de Nies noted. "At major White House events the tradition has long been that the Social Secretary works near the entrance with the staff helping to verify guests. Desiree Rogers was not at the gate."
Enter Mahogany Jones, the publicist for the partycrashers: "The Salahis are not shopping any interviews or demanding money from the media networks to tell their story," was how NBC's Guthrie quoted her—without mentioning the possibility of their being cast in a Real Housewives reality TV show on Bravo, NBC's sibling cable channel. Next Guthrie picks up on the Washington Post's reporting about the role of Michele Jones, a Pentagon official who corresponded with the Salahis about the prospect of obtaining tickets. "She had no authority to get them into the dinner," NBC's Guthrie reported.
THE QUALITY OF MERCY What made the murder of the four police officers in that Washington State coffee shop cross over from a local crime story to a national one? The answer lies in the suspect's penal history and its ties to Mike Huckabee, onetime Republican Presidential candidate and current cable TV news personality.
Police pursued a manhunt for Maurice Clemmons, the accused killer of four of the comrades. At the time of the killings Clemmons was free on bail, accused of child rape and assault. It was not the bail that was newsworthy but Gov Huckabee's decade-old act of clemency. ABC's Neal Karlinsky quoted from the successful appeal for mercy that Clemmons submitted in 2000: "Where once stood a young 16-year-old misguided fool now stands a 27-year-old man who has learned through the School of Hard Knocks how to appreciate the rights of others."
CBS' John Blackstone pointed out that Clemmons had been convicted of robbery and sentenced when he was still a juvenile. "He should have been in an Arkansas prison until 2015 for a teenage crime spree," was how ABC's Karlinsky put it. NBC's George Lewis noted the original 95-year sentence for a "long record of violent crimes" and did not mention Clemmons' youth as a factor in Huckabee's leniency.
AMAZON & TWITTER ON CYBER MONDAY "Cyber Monday is not so much a day any more as it is a state of mind." Thus CNBC's Jane Wells disdained the very story she had been assigned to by NBC. Both Wells and CBS' Hattie Kauffman filed from amazon.com's giant distribution warehouse in Phoenix to illustrate the gradually switchover of holiday retail habits from shopping malls to online shopping baskets. CBS' Kauffman estimated that 10% of all Christmas shopping this year will be online: 78m shoppers made physical visits to stores on Black Friday; 96m surfers let their fingers do the shopping on Cyber Monday. ABC's Dan Harris showed us that online commerce involves not only the Websites of retailers themselves but also marketing buzz on social networks. "Welcome to a very Twitter Christmas!"
MEET MARK MALKOFF Comedian and filmmaker Mark Malkoff grabbed free publicity from CBS' Assignment America for his project to collect Keys to the City. So far 95 municipalities have honored him—not for his comedy or for his movies—but just for asking. "This man is completely undeserving of the honor," stated Steve Hartman. Hartman took himself off to Trenton NJ to test how easy it is to win that city's keys. Hartman won the honor for himself and for his cameraman and for his anchor and for Tyler, someone he met at lunch: "This is going to mean so much to some random person," Hartman thanked Hizzoner.
YOU HAVE A RIGHT TO REMAIN SILENT There was one valuable civic service that Tiger Woods performed on behalf of all of us. He reminded us of our Constitutional rights. ABC anchor Charles Gibson invited Nightline anchor Terry Moran into the studio after the golf champion refused to allow the Florida Highway Patrol into his home for three straight days following a late night accident involving his SUV and a fire hydrant: "Every American, Tiger Woods included, has an absolute, fundamental right not to talk to the police," Moran asserted.
Besides Moran, each of the newscasts had a correspondent outside the golfer's Florida home to cover Woods' refusal to comment. ABC's John Berman called the highway patrol's statement about its rebuffed interview requests "tersely worded." CBS' Randall Pinkston noted that the golfer's lawyer had provided his client's license, registration and proof of insurance and "that is all that is legally required."
Unable to obtain a Woods soundbite, reporters resorted to reading statements from his Website. "Many false, unfounded and malicious rumors that are currently circulating about my family and me are irresponsible," was a choice non-denial-denial that CBS' Pinkston and NBC's Mark Potter quoted. The "many" being irresponsible clearly implies that "some" or a least "a few" are not. Singling out "false, unfounded and malicious" rumors for denunciation implies that there are others that will turn out to be true or well-founded or fair-minded. His Website might as well have said nothing.
TUOHY TRUMPS TIGER NBC's closer contrasted the implied scandal surrounding Tiger Woods with the feel-good sports story of Michael Oher, the NFL rookie who plays for the Baltimore Ravens. Chris Jansing was assigned to tell us the tale of Leigh Anne Tuohy, "a superhero of a different kind, a wealthy woman who one freezing, fateful night spotted a teenage Michael Oher alone and brought him in from the cold." Except that the Los-Angeles-based Jansing was not really telling us the story of Oher and Tuohy—but of their movie biopic The Blind Side, Hollywood's unexpected box office hit. "Typically movies drop off significantly in the second week but The Blind Side was actually up 18%."
