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TYNDALL HEADLINE: HIGHLIGHTS FROM NOVEMBER 6, 2009
Thursday, the massacre at Fort Hood overwhelmed coverage of the healthcare debate on Capitol Hill. A day later, coverage of the shooting pushed aside unemployment. The dismal jobless data for the month of October--exceeding 10% for the first time since 1983--would have qualified as Story of the Day except for the carnage on the army base. ABC found Fort Hood most newsworthy, extending World News to a special hour of coverage. For consistency's sake Tyndall Report monitors only the regular first half hour. Altogether, the killings occupied 74% of the three-network newshole (44 min out of 59), a slight increase from Thursday (41 min). CBS (12 min v ABC 17, NBC 15) covered the hard news from Texas least intensely, finding time for a show business theme for its weekending American Spirit inspirational feature.
TYNDALL PICKS FOR NOVEMBER 6, 2009: CLICK ON GRID ELEMENTS TO SEARCH FOR MATCHING ITEMS
FORT HOOD KILLINGS FORCE ABC INTO OVERTIME Thursday, the massacre at Fort Hood overwhelmed coverage of the healthcare debate on Capitol Hill. A day later, coverage of the shooting pushed aside unemployment. The dismal jobless data for the month of October--exceeding 10% for the first time since 1983--would have qualified as Story of the Day except for the carnage on the army base. ABC found Fort Hood most newsworthy, extending World News to a special hour of coverage. For consistency's sake Tyndall Report monitors only the regular first half hour. Altogether, the killings occupied 74% of the three-network newshole (44 min out of 59), a slight increase from Thursday (41 min). CBS (12 min v ABC 17, NBC 15) covered the hard news from Texas least intensely, finding time for a show business theme for its weekending American Spirit inspirational feature.
All three newscasts corrected an error they made in their early hours of Fort Hood coverage on Thursday. Major Nidal Hasan is not dead: so now the psychiatrist switches from being the slain shooter to the "accused" shooter as he recuperates from his wounds at the Brooke Army Medical Center in San Antonio. Second, NBC and CBS dialed back Thursday's suspicions that Hasan acted with a pair of accomplices. "Officials today confirmed the carnage was the work of one man," was how NBC's Lester Holt reported it. "This whole thing was the work of a lone wolf without connection to a larger group," CBS' Dean Reynolds repeated what unidentified "federal law enforcement officials" told his colleague Bob Orr. ABC did not update Thursday's report by Martha Raddatz that "two additional suspects were found." Even then she said that they "may not have been involved in the shooting."
SLAIN AS THEY READIED THEMSELVES FOR WAR A day later the details of the shooting that left 13 dead and some three dozen injured at a Soldier Readiness Center became clearer. All three newscasts kicked off from Fort Hood: Lester Holt for NBC, Dean Reynolds for CBS and Ryan Owens for ABC. CBS' Reynolds called the Readiness Center, where soldiers are given medical checkups before an overseas deployment "a shooting gallery." ABC's Owens said the center was "packed. There were at least 300 soldiers inside, all of them unarmed."
"It was a day of tragedy and heroism as soldiers worked as fast as they could to save their own," recounted NBC's Mark Potter. They took off their T-shirts and turned them into tourniquets. They used cars to rush the wounded to emergency rooms. CBS' Kelly Cobiella told the story of Amber Bahr, a 19-year-old soldier who carried a comrade to safety "not realizing she was shot in the back."
The shooting was finally halted by Sgt Kimberly Munley, a civilian police officer. ABC anchor Charles Gibson designated her as his network's Person of the Week for challenging the gunman to a handgun duel that left both of them wounded. Munley is a firearms instructor and SWAT team member. "Within hours of the shooting Facebook fan pages dedicated to Kim popped up."
Many of the dead soldiers were supposed to have flown off to war. Instead their bodies were flown to Dover Air Force Base, where the bodies of the war dead arrive. There is a military mortuary there where autopsies will be performed. NBC's Holt called it "the same solemn journey."
As a tribute to the slain soldiers, each newscast offered a series of thumbnail portraits. CBS' Cobiella offered tidbits about an "avid videogamer" and a "gifted guitarist." ABC's Bob Woodruff told us of a newlywed and a mental health specialist "just like the man who allegedly ended her life." All three newscasts featured Francheska Velez, who was coming home from war. "Velez had returned early," NBC's Potter explained, six weeks pregnant.
WHO SHOT THE BULLETS? Unnamed "federal" sources told ABC's Brian Ross that Nidal Hasan, the accused killer, bought his handguns legally at a store called Guns Galore in Killeen. The pistols were made in Belgium and can hold an extended 20-round ammunition clip. CBS' Dean Reynolds observed that this brand of handgun is "popular with Mexican drug cartels" and CBS' David Martin said the model is "known on the street as a copkiller." MSNBC military analyst Jack Jacobs cautioned NBC anchor Brian Williams that "the numbers really do not work out very well." The number of dead and wounded seemed too high for a pair of pistols, even those carrying larger magazines. "I am very much convinced that there may have been friendly fire involved in some of the wounded."
THE ALLEGED PERPETRATOR Attention turns to the accused killer, Major Nidal Hasan, a 39-year-old army psychiatrist. "The picture emerging of Hasan is of a man increasingly anguished over his imminent deployment to Afghanistan," NBC's Lester Holt told us. ABC's Brain Ross added that one of the soldiers he was counseling recently committed suicide. Hasan's friends and family were speculating that this death have been a "final straw."
Hasan's professional reputation was hardly stellar. ABC's Ross was told by unidentified "army officials" that he received a "poor evaluation" for his work at Walter Reed Army Hospital. CBS' David Martin, looking at the "debris of a military career gone horribly wrong," reported that Hasan's supervisors at Walter Reed found him having "difficulties." On NBC, Jim Miklaszewski noted that "army officials say he was a loner, reprimanded for launching into religious rants during counseling sessions for soldiers with combat stress. In most of his performance evaluations his commanders gave him sub-par ratings." Yet he was assigned to Fort Hood to go to war anyway: "The army is so short on psychiatrists, commanders may have chosen to overlook the warning signs."
Someone calling himself Nidal Hasan made an Internet posting six months ago praising Moslem suicide bombers as "heroic," CBS' Dean Reynolds pointed out: "If one suicide bomber can kill a hundred enemy soldiers because they were caught off guard that would be considered a strategic victory." The post asserted an equivalence between falling on a grenade to save the lives of one's comrades and blowing oneself up to kill one's enemies. Reynolds stated that CBS News has confirmed that the poster and the psychiatrist are one and the same. So did Ross at ABC. NBC's Pete Williams was not so certain, limiting himself to reporting that the FBI is "looking into whether he wrote this blog posting…So far nothing proves that he wrote it."
HASAN IS A MOSLEM Recently Nidal Hasan, a Palestinian-American, "tried to get out of the army because soldiers ridiculed him for being a Moslem and for his religious traditions," his cousin Mohammed told NBC's Jim Miklaszewski in an interview from his home on the West Bank. CBS' David Martin quoted from a police complaint Hasan filed at Fort Hood about his car being defaced and an Allah Is Love bumper sticker being torn off. ABC's Brian Ross added that "he complained of being harassed by other soldiers who, he said, called him a camel jockey. CBS' Dean Reynolds played convenience store security videotape obtained by CNN that showed Hasan wearing "devout Moslem clothing" when off duty. Yet ABC's Ross suggested that Hasan may not have been strictly observant: "He himself was counseled for alcoholism."
In the past week Hasan had been "giving away his furniture and copies of the Koran," to his neighbors, ABC's Ross added, "apparently disposing of his worldly goods." CBS' Martin quoted Hasan as "saying he did not need them any more." NBC's Miklaszewski picked up on the same behavior: "The day before the deadly rampage Hasan phoned a friend to say goodbye and gave a neighbor all his belongings including his Koran." "Should that have raised red flags?" asked CBS' Reynolds rhetorically. Whether these were the actions of a soldier about to go to war or a killer about to go on a shooting spree, how could anyone have known?
NBC's Lester Holt quoted the father of an eyewitness to the shooting asserting that his daughter heard Hasan exclaim Allah Akbar--"God Almighty"--as he opened fire. As a result of the shooting, NBC's Miklaszewski found army officials "concerned about a possible backlash against Moslems in the military." They are already a tiny minority, numbering just 4,000.
PENTAGONESE NBC's Janet Shamlian filed a feature on the response to the Fort Hood shooting in Killeen, the base's home town. She showed us blood drives and charity fundraising and church services and condolences from schoolchildren. Gen George Casey, the Chief of Staff of the army, went to Fort Hood to boost his troops' morale. ABC anchor Charles Gibson interviewed him as part of his network's extended coverage. "We are moving large numbers of Incident Stress Management Teams here and Behavior Health Providers," the general declared in Pentagonese.
DISMAL All three newscasts assigned a correspondent to cover the dismal economic news that would, otherwise, have made huge headlines. "The recession is not over for nearly 16m Americans who cannot find work," declared CBS' Anthony Mason. With nationwide employment shrinking by 190,000 jobs in October, ABC's Betsy Stark calculated that this was the 22nd month in a row in which employers cut payrolls. The regular rate of unemployment is now 10.2%; NBC's John Yang gave us a second statistic, which adds in those who have given up searching for a job and those who can find only part-time work. That rate is 17.5%. "Nationwide there are six unemployed people for every job opening."
ILLITERACY, POVERTY, RAPE, INCEST, ABUSE CBS anchor Katie Couric tried to end the week on an inspirational note. Her American Spirit profile introduced us to Gabourey Sidibe, the rookie actress who is the star of the newly-released movie Precious. Unfortunately the movie's storyline only reinforced the day's gloomy mood: "Being illiterate is only part of her story. Precious is poor, pregnant for the second time by her father and emotionally abused by her mother."
All three newscasts corrected an error they made in their early hours of Fort Hood coverage on Thursday. Major Nidal Hasan is not dead: so now the psychiatrist switches from being the slain shooter to the "accused" shooter as he recuperates from his wounds at the Brooke Army Medical Center in San Antonio. Second, NBC and CBS dialed back Thursday's suspicions that Hasan acted with a pair of accomplices. "Officials today confirmed the carnage was the work of one man," was how NBC's Lester Holt reported it. "This whole thing was the work of a lone wolf without connection to a larger group," CBS' Dean Reynolds repeated what unidentified "federal law enforcement officials" told his colleague Bob Orr. ABC did not update Thursday's report by Martha Raddatz that "two additional suspects were found." Even then she said that they "may not have been involved in the shooting."
SLAIN AS THEY READIED THEMSELVES FOR WAR A day later the details of the shooting that left 13 dead and some three dozen injured at a Soldier Readiness Center became clearer. All three newscasts kicked off from Fort Hood: Lester Holt for NBC, Dean Reynolds for CBS and Ryan Owens for ABC. CBS' Reynolds called the Readiness Center, where soldiers are given medical checkups before an overseas deployment "a shooting gallery." ABC's Owens said the center was "packed. There were at least 300 soldiers inside, all of them unarmed."
"It was a day of tragedy and heroism as soldiers worked as fast as they could to save their own," recounted NBC's Mark Potter. They took off their T-shirts and turned them into tourniquets. They used cars to rush the wounded to emergency rooms. CBS' Kelly Cobiella told the story of Amber Bahr, a 19-year-old soldier who carried a comrade to safety "not realizing she was shot in the back."
The shooting was finally halted by Sgt Kimberly Munley, a civilian police officer. ABC anchor Charles Gibson designated her as his network's Person of the Week for challenging the gunman to a handgun duel that left both of them wounded. Munley is a firearms instructor and SWAT team member. "Within hours of the shooting Facebook fan pages dedicated to Kim popped up."
Many of the dead soldiers were supposed to have flown off to war. Instead their bodies were flown to Dover Air Force Base, where the bodies of the war dead arrive. There is a military mortuary there where autopsies will be performed. NBC's Holt called it "the same solemn journey."
As a tribute to the slain soldiers, each newscast offered a series of thumbnail portraits. CBS' Cobiella offered tidbits about an "avid videogamer" and a "gifted guitarist." ABC's Bob Woodruff told us of a newlywed and a mental health specialist "just like the man who allegedly ended her life." All three newscasts featured Francheska Velez, who was coming home from war. "Velez had returned early," NBC's Potter explained, six weeks pregnant.
WHO SHOT THE BULLETS? Unnamed "federal" sources told ABC's Brian Ross that Nidal Hasan, the accused killer, bought his handguns legally at a store called Guns Galore in Killeen. The pistols were made in Belgium and can hold an extended 20-round ammunition clip. CBS' Dean Reynolds observed that this brand of handgun is "popular with Mexican drug cartels" and CBS' David Martin said the model is "known on the street as a copkiller." MSNBC military analyst Jack Jacobs cautioned NBC anchor Brian Williams that "the numbers really do not work out very well." The number of dead and wounded seemed too high for a pair of pistols, even those carrying larger magazines. "I am very much convinced that there may have been friendly fire involved in some of the wounded."
THE ALLEGED PERPETRATOR Attention turns to the accused killer, Major Nidal Hasan, a 39-year-old army psychiatrist. "The picture emerging of Hasan is of a man increasingly anguished over his imminent deployment to Afghanistan," NBC's Lester Holt told us. ABC's Brain Ross added that one of the soldiers he was counseling recently committed suicide. Hasan's friends and family were speculating that this death have been a "final straw."
Hasan's professional reputation was hardly stellar. ABC's Ross was told by unidentified "army officials" that he received a "poor evaluation" for his work at Walter Reed Army Hospital. CBS' David Martin, looking at the "debris of a military career gone horribly wrong," reported that Hasan's supervisors at Walter Reed found him having "difficulties." On NBC, Jim Miklaszewski noted that "army officials say he was a loner, reprimanded for launching into religious rants during counseling sessions for soldiers with combat stress. In most of his performance evaluations his commanders gave him sub-par ratings." Yet he was assigned to Fort Hood to go to war anyway: "The army is so short on psychiatrists, commanders may have chosen to overlook the warning signs."
Someone calling himself Nidal Hasan made an Internet posting six months ago praising Moslem suicide bombers as "heroic," CBS' Dean Reynolds pointed out: "If one suicide bomber can kill a hundred enemy soldiers because they were caught off guard that would be considered a strategic victory." The post asserted an equivalence between falling on a grenade to save the lives of one's comrades and blowing oneself up to kill one's enemies. Reynolds stated that CBS News has confirmed that the poster and the psychiatrist are one and the same. So did Ross at ABC. NBC's Pete Williams was not so certain, limiting himself to reporting that the FBI is "looking into whether he wrote this blog posting…So far nothing proves that he wrote it."
HASAN IS A MOSLEM Recently Nidal Hasan, a Palestinian-American, "tried to get out of the army because soldiers ridiculed him for being a Moslem and for his religious traditions," his cousin Mohammed told NBC's Jim Miklaszewski in an interview from his home on the West Bank. CBS' David Martin quoted from a police complaint Hasan filed at Fort Hood about his car being defaced and an Allah Is Love bumper sticker being torn off. ABC's Brian Ross added that "he complained of being harassed by other soldiers who, he said, called him a camel jockey. CBS' Dean Reynolds played convenience store security videotape obtained by CNN that showed Hasan wearing "devout Moslem clothing" when off duty. Yet ABC's Ross suggested that Hasan may not have been strictly observant: "He himself was counseled for alcoholism."
In the past week Hasan had been "giving away his furniture and copies of the Koran," to his neighbors, ABC's Ross added, "apparently disposing of his worldly goods." CBS' Martin quoted Hasan as "saying he did not need them any more." NBC's Miklaszewski picked up on the same behavior: "The day before the deadly rampage Hasan phoned a friend to say goodbye and gave a neighbor all his belongings including his Koran." "Should that have raised red flags?" asked CBS' Reynolds rhetorically. Whether these were the actions of a soldier about to go to war or a killer about to go on a shooting spree, how could anyone have known?
NBC's Lester Holt quoted the father of an eyewitness to the shooting asserting that his daughter heard Hasan exclaim Allah Akbar--"God Almighty"--as he opened fire. As a result of the shooting, NBC's Miklaszewski found army officials "concerned about a possible backlash against Moslems in the military." They are already a tiny minority, numbering just 4,000.
PENTAGONESE NBC's Janet Shamlian filed a feature on the response to the Fort Hood shooting in Killeen, the base's home town. She showed us blood drives and charity fundraising and church services and condolences from schoolchildren. Gen George Casey, the Chief of Staff of the army, went to Fort Hood to boost his troops' morale. ABC anchor Charles Gibson interviewed him as part of his network's extended coverage. "We are moving large numbers of Incident Stress Management Teams here and Behavior Health Providers," the general declared in Pentagonese.
DISMAL All three newscasts assigned a correspondent to cover the dismal economic news that would, otherwise, have made huge headlines. "The recession is not over for nearly 16m Americans who cannot find work," declared CBS' Anthony Mason. With nationwide employment shrinking by 190,000 jobs in October, ABC's Betsy Stark calculated that this was the 22nd month in a row in which employers cut payrolls. The regular rate of unemployment is now 10.2%; NBC's John Yang gave us a second statistic, which adds in those who have given up searching for a job and those who can find only part-time work. That rate is 17.5%. "Nationwide there are six unemployed people for every job opening."
ILLITERACY, POVERTY, RAPE, INCEST, ABUSE CBS anchor Katie Couric tried to end the week on an inspirational note. Her American Spirit profile introduced us to Gabourey Sidibe, the rookie actress who is the star of the newly-released movie Precious. Unfortunately the movie's storyline only reinforced the day's gloomy mood: "Being illiterate is only part of her story. Precious is poor, pregnant for the second time by her father and emotionally abused by her mother."
